“If the rating is high enough, I don't bother going into place details” - an exploration of digital platforms' users experiences of digital place representation

Accessibility and pervasiveness of digital platforms have made them a prism of human everyday experience. These experiences are constructed through user-generated content (UGC), which becomes a highly relevant source of information and a significant factor influencing humans' perceptions and behavioural intentions. This article examines the impact of UGC on place perception and decision-making, employing a mixed-methods approach that combines in-depth interviews with a survey. It highlights the ways users interact with spatially explicit digital platforms like Google Maps, revealing how visual and textual UGC construct digital representations of places. Results reveal three primary strategies for navigating digital platforms: focusing on data filtering, utilising cross-platform comparison, and leveraging spatial exploration. Specifically, certain users rely on algorithm-based ranking lists, while others employ more customised filtering methods, thereby reducing the impact of digital platforms' mechanisms. Additionally, the study explores the user motivations behind creating and sharing UGC, revealing the dual purposes of personal identity expression, information sharing, and the creation of personal place archives. This research contributes to digital geography by deepening the understanding of the algorithmic mediation of place experience and the complex interplay between human and technological actors. It underscores the necessity of examining digital platforms as active mediators, raising questions about the visibility and user autonomy in increasingly digitalised environments. You have arrived in a completely new and unknown place. You have gone on vacation, a business trip, for studies, or simply wanted to escape your daily routine. You are surrounded by new sights, unfamiliar people. You are trying to grasp this new world, this new reality, and find your place in it. The feeling of being overwhelmed makes you reach for your phone—Google Maps, Instagram and TripAdvisor help you tame the surrounding space. You are wondering where to go, what to visit. A museum? A restaurant? TripAdvisor suggests the top 5 activities around you, and Instagram highlights the spot where all the influencers take their pictures. Google shows you a nearby Italian trattoria. Over 1000 people rated it 4.7 stars. Not bad, you think. Feeling a bit tired, you decide to take an Uber there. Moments later, as you post a photo of your cacio e pepe on Instagram and tag the restaurant, you start to wonder—how did you end up here? On your journey with your phone in hand, did you miss something? Was your experience pre-planned by someone else? You have fallen into the algorithm's trap, maybe? • Everyday interactions are negotiated through, rather than merely informed by digital platform logics. • Results uncover three tactics: focused on data filtering, using cross-platform comparison, and utilising spatial exploration. • Users demonstrate varying levels of trust in the algorithmic sorting mechanisms. • Cross-checking platforms exemplifies users' resistance, trying to mitigate the risk of experiencing a single place vision. • UGC sharing acts as a way to create digital archives of meaningful places.