Studying Digital Graffiti as a Location-Based Social Network

Increasing amounts of geo-tagged social media have led to interest in how that media can be re-integrated into the physical environment. Yet, although location information is often automatically appended to media, little is know about how users consider location in its creation and viewing. Using Graffiti as a design meme, we developed a novel social media service to investigate these issues. A two week field study showed how users incorporated both utilitarian and playful aspects of location into their social media creation, as well as revealing a disconnect between the location-media relationship intended by creators and perceived by viewers. We outline implications of our work for services that seek to repurpose existing geo-tagged social media in the design of novel services.