Writing space: Examining the potential of location-based composition

People use location-aware mobile applications to both produce and organize information. As scholars have noted, digital information is increasingly being organized by physical location. This article examines how new forms of location-based writing represent an important development for composition scholars. Increasingly, people use mobile applications to write about locations, and those texts then appear when other people travel to those locations. This form of location-based composition shows the potential of understanding how texts can impact how people experience physical space. To understand these forms of writing, this article develops a theoretical framework for understanding these texts and then historicizes location-based writing by discussing earlier forms of locative media art. The article then examines the location-based texts found in the mobile application Foursquare to show that instructors can use mobile applications to teach students about attaching texts to the physical places they describe. This article ultimately argues that location-based texts represent a new form of text, a form of text that should be taught in the composition classroom.