Navigating digital geographies: Black boxes, geospatial narratives, and the art of constructing location data

Abstract

Smartphone location data are often treated as objective and self-evident—but it is neither. This article opens the black box of how location is constructed on the phone and in the cloud, arguing that these processes are foundational to digital geography and central to how its infrastructures take shape. Drawing on an original experiment conducted in Kingston, Ontario and Baltimore, Maryland, we reverse-engineer and document the different methods of producing location data in Android smartphones. In doing so, we reveal three intertwined, overlapping, and contested geospatial narratives: raw GNSS location data, Google’s computed location data, and the human narrative of embodied experiences. We analyze the frictions and contradictions among these narratives to demonstrate how location data are not simply measured, but actively produced through assemblages of surveillance, infrastructural power, and capitalist extraction. Against dominant portrayals of location as a neutral technical fact, our findings show that Google’s location services depend on off-phone processing, structured by opaque systems designed for control and profit. We call for a critical reorientation in how digital geographers engage with location technologies—not as passive tools, but as politically charged systems that mediate and monetize everyday life.