3(2) 2017: Mobile Digital Practices

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9

Audiences, Aesthetics and Affordances: Analysing Practices of Visual Communication on Social Media
Schreiber, Maria (2017) , S. 143-163
This research investigates how the practices of sharing pictures with specific audiences on social media may be related to aesthetics and affordances. Based on fieldwork (interviews, picture analysis and digital ethnography) with a group of female teenagers in Vienna, Austria, how they visually curate their accounts is mapped and reconstructed. Regarding content and aesthetics, different kinds of pictures are shared using different apps. Snapchat, for example, (for this specific group at the time of the investigation) is the preferred medium for live communication with very close friends using fast, pixelated, “ugly” pictures, while Instagram serves to share polished, conventional, “beautiful” pictures with broader audiences. Based on this case study, three conceptual arguments can be made. First, visual communication is practised in relation to specific social settings or audiences. Social media is part of these practices, and users navigate differences between platforms to manage identities and relationships. Second, the analysis of practices embedded in specific software, therefore, has to be contextualised and related to the structures of these environments. Software co-constructs processes of editing, distribution, sharing and affirmation, and its affordances have to be related to the ways in which users exploit them. Third, as visual communication becomes an intrinsic part of online communication, the exploration of how distinctions between audiences and affordances play out stylistically appears to be of particular interest, which entails calibrated aesthetics; however, this visual layer is seldom investigated closely.
Introduction: Mobile Digital Practices. Situating People, Things, and Data
Ramella, Anna Lisa; Lehmuskallio, Asko; Thielmann, Tristan; Abend, Pablo (2017) , S. 5-18
Mad Practices and Mobilities: Bringing Voices to Digital Ethnography
Baylosis, Cherry (2017) , S. 229-236
There is a claim that digital media technologies can give voice to the voiceless (Alper 2017). As Couldry (2008) points out it is now commonplace for people – who have never done so before – to tell, share and exchange stories within, and through digital media. Additionally, the affordances of mobile media technologies allow people to speak, virtually anytime and anywhere, while the new internet based media sees that these processes converge to allow stories, information, ideas and discourses to circulate through communicative spaces, and into the daily lives of people (Sheller/Urry 2006). The purpose of this paper is to discuss a methodological framework that can be used to examine the extent that digital media practices can enable voice. My focus is on people ascribed the status of mental illness – people who have had an enduring history of silencing and oppression (Parr 2008). I propose theories of mobilities, and practice, to critically examine voice in practices related to digital media. In doing this, I advocate for digital ethnographic methods to engage these concepts, and to examine the potential of voice in digital mobile media. Specifically, I outline ethnographic methods involving the use of video (re)enactments of digital practices, and the use of reflective interviews to examine every day routines and movements in and around digital media (Pink 2012). I propose that observing and reflecting on such activities can generate insights into the significance these activities have in giving voice to those who are normally unheard.
The MicroSDs of Solomon Islands: An Offline Remittance Economy of Digital Multi-Media
Hobbis, Geoffrey (2017) , S. 21-39
Based on twelve months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, this article investigates the offline circulation of digital media files in Solomon Islands. It explores how circular temporary labour migration drives the acquisition, movement and consumption of digital media, and how these media files contribute to moral controversies. Before the rapid proliferation of mobile phones in 2010, people living in rural environments had limited access to electronic media and the male village elite controlled access to this media, especially foreign movies. Mobile phones, on the other hand, are individually owned and encourage private consumption of media files. At the same time, migrants living in urban areas can easily obtain digital media files and have started integrating them into remittance networks. Access to electronic media in rural areas has exploded. Because foreign visual media are associated with urban, morally ambivalent lifestyles, this proliferation has also fuelled moral uncertainties among rural residents. This article suggests that to understand these moral controversies, and their significance in contemporary Solomon Islands, it is crucial to account for the mobility of digital media files offline and alongside the movements of temporary labourers.
Mobile Mediated Visualities: An Empirical Study of Visual Practices on Instagram
Serafinelli, Elisa; Villi, Mikko (2017) , S. 165-182
The escalation of photo sharing through social networking sites is one of the most substantial changes in mobile communication practice in recent years. The launch of smart mobile technologies represents a decisive moment in the production and observation of visualities with an elevated characteristic of digital shareability and reproducibility. Considering recent technological advancements and new social media services, this paper aims to study how social platforms and smart mobile devices are affecting individuals’ visual, social and digital practices. In particular, this paper examines the social exchange of photographs online in order to advance an in-depth reading of contemporary mobile media. The mobility afforded by smart mobile devices represents a fundamental condition that shapes the human-technology relationship. The paper studies this condition by concentrating on the dynamic mobility of individuals, devices and visual information. Methodologically, the paper employs a case study approach to analyse how Instagram affects individuals’ perception of their mediated lives. Qualitative interviews formed the fieldwork and a sample of 44 Instagram users took part in the study. Visual content analysis of participants’ photo sharing further contributed to the investigation. Findings from the study show that the use of smart mobile devices constitutes the development of new forms of mobile mediated visualities. The mobility and mediation afforded by smart mobile devices seem to establish new practices for producing and sharing images that push individuals to think visually of events, people and surroundings. These practices lead to the visual dataification of social practices and intensify the quantity and variety of visual data shared online. Within this context, the visual hyper-representation of social practices is exemplified by the current trend of giving to everything a visual justification (e. g. foodporn). In its conclusions, the paper offers a conceptual apparatus that can help to understand contemporary social, digital and visual interactions.
‘Re-appropriating’ Facebook?: Web API mashups as Collective Cultural Practice
Werning, Stefan (2017) , S. 183-204
In contemporary debates about socio-technical implications of software, the platform metaphor, the corresponding notions of architectures and ecosystems as well as the formatting of data to afford ‘platformization’ play a central role. This approach has certainly proven fruitful to assess the role of companies like Facebook in contemporary society. However, it characteristically overlooks the messiness of actual usage practices and those studies that do acknowledge the internal power struggles that subcutaneously shape platforms often take a top-down perspective, disregarding bottom-up processes of (re-)appropriation. To address this gap, the article outlines a method to study how users and semi-professional developers collectively frame the cultural imaginary of a platform by conducting a thoroughly comparative content analysis of mashups created using the Facebook Web API. The affordances of many individual mashups might be considered marginal; yet, the tool-assistant comparison allows for inferring common patterns of interpretation that characterize mashup creation as a mobile digital practice, which plays a key role in social media platform development.
Screen Tourism
Schulze, Marion (2017) , S. 123-141
In the article, I discuss new forms of mobility allowed by digital practices, i. e. digital mobilities consisting in visiting geographical places from and through a screen. This discussion is based on my online ethnographic research on international fans of South Korean television series, K-Dramas. The international fandom of K-Dramas, and in a larger sense, South Korean pop cultural products – exemplified by the success of South Korean rapper Psy’s “Gangnam Style” in 2012 –, is a continually growing global phenomenon that has been observed from the end of the 2000s on; a fandom that is mainly constituted through the Internet. However, instead of discussing already thoroughly researched “classic” participatory digital activities of television series fans, as blogging or writing fan fiction, I will focus on still overseen forms of mobility practices engendered by the watching of K-Dramas. My research shows that international fans of K-Dramas are highly mobile – but as much digitally as actually. They do not only travel physically to Korea to visit film locations. They also engage in digital mobilities to Korea through the mediation of desktop web mapping services like Google Maps and their South Korean equivalents, Daum and Naver. This screen screen tourism – as I call it –, then, differs in many ways from screen tourism how it is discussed in previous research on media. In describing and discussing these forms of digital mobility, special attention will be given to two dimensions: (1) the techniques fans use to find film locations, and (2) fans’ “ethno-mapping,” i. e. the methods they have created to map out film locations online.
So ‘Hot’ Right Now: Reflections on Virality and Sociality from Transnational Digital China
Coates, Jamie (2017) , S. 77-97
A reflection of both the intensity of sharing practices and the appeal of shared content, the term ‘viral’ is often seen as coterminous with the digital media age. In particular, social media and mobile technologies afford users the ability to create and share content that spreads in ‘infectious’ ways. These technologies have caused moral panics in recent years, particularly within heavily regulated and censored media environments such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This paper uses the spread of a ‘viral’ sex video among young Chinesespeaking people who live transnational lives between Japan, China, and Taiwan, to reflect upon the question of ‘viral’ media as it is conceptualised more broadly. Their position both inside and outside Sinophone mediascapes affords a useful case study to think beyond purely institutional discussions of Chinese media, and focus on the ways media practices, affects, and affordances shape patterns of content distribution. It examines the language and practices of ‘virality’ among Chinese-speaking people in Tokyo and shows how the appeal of content like the sex video ‘digital stuff’ on WeChat are typically a digital amplification of pre-existing social practice. Described in terms of ‘sociothermic affects’ (Chau 2008) such as ‘fever’ and ‘heat’ (re/huo), the infectious nature of media is imagined in different but commensurate forms of virality that precedes the digital age. In the digital age however, virality is also made scalable (Miller et al. 2016) in new ways.
Twitter in Place: Examining Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Plaza through Social Media Activism
Collins, Samuel Gerald (2017) , S. 99-121
In Korea, social networking sites are overwhelmingly utilized through smart phones; people tweet or update Facebook with their mobile devices. Like any social networking site, this means that people are making (and remaking) connections with each other, but it also means that people are connecting in complex ways to place. Even if geo-location is disabled, these social media still have this embodied dimension; they’re not just tweets, but tweets in a particular space and time. In Seoul, embodied practices of social media infuse spaces with diverse and networked meaning that interact (however weakly) with existing spatial systems. In this essay, I explore the diverse meaning of public space in Seoul through an analysis of Twitter traffic surrounding enormous protests in 2016 at Gwanghwamun Plaza calling for the resignation of President Park Geun-hye. People who protested against the President in Gwanghwamun Plaza were not only calling for her resignation, but they are also making strong claims to space that re-define the heterogeneous site as a space of protest. At the same time, they are not the only groups making claims on the plaza: conservative groups, merchants, commuters, tourists and various bots tweet other meanings through their interactions with the protest site, and these, too, add to the networked representation of Gwanghwamun Plaza. Ultimately, the paper suggests a theory of social media in urban settings which emphasizes complex interactions of space, representation, networked action, absence and presence.

Browsing 3(2) 2017: Mobile Digital Practices by Subject "ddc:302"

Results Per Page

Sort Options