Research project Digital Nature
Digital platforms are fundamentally transforming the way we live, work and play, normalizing everyday digital-social-spatial relations. The dominant articulation of ‘platform urbanism’ makes one wonder what the social consequences of platformization are in rural areas and the ways digital life in the rural may be theoretically and empirically different.
In Sweden, despite high hopes that digital technologies will make the rural competitive and attractive, we know little about social-technical practices and relations in the rural, and how the diverse rural spaces and places are connected to and from platformization. This project asks: 1) How is digital technology incorporated into everyday social and economic life in specific Swedish rural contexts? 2) How do everyday digitally mediated practices change rural social-technical relations and spatialities? 3) What are the consequences and implications of these relations for regional development? 4) What role does platformization play in normalizing, reproducing or reinforcing social inequalities/divides? Utilizing ethnographic, digital and computational methods, we will explore the questions in three nature-based industries situated in varied Swedish rural contexts – Beekeeping, Organic Farming and Wild Berry Refinement. This project has strong social relevance by addressing rural development, sustainability, and equality. We further advance this material to theoretically explore the role of rurality in shaping digital relations.
Project managers
Qian ZhangWebster, N.A. (accepted/In-print) More than just context: Reflections on the importance of embodied expressions of knowledge from a study of beekeeping and digital practices.. In Carr, N. (ed). The Messy Reality of Fieldwork Across the Social Sciences and Humanities Volume Two: Surviving and Thriving in the Face of Internal Pressures. Routledge Books.
Zhang, Q., & Webster, N. A. (In-print) In Hall, C. M. & Lundmark, L. (Eds.) - Making a digital tourist gaze of the Swedish countryside: Digital affect and atmosphere of WWOOF tourism. Handbook on Tourism and Migration. Edward Elgar.
In November 2025, Natasha Webster was recently interviewed by Dagens Nyheter to comment on the role of digital technologies in Swedish rural development. She argues that digital technologies can open new social spaces and create new relations and communities. The news article is called "När skolan och macken försvinner - framtidens möteplats på landsbygden" and can be read here: https://www.dn.se/ekonomi/nar-skolan-och-macken-forsvinner-framtidens-motesplats-pa-landsbygden/
In November 2025, the research team successfully delivered a workshop at the annual EcoJust Conference "Justice in Transition: Navigating Conflict, Care and Co-Creation" organized by the EcoJust platform at Södertörn University. The workshop is called "Witnessing pathways of eco-(in)justices in the agrifood system through mapping the digitalised farming space". Using witnessing as a method, the participants explored and reflected on how digital technologies shape the ways we see and feel about agrifood systems, and its implications for more-than-human relations and justices.
In November 2025, Qian Zhang was invited and participated in the FlIARA symposium at Linnaeus University. The day provided a rich exchange of experiences, challenges, and future directions in academic research connected to gender, innovation and rural transformation. More details about the symposium can be read here: https://lnu.se/en/meet-linnaeus-university/current/news/2025/FLIARA-symposium-at-lnu/
Project activities (2023-):
Conference presentation and participation:
Natasha Webster, “Bzzzzz Bzzzz Bzzzzz: Mind mapping through soundscapes of bees in their local geographies” Presentation, November 2025, Sound & Purpose Conference, Lund, Sweden.
Natasha Webster, “Bzzzzz Bzzzz Bzzzzz: Mind mapping through soundscapes of bees in their local geographies”, 2025, Higher Seminar, Department of Human Geography, Örebro University, Sweden.
Natasha Webster, “Digital Uptake and Resistance: Emotional Geographies of Digital Practices in Hobbyist Beekeeping” Presentation, 6th International Geomedia Conference, September 2025, Karlstad University, Sweden.
Linn Axelsson, "Virtually Authentic? Digital reconnection with food origins in Nnrthern Sweden’s atisanal food movement" presentation, 6th International Geomedia Conference, September 2025, Karlstad University, Sweden.
Qian Zhang, "Hope for Aarifood transformation? Digitalizing everyday rhythms on WWOOF farms" presentation, 6th International Geomedia Conference, September 2025, Karlstad University, Sweden.
Natasha Webster, “Tell it to the Bees: Digital practices and their multiple rural geographies” presentation, August 2025, RGS-IBG Annual Conference, Birmingham, United Kingdom.
Qian Zhang and on behalf of Natasha A. Webster. “Digitally mediated justice: Exploring changing everyday social-ecological-spatial practices and relations”, presented at EcoJust Conference, November 2024, Nacka, Sweden.
Qian Zhang. “Mapping digitally mediated space”, presented at Workshop: Participatory Research Methods in a Digital Age, October 2024, Huddinge, Sweden
Natasha A. Webster and Qian Zhang. “Beyond the romantic gaze: Travelling to WWOOF farms through digital aRect and atmosphere”, presented at the Swedish STS Conference, October 2024, Norrköping, Sweden.
Qian Zhang and Natasha A. Webster. “Beyond the romantic tourist gaze: Making WWOOF farms through digital affect and atmosphere”, presented at the Nordic Geographers Meeting, June 2024, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Natasha A. Webster. “Tell it to the bees: Reflections on digital continuums and rurality”, presented at Geomedia Speaker Series, April 2024, Karlstad, Sweden.
Qian Zhang. “WWOOFing for sustainable farming: Everyday digital geography and rurality”, presented at Higher Seminar, Department of Economics, Geography, Law and Tourism, Mid Sweden University, April 2024, Östersund, Sweden.
Qian Zhang and Natasha Webster. “Rural Digitalization 2.0: Digging into context, everyday life and rural digital geographies”, presented at conference “Ruralities and Regions in Transition”, November 2023, Åkersberga, Sweden.
Qian Zhang. “Smart adaptation: Reconceptualizing digital-farming relations through exploring everyday rural life”, presented at conference “Green Transitions on Nordic Farms: Linking changing climate and farming practices”, September 2023, Uppsala, Sweden.
Nils Pettersson, Charlotta Hedberg, Linn Axelsson, Madeleine Eriksson. “Wild berry shifting: Berry flows, actor relations and sustainability transition of the wild berry industry”, scientific poster presented at “Nordic Wildberry Conference 2023”, September 2023, Umeå, Sweden.
Natasha Webster. “Sticky problems: Conceptualizing local Honey in digital geography”, presented at conference “Migration and Social Change”, June 2023, Utrecht University (online).
Organisation of conference session:
Qian Zhang, Natasha Webster and Linn Axelsson organised the session “Transforming ruralities through digital practices or transforming digitalities through rural spaces?” at 6th International Geomedia Conference, September 2025, Karlstad, Sweden.
Organisation of PhD courses
In the autumn 2025 the project sponsored Digital Geographies - a National PhD course in Human Geography. The course was co-organized by Örebrö University, Stockholm University, Karlstad University and Södertörn University.
Digital Geographics Study Guide (updated August 2025) pdf, 284 kB. (283 Kb)
Others:
Natasha Webster was selected to join the Social Impact Lab at Örebro University and she contributes a focus on rural digital life. Details can be read in https://www.oru.se/samverkan/oru-innovation/innovationskontoret/social-impact-lab/deltagare-2025/natasha-webster/
Research exchange meeting, November 2024. Linn Axelsson who is responsible for the wild berry case in the project coordinated a research exchange meeting between and the research team led by RISE which developed an app called BÄRÄKNA for mapping wild berry inventory in Sweden (for more info about the project and the app https://www.ri.se/en/expertise-areas/projects/fairchain, https://www.ronaldhelgers.com/). The participants discussed around the potential and challenges of designing and using the app. This interdisciplinary exchange of engineering, design and social science perspectives on digital technologies was productive and contributed to deepening our research team’s collective knowledge on digital-rural relations.
Department higher seminar given by guest, lecturer and Dr. Alistair Fraser from Maynooth University, Ireland, titled “‘Hack the land!’: Digital geographies of resistance and the planetary struggle for land”, September 2023.