The role of the community-related uses of location-based social media in citizens’ local community experience

In modern societies, the spread of ubiquitous, locative, social media – and of their community-related uses, specifically – has complexified the ways citizens can experience their local communities (that is, neighborhoods and cities) by producing more and different social opportunities that have become easily available to citizens. However, in most cases, such community-related uses have sprung up spontaneously regardless of the stated aims of the platforms they refer to. For this reason, such uses have been hypothesized as strategies citizens could have played out to differently sustain their SoC when more traditional paths were not feasible due to their community spatial and/or social features. Indeed, local communities have become increasingly spatially and socially closed, with consequences in the opportunities citizens have to experience their social dimensions. In light of the above, by relying on the findings from four studies, the community-related uses of two different mainstream platforms (Instagram and dating People-Nearby Applications) will be here deepened with reference to (a) the social needs underlying these uses, and (b) which are the paths through which these uses can enhance citizens’ tie to their local community. The aim is to unravel whether they might represent paths towards a different experience of the local community of belonging for their users. Taken together, the findings highlight the complexities related to modern local community experience and suggest that social media could provide relevant contributions as tools providing citizens with new opportunities and resources to be activated. Becoming aware of these complexities and of the implications deriving from them allows opening new perspectives with reference to both further research questions and innovative practices and interventions to be implemented.