“Wayfearing” and the city: Exploring how experiential fear of crime frames the mobilities of women students at a city-based university using a bespoke chatbot app

Abstract

Personal safety apps provide new ways for crime data to be utilized by citizens within the context of urban mobilities. Yet, high-profile stories reveal the fear many women continue to experience in their daily lives. Operating as locative media, personal safety apps seem to imply that environments can simply be avoided. This is not always possible. Women students attending a city-based university, for example, might have to move through various urban spaces to get to their institution. Using a bespoke chatbot app for recording the experience of environments rather than avoiding them and semi-structured interviews, the purpose of this article is to examine the experiential fear of crime (EFC) that women students attending a city-based university experience in their daily lives. Between May and June 2022, 24 students who identify as women and attend a London-based university took part in this project. Our research first explored the question, how does EFC frame the experience of moving through a city-based university? Second, how does EFC frame the experience of ambulating the wider urban environment beyond campus? The article contributes to the wider field of locative media, by revealing how fear can shape extant understandings of digital wayfaring.