| Summary: | Social networks have a strong transformative effect over our culture and practices. In addition to traditional social relations, new digital social bonds have increased in virtual spaces. However, these online practices are also embedded in actual material spaces and define territorialities. This exploratory paper aims at investigating the spatial dimension of digital practices of Facebook users through the spatial analysis of individual check-ins. The case study is drawn from data collected in 252 municipalities, in the Northern suburbs of Paris, an area with about 1 M inhabitants. Data used are composed of 1935 geotagged unique places on Facebook network, i.e. 2 M checks-in. The choice of this intermediate density suburban area allows questioning the main representations of areas traditionally characterized by low levels of urbanity and a lack of spatial identities. This paper is meant to highlight the Facebook network as real « spatial goggles », added to traditional spatial variables. Indeed, datas show a specific geography of geotagging practices, identified by the means of density maps, and digital hot-spots in these suburban areas of the Greater Paris region. From a theoretical viewpoint, this paper brings a better understanding of the news online information layer, which can to traditional offline information layers in geographical analysis at a local level.
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