Geomedia 2021 is hosted by the Graduate School Locating Media and the CRC Media of Cooperation at the Department of Media Research, University of Siegen. It is organized in collaboration with the Geomedia Group at Karlstad University. The conference was supposed to be held east of Cologne in downtown Siegen, a lovely, off-the-beaten path industrial hub with a thriving university of over 20,000 students, but will now be held fully digital.

Since 2012, the interdisciplinary graduate school “Locating Media” unites researchers with a strong emphasis on investigating media, data and human actors in motion and in situ relevant to present times. The current summer term is at the same time the last semester of the group. Former associated and current members of “Locating Media” are taking this as a worthy occasion not only to look back upon a longstanding and thriving tradition of situation- and location-aware media research but to present their current research to provide an insight into the innovative variety of topics and methods of a “Locating Media”-specific approach. Uniting researchers and methods from various fields from both the sciences and the humanities such as critical data studies, media linguistics, socio-informatics, or theatre, platform, literary, media and cultural studies, the research training group applies skills from the social, computer and cultural sciences to issues relevant to digital media culture in the true spirit of interdisciplinary exchange and discussion.

Whereas the first period of “Locating Media” (2012-2016) focused on the convergence of technical, scientific, creative and practical localisations of media, the second and final phase of the group (2017-2021) investigates the distributed spaces and situations of mobile media and data practices. In doing so, the hitherto proved ethnographic methods of media research are supplemented by digital and mobile methods. Using both qualitative and quantitative approaches in investigating digital media and data practices, the graduate school was, and is, delivering pioneering research not only in German media studies and sociology but also in related fields, having a profound impact on the development of methods and methodologies for the disciplines involved.