The Sense of Being ‘There’: A Model for the Space of Presence.

With respect to the common definition of presence as the ‘sense of being there’, most studies concentrate on the ‘sense of being’ part of the concept, addressing users’ interior state during the technologically mediated experience. In this work, we would like to emphasize the role of the ‘there’ part, introducing a model for the “space of presence” not as a component but as a defining dimension of presence itself. The paper starts by emphasizing the central role of place in the constitution of presence, and then elaborates on this concept in the light of recent developments in human geography, ethnography and cognitive science. Such space consists of physical, cognitive and cultural resources dynamically structured by the unfolding action and is then very different from physical or even mental spaces. The conclusive section illustrates some of the main implications of the proposed model, that do justice to the richness of the concept of presence and show its potential insightfulness in the study of mediated experiences.