Mapping the uneven geographies of digital phenomena: The case of blockchain

Digital phenomena pose unique challenges to social science researchers investigating the impact of new and changing technologies. In part, this challenge derives from the constantly evolving practices, actants, and geographies enrolled in the digital. When these phenomena are coupled with over-the-top expectations and media hype, initial impressions often mask the complicated and nuanced ways new technologies are put to use. Blockchain (and its original application Bitcoin) represent one of these new, unstable digital phenomena that simultaneously captures public imagination and generates powerful discourses of disruption and change. One way of clarifying the messiness of technologies like blockchain is to ground its practices within the materiality of geography. The DIGO framework proposed in this article uses four broad categories—discourses (measured via Twitter), infrastructures (indicated by Bitcoin mining), groupings (based on firms and exchanges), and outcomes (measured by initial coin offerings)—located in geographic space. Each category is meant to provide insight on blockchain as it unfolds across space and scale. The same framework can guide research on other digital phenomena, based on appropriate measures for each of the four DIGO foci.