Unfolding Spatial Histories: A Postdigital Study of GeoGuessr Gameplay

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 7:45 am - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: Shaping Identities, Relationships, and Worlds Through Digital Literacies

Abstract

This study explored GeoGuessr player’s spatial understanding through analysis of 40 hours of Twitch livestreams. A postdigital lens framed game live streaming as postdigital literacies emphasizing entanglement, digital materiality, and spatiotemporality (Lacković et al., 2024). Guided by digital ethnography, three findings emerged: 1) spaces in Google Street View imagery were entangled with temporality, materiality, and sociopolitical context, 2) spatial meanings were compressed by digital map logic, 3) players’ spatial understanding evolved through encountering, disintegrating, and reborn stage. These findings imply spatial understandings emerge through an imagined world shaped by entangled and relational space in digital games, underscoring the need for teachers’ active engagement in students’ gameplay to support critical examination of the socio-cultural, historical, material, and epistemological dimensions of meaning-making.

Author

• Liyan Yang, University of Kansas