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Moving around every few years changes one’s idea of home and of roots. These concepts are not foreign but my definition of them is, at best, atypical. It took most of my life to find a location I called home, in the same ways my friends and the culture at large did. I spent a lot of time as a kid not at my house. I went to slumber parties, on vacations with friends and their families; I spent weeks and often months at a time at my grandparents’ house. I loved the adventure of it. I never cried for home or begged my parents to come get me. I was usually sad when I had to leave…wherever it was to go “home.”

My view of homesickness was from a distance. I watched friends’ parents come get them from sleepovers; I saw campers miss their dogs, cats, basketball hoops, etc, but I never understood it because I never experienced it. And then I did.

Until I worked at Disneyworld for a semester. Then, I suddenly realized what the campers must have felt like. I think my homesickness then was due to the depth of defamiliarization I experienced. I mean, Disneyworld… it was like not being in a real place. We’ve been talking in one of my classes about disorientation, how it’s difficult in new places to know how to act or to even know who you are. We feel like Alice from Through the Looking Glass, getting bigger, smaller, feeling confused, not knowing what to do or say. We feel lost. And in Orlando, I identified strongly with Alice, for more reasons we won’t get into right now. Eventually, my routine became familiar; I made friends and settled in but I never felt quite right there. I never completely fit, not like some of my friends who stayed after our commitment was up. I was glad to return to Mobile, but even there I faced the unfamiliar. My grandfather was dying; my great-gran moved in with my grandparents where I’d been living until I left for Orlando. I returned but I did not have a bedroom or a space that was mine. I spent most of my time at Candace’s or friends’ houses. It took a long time to feel at home again. In fact, it wasn’t until after I returned from Europe that I felt like I was coming home.

Mobile, Al was the closest place to home that it got for me. Leaving was difficult and necessary. I miss it so often and wonder what it is I miss. Lately, I have actually missed the place, the familiar haunts, the drive across the bridge, midtown, downtown. I miss the way I felt: dreamy, pulsing with ideas and possibilities. But I know some of that had to do with the time in my life. And it isn’t as though I want to move back… oh, no. I know better. However, for the past few weeks I’ve felt something deep and pulling. I feel homesick. I miss Alabama. I miss the South. I miss people getting it the first time. I miss something intangible. I miss my grandmother and the big family gatherings where I have no clue how I’m related to half the people and it doesn’t matter. I miss it, deeply and painfully.

It has been miserably gray here the past few days and when Spring arrives, I hope I will feel less homesick. I think there’s a part of me that wants to see my home through a camera lens, to have a record of what I love about it. I’ve been wanting to do this video essay about place but don’t think I’ll really be able to do it the way I want unless Mobile is part of it.

I love my life here in Illinois. I am a better person having moved here. These are things I feel deeply, too.

I’m left not knowing exactly where my home is, though my heart a bit torn at times, is definitely here in Illinois, in the life I am building. I get it, now, the homesickness, the stomachaches and the calls to parents. I get it, more than I ever wanted to.

When I think of a neighborhood I think of a specific area, distinct in some way from its surroundings, such as the types of homes or buildings between streets or the architecture of an area. Typically houses or buildings are close to another, within walking or bike-riding distance. In suburbs and small towns the areas are typically separated from major thoroughfares though in urban areas this isn’t necessarily the case. Neighborhoods are created out of a physical space, out of proximity and from them a complex and rich system of community, connections, relationships and expectations emerge. As Stephen Doheny-Farina (1998) writes in The Wired Neighborhood, “A community is not something you can easily join…It must be lived. It is entwined, contradictory, and involves all our senses. It involves the ‘continuing, unplanned interactions between the same people for a long period of time’ ” (p 37).  Put simply: neighborhoods are not only about the houses, streets and businesses that create boundaries but also about the people who live within them and the identities they form together as a social group.

The concept of the neighborhood not only gives users a sense of place, of belonging but it also motivates users to connect to others and to contribute to social media in significant ways. Social media sites not only encourage users to participate through building a digital community and contributing to social media by generating content for the site but also rely on participation for their success.  In Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations Clay Shirky (2009) explains that “the desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct […]” and with the explosion of social media participating in groups has become, as Shirky quotes social scientist Seb Paquet, “ridiculously easy” (p 54).

As an increasingly mobile society, our social lives have moved from geophysical neighborhoods to digital ones, bringing with us the nostalgia of “near dwellers ” as community where people share common values and expectation. In his essay, “The Age of Social Transformation,” Peter Drucker (1994) writes, “People no longer have roots. People no longer have a neighborhood that controls what their home is like, what they do, and, indeed what their problems are allowed to be” (p 74).  While Drucker implies the old community has been dead for some time, Doheny-Farina and Clay Shirky remind us that the need for identifying through community ties remains. In the place of the traditional neighborhood communities social connections via the Internet have developed, many through social media.

If you imagine the Internet as a cityscape, as David Crystal (2006) has suggested “with its suggestion of unlimited opportunities and myriad dangers,” then social media are its neighborhoods, its burroughs, its coffee shops and diners: its gathering places where you run into old friends and make new ones (p 62). In/on/through social media identity is defined through relationships, collaboration and participation. Therefore, using neighborhood as a metaphor conveys the kind of comfort and intimacy necessary for users to create relationships, participate in and share themselves with digital communities. As a metaphor, neighborhood evokes community, familiarity, shared space and often an assumption of shared values. Due to how easily and quickly groups emerge and dissolve via the Internet and our increasingly mobile society, we have made the concept of neighborhood into an icon, a holder of shared values. In doing so, a sense of nostalgia regarding neighborhoods emerges as we yearn for a place to connect with those who have something in common with us. Place easily becomes the focus of this yearning.

I moved frequently throughout my childhood in and out of neighborhoods.  I walked behind neighbor’s houses to visit friends who lived blocks over from me. I rode my bicycle with the boys across the street. I raced to the honeysuckle vines with kids from my block. I shared physical proximity with these people, but often little else. I never quite belonged in their social groups, sometimes because of their age, other times because I didn’t like the same things they did. I liked to read and listen to music and my closest friends throughout my youth were also readers, dreamers like me. So while my neighbors might have been geographically near to me, those I considered my friends had similar interests. Furthermore, I am currently only familiar with three of my neighbors in my apartment building. The girl downstairs has an Irish wolfhound. I say hello as we pass in the parking lot. Across the hall lives an African man with whom I exchange pleasantries when I see him. He occasionally and mistakenly receives packages addressed to me. The couple upstairs has a Boston terrier; I see them on walks to the mailbox. I wouldn’t say that I know any of these people well. I suppose one could argue that these shallow connections are part of the nature of apartment living, particularly in a building filled mostly with graduate students leading busy, separate lives. It could, however, point to larger societal changes.

James A. Vela-McConnell explores social proximity in his book, Who is my Neighbor?: Social Affinity in a Modern World. McConnell (1999) points out that while research has shown the importance of physical proximity in the early development of friendships, “it is later superseded by similarities in beliefs and values” (p 31). He explains, “choosing to have relationships with those who are similar to ourselves validates our sense of our own identities” (p 31).  With today’s digital possibilities, society is not limited to geographic proximity for social connection or participation. In lieu of proximity, we rely on technology to help us construct our collective identities by trying to recreate connections to geophysical locations. Social media sites work as an “unbounded community,” in which my geographic location is only one way to connect me to other social media users. However, getting people to connect through their attachment to and affinity for a geographic location is one of the ways that sites like yelp, outside,in and Front Porch forum encourage participation. These sites provide geophysical neighborhoods with a web presence. Neighborhood becomes not a metaphorical representation of the geophysical location but rather a digital representation.

Hyperlocalism is devoted to the stories, the news, and the ins and outs of a particular neighborhood, zip code, or group within a specific geographic region. Rob Curley, a Kansas native, helped to create LJWorld.com an online version of Lawrence Kansas’ newspaper, Lawrence Journal-World. The plan was simple: cover local news from a local perspective. Curley explains he doesn’t think of himself as new media, rather he urges newspapers to get back to their roots, to covering the community. In an interview with Fast Company magazine (2006), Curley says, “I’m old school. I think newspapers lost their way and started focusing on big investigative stuff and forgot to cover the prom or 10-year-olds playing baseball” (qtd. in Salter). On his blog Curley applauds the Las Vegas Sun’s recent coverage of the Monte Carlo hotel fire as it happened. The coverage began with a live blog, continued with pictures and then a historical overview of the hotel. As events unfolded the Sun’s website covered them in real time, continuously updating content, providing ways for readers to upload their own videos and photos of the event. Curley’s hyperlocal philosophy encourages local outlets to own the stories happening in the area. He explains that you can’t “outCNN CNN” but you shouldn’t let them OutLawrence, OutNaples, Outinsertyourtownnamehere you. The philosophy has caught on with sites like Triblocal.com, sponsored by the Chicago Tribune which asks readers to become contributors by sharing their photos, stories and events with “neighbors, friends and community.” Readers select the specific suburb or Chicagoland area such as Tinley Park, Lemont, Geneva, Batavia, Glen Elyn, etc. Each area gets localized coverage including top stories, daily photos and highlighted events. Newspapers around the country are reevaluating their approaches to news coverage. The Indianapolis Star’s local media site, IndyStar.com also sponsors IndyMoms and Indypets.

But it is not just news organizations getting in on the hyperlocal act. Sites like yelp, outside.in, and Front Porch Forum attempt to connect users to their collective identities through the news, people and places in their neighborhoods and communities. Each site discussed in this text focuses on hyperlocal content helping users construct their collective identities through place.

Let’s take a look at how some of this works on the social, hyperlocal news and information site outside.in.

According to its co-creator Steven B. Johnson outside.in is “an attempt to collectively build the geographic Web, neighborhood by neighborhood.” Johnson explains that the purpose of outside.in is to unite the various voices emerging from hyperlocal bloggers, review sites, city government sites and traditional media and ground the information geographically.

Outside.in’s default main page allow you to choose from a number of geographic locations either from the list, map or by typing in your city or adress. Localized information comes up once users choose their location. The information is culled from news reports as well as blogs.  The “for publishers” and “for bloggers” links on the main page encourage users to submit already published content about issues related to places in their geographic areas. With this feature, users can submit content directly from their blogs or news sources to outside.in.

Since its conception outside.in has changed drastically both in design and actual site content. I discuss some of these changes, specifically as I discuss relevance and layers of zoom but I want to address the changes here because I spent a great deal of time exploring and theorizing outside.in as a site of hyperlocal content and was surprised to watch the site change so significantly since my initial research began.

When outside.in first came to my attention, I was excited by the user-generated hyperlocal content. At the time, the site encouraged participation among users. To begin, users had to become a “neighbor” by joining the site. On the registration page users were met with the following message: “Meet the neighbors. Get the word on the street. Weigh in on the things around you.” At the time, the site depended on user involvement and a user’s commitment to the hyperlocal. The tag line right before the registration forms read, “Neighbors define places, stories, and people that shape a community. You become the expert that brings the neighborhood to life, online.” Those statements encapsulated outside.in’s approach to “tracking news, views and conversations.” If users did not blog but still wanted to contribute to the community dialogue, the could participate on discussion boards, respond to threads and geotag their location as well as other’s posts. None of these options are currently available and users no longer register on the site in order to view content. Additionally, there are advertisements on the site which did not exist in previous versions of outside.in. The site has moved from instant user-generated content to aggregating previously published stories. For example, the language from the previous registration page: “you become the expert that brings the neighborhood to life, online” has been revised on the FAQ page: “Hyperlocal content gives you the news and information for the area right around where you are, like the block around your office or the neighborhood where you live.” As I mention in a later post, this shift becomes a significant shift in metaphor: from conversation to collection and though users can filter content, they remain passive receivers of information.

Registration page for outside.in from 2008

Current home page for outside.in February, 2010

Relevance has both a geographic and an emotional dimension. Steven Johnson points out that crimes, politics, real estate development, for example, affect a larger population, reverberating more widely than news about pothole repair. Definitions of what is local and what is important or near to me will differ from my neighbors and from my peers. For example, as a member of the gay community I am interested in political actions in the state of Illinois where I reside as well as on the national level. I am also interested in news out of London that Alan Duncan, a Member of Parliament, recently entered into a civil union with his partner and the debate over gay characters not kissing on a soap opera. Although I have varying geographic distance from each of these “news items,” these issues share emotional proximity. Additionally, though I currently live in Champaign-Urbana I am still interested in Mobile, Alabama, where family members still reside. All of these locations and communities, while not always a part of my daily interactions, are part of my collective identity. Location is only part of what makes information relevant to users of sites like outside.in.

In previous incarnations of outside.in, participation was encouraged through a featured thread known as “outside inquiry” on discussion boards each week. These threads included questions such as, “What is the most over-hyped and overpriced neighborhood in (insert town or city name here)?” and “What (insert town or city name here) building to you most like to tear down?” A small header at the top of each outside.in page listed the outside.inquiry question of the week and invited users to join in the discussion.

Outside inquiry discussion forms which no longer exist. Click on the thumbnail for a larger image.

The outside.in forums attempted to extend the shelf life of information on the site. These threads as well as the discussion forums as a whole have since disappeared from the site. In its current form, outside.in appears to be more of a news aggregator of hyperlocal content as it has evolved by teaming with publishing companies including The Miami Herald, New York Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and properties of the Tribune Company, such as Chicago Tribune, and the Baltimore Sun as well as bloggers, who use the site to distribute content and drive readership to their blogs.

Newspapers and blogs are typically organized around time and privilege the most recent news. As it says on EveryBlock’s FAQ section, “We’re interested in local data that has a date and a specific location.” Neighborhood information stays news for longer periods of time, however, than a typical news story which loses its relevance fairly quickly. For example, a post mentioning gay-friendly businesses in a particular area would be useful weeks after the post was written as would information about the location of Chicago Transit fare machines that accept credit cards. EveryBlock, however, makes it clear that In order for information to sustain its relevance, it must go beyond the headline buzz and instead offer users ways to track the conversations, debates and discussions related to what matters to them as part of their collective identity. This, in part, is what outside.in is attempting.

The dinosaur is my favorite. And while all of these were in a very interesting “nursery,” the fact that these statues exist in this place implies a demand for them, which speaks volumes.

I’ve met some interesting people while at the Reading and it makes me think about how very different I would be had I grown up solely in small towns or had fewer choices and conservative parents. It’s odd to meet such a range of people with such wide and varying pedagogies, outlooks and perspectives on the world around them. And it’s nice when you meet someone who gets you, who feels like an old friend after just a few conversations.

But I am ready to go home and when I say that, I mean Champaign. It is strange to think of Illinois as home. So much of my time in graduate school was spent calling Alabama home but once my parents moved to Panama City, it became harder to call anywhere but Illinois home, though I know a part of me will always feel at home below the Mason Dixon line.

Alabama holds my roots in its dark red clay and kudzu-lined backroads, in the highways between Mobile and Tuscaloosa where I traveled to see my brother in college and in its kitchens where the women in my family told stories as they shelled peas, deveined shrimp and peeled sweet potatoes. I will always feel drawn to the pull of the tide and the smell of the air, heavy with rain. I feel nostalgia creep in when I am gone too long and I know it’s only a matter of time before I return and experience the disconnect between the life I lead and the one I left behind. I begin, instead, to long for the openness of the Midwest landscape and tire of pine trees and slow driving.

I have been on the coast almost a month and I am homesick for Illinois, for my life, for a routine, for my own bed. I am so lucky to have someone love me so much that they let me go away for a month and take a break, relax and find my footing again. I am overwhelmed at how happy I am to feel so deeply, to love so much. It creates a yearning in me that goes far beyond place. Tonight as I walked along the beach in the humid, sticky air and heard the ocean waves crashing as I shared stories about myself with a new friend, I felt amazingly alive. I rolled up my pants (not quite far enough since the tide was coming in pretty high) and let the water, the shells, the seawood (who knows what else) drift over me. On the beach, at night, I could be anybody. I’m just a shadowy figure in the moonlight, after all, in a place where no one knows me. And while it might have been fun to dream up a character; it felt damn good just being me, torn between the places that define me, getting my jeans wet in the surf.