Digital geography is an almost self-explanatory term, giving indications that geographical studies and landscapes are embracing the digital age and adapting to new technologies, with digital technologies having a significant role in modern geographic practice. (Ash, Kitchin, Leszczynski, 2018). 

Digital geography is very often centred around ideas of space and place, with the former meaning an area whilst the latter is focues on the meanings given to spaces to give them an identity as something different. (Parmett, 2017). When looking at digital geography in this regard, this suggests that different online areas are a new form of place. An example of this is how shared knowledge of an online game such as World of Warcraft, an MMORPG game with a fantasy setting, (Britannica, n.d.) creates different places within the game itself, for instance how an area where players buy and sell goods in-game creates a sense of a marketplace despite it being simply illustrations on a screen. 

Whilst place is often linked to digital geography however, some argue that digital geography could be then end of place. Cresswell states that the “combination of mass communication, increased mobility, and a consumer society has been blamed for a rapidly accelerating homogenization of the world” (Cresswell, 2005) What this means is that advancements made to geography via the digital medium could potentially have caused different places to be too similar and therefore the meaning required to transform a space to a place has been removed. In a way this makes sense. The online equivalent of a place in some regards, if looking at geographies of the digital and how geography can be applied to digital technology, is simply a website. These websites may often be similar to each other, for instance YouTube and Vimeo both being video sharing platforms, and so therefore the overall meaning behind them cannot be used to identify them as a unique place. On the other hand, geographies such as World of Warcraft’s digital places show that whilst the applying geography to the digital might remove a sense of place, creating something digital with geography in mind can avoid this.

Overall, digital geography is a way for technologies to embrace aspects such as space and place, and whilst some forms of digital technology may remove a sense of place, such as similar websites, other areas where geography has been considered by developers can keep a sense of place.

References:

Ash, J., Kitchin, R., & Leszczynski, A. (2018) Digital turn, digital geographies? Progress in Human Geography, 42(1), 25-43.

Britannica (n.d.) World of Warcraft. https://www.britannica.com/topic/World-of-Warcraft

Cresswell, T. (2015) Place: An Introduction. (2^nd ed.) Wiley Blackwell.

Parmett, H. M. (2017) Space. In L. Ouellette & J. Gray (Eds.) Keywords for Media Studies (pp. 341-344). New York University Press.