Digital media contribute to changing and transforming perceptions, sensibilities, interactions and practices towards the environment. In recent years, the Oder Valley, Lower Silesia, Poland. has become a site for the construction of an attractive tourist infrastructure transformed into a product, a site for the expansion of housing infrastructure, but also a site for the struggle of environmentalists for the recognition of the legal subjectivity of the river - in each case, digitised images of nature are an important component of the politically produced semiosphere. "Digital aestheticisations of nature" are both part of the "nature" prepared for the tourism industry, the content of social media posts, and part of wider processes of deterritorialisation of images of "nature" and its new, bottom-up categorisation.
To explore the social effects of digital representations of nature, ethnographic research has been undertaken, using digital ethnography, autoethnography, participatory observation, discourse analysis and participatory methods and techniques (including photo-elicitation and 'research walks'), with active use of photography and video.
The research primarily involves three categories of social actors: "local experts" (ecologists, enthusiasts), stakeholders (government and local government institutions, urban planners, tourism agencies, environmental organisations), residents of riverside areas and users of these areas (tourists, anglers, etc.). Fanpages, blogs, social media concerning the Oder Valley were also analysed, especially content including visuals, podcasts, videos.
The analysis of the visual material reveal different interests (developers vs. environmentalists), intersecting aesthetics, friction between these interests and aesthetics, and different levels of aestheticisation of digital images of the Oder. The analysis on a broader level gives an insight into the process of historical change brought about by digital techniques in terms of human interaction with nature.
