Sociologica, 3/2015 - Copyright © 2015 by Società editrice il Mulino, Bologna. 1 Symposium / Other Senses of Place: Socio-Spatial Practices in the Contemporary Media Environment, edited by Federica Timeto Addressing “Captive Audience Positions” in Urban Space From a Phenomenological to a Relational Conceptualization of Space in Urban Media Studies by Simone Tosoni doi: 10.2383/82480 1. Introduction In a ground-breaking 2004 research manifesto, urban geographer Stephen Gra- ham urged new media scholars to leave behind “the dazzling lights” of the academ- ic discourse on cyberspace and start a systematic effort to tackle the ways in which media are “adopted and shaped within the fine-grained practices of everyday urban life” [Graham 2004, 17]. For Graham, an inadequate conceptualization of space (cy- berspace as a symbolic space distinct from real life) was hindering new media schol- ars in participating to the interdisciplinary debate about the “remediation of urban life,” where they were expected to play a key role. In an increasingly technologically mediated urbanism, a systematic attention to media is indeed essential to properly address urban daily life. Ten years later, Graham’s plea has not remained unheard: the research program on media engagements in urban space is one of the liveliest within a subfield of research that could be labelled “urban media studies,” aiming at addressing jointly media and cities. Urged by the diffusion of portable and outdoor media, by a rising interdisciplinary interest for mediated urbanism, and by the recent mobility turn in social sciences, media scholars have quickly updated their research agendas, now steadily including portable and outdoor media like smart phones and geo-locative applications [Gordon and de Souza e Silva 2011], mp3 players [Bull 2008], e-readers [Goggin and Hamilton 2012], laptops and tablets [Yi-Fan 2013], portable videogame