“Basic human things”: Investigating vehicle residents' continually fractured (information) landscapes

Abstract This ethnographic study explores vehicle residents' information practices in the United States (US). Vehicle residents are people whose primary means of housing is a vehicle. This work builds on previous research encompassing transitions and fractured (information) landscapes. Using fractured information landscapes as the theoretical framework, this study investigates how vehicle residents' experience continually fractured (information) landscapes through mobility and transition. This study is based on two rounds of ethnographic research including participant observation, semi‐structured, information horizon interviews, and guided tours and photographs of participants' vehicles. Results revealed three major themes emerged from the data: (1) Mobility impacts vehicle residents' information access. (2) Access and environments shape vehicle residents' information horizons. (3) Vehicle residents have layered information horizons: a foundational layer and a dynamic layer. Together, the foundational and dynamic layers comprise vehicle residents' broader information landscapes. Information landscapes fracture through mobility and transition. Constant transition limits the time required to resettle and rebuild an information landscape in a new environment, before mobility is inevitable, yet again. Mobility reinitiates the cycle. Overall, understanding how mobile populations' information landscapes micro‐fracture in the face of constant transition offers the opportunity to understand information practices more generally within the context of a hyper‐mobile world.