Terrains numériques : la datasphère, nouveau(x) terrain(s) exploratoire(s) de la géographie ?

Abstract

This paper investigates how "digital fieldwork" could become new tools of analysis in geography and geopolitics. In this still undeveloped research field, we present various experimental researches, allowing us to approach the digital fieldwork, in its both material (infrastructures) and informational (data under different forms) characters, and to highlight new forms of interactions and rivalries emerging in the datasphere. These research works lead to confront our experiences from fieldworks in Russia and in the Balkans with what digital technologies allow to observe today. The new look at these fieldworks through their digital dimensions inspires to think more generally about the multiple forms that "digital fieldworks" could take from a geopolitical point of view.

Keywords

• Digital fieldwork
• Geopolitics
• Datasphere
• Digital space
• Digital infrastructure
• Digital place of memory