Research project Digital Nature
Social-technical relations and practices within Sweden’s rural agriculture and harvesting industry.
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 the autumn 2025 the project will sponsor the following National PhD course in Human Geography. Welcome to apply!
Digital Geographies 9-10 September, 7-8 October, 18-19 November, 16 January 2026
Organizers: Örebro University, Stockholm University, Karlstad University
Application deadline: 15 June 2025
Course Description PDF (updated August 2024) (133 Kb)
Contact: Natasha Webster, Örebro University natasha.webster@oru.se
Project description
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 members
Project managers
Qian Zhang
Researcher
Members
Linn Axelsson
Senior Lecturer, Docent
Shengnan Han
Professor
Natasha Webster
Senior Lecturer
Publications
More about this project
Project activities (2023-):
Conference presentation and participation:
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).
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.