Global Mobile Media

Gerard Goggin has produced an incisive and penetrating overview of the world according to mobiles. Covering sight, sound and status, plus a host of other issues, he provides a provocative analysis of how mobile communication gadgets come to play such a prominent role in our lives. Any scholar of New Media will want to read this book – James Katz, Department of Communication, Rutgers University, USA With billions of users worldwide, the cell phone is not only a successful communications technology; it is also key to the future of media. Global Mobile Media offers an overview of the complex topic of mobile media, looking at the emerging industry structures, new media economies, mobile media cultures and network politics of cell phones as they move centre-stage in media industries. The development, adoption and significance of cell phones for society and culture have been registered in a growing body of work. Where existing books have focused on communication, and on the social and cultural aspects of mobile media, Global Mobile Media looks at the media dimensions. Goggin provides a pioneering yet measured evaluation of how cell phone corporations, media interests, users and policy makers are together shaping a new media dispensation. Global Mobile Media successfully places new mobile media historically, socially and culturally in a wider field of portable media technologies through extensive case studies, including: the rise of smartphones, with a detailed discussion of the Apple iPhone and how it has catalysed a new phase in convergent media, audiences and innovation the new agenda in cultural politics and media policy, featuring topics such as iPhone apps and control, mobile commons, and open mobile networks a succinct map of the political economy of mobile media, identifying key players, patterns of ownership and control, institutions, and issues a critical account of cell phones’ involvement in and contribution to much-discussed new forms of production and consumption, such as user-generated content, p2p networks, open and free source software networks an anatomy of how cell phones relate to other online media, particularly the Internet and wireless technologies. Global Mobile Media is an engaging, accessible text which will be of immense interest to upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in Communication Studies, Cultural Studies and Media Studies, as well as those taking New Media courses.

This edited volume brings together cutting-edge studies from emerging scholars of East/Southeast Asia who explore the role of mobile media in the contemporary transformation of the region’s social intimacies, from the romantic to the familial to the communal. By providing a regional and transnational overview of such studies, it affords new insights into how these mobile technologies have contributed to the rise of ‘glocal intimacies’. This pertains to the normalisation and intensification of how people’s relationships of closeness are entangled in the ever-shifting and constantly negotiated flows between global modernity and local everyday life. In providing case studies of mobile media and glocal intimacies, the chapters in the volume attend to a broad range of countries that include China, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, and Taiwan. This illustrates the differing ways in which mobile media might be embedded in the region’s divergent articulations of social intimacies, which reflect the ongoing tensions between Western and Asian imaginaries of modernity. The chapters also discuss a wide array of mobile media that people use, from social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, to messaging apps like KakaoTalk and WhatsApp, to dating apps like Tinder and Blued. This allows for a mapping out of the different levels of impact that mobile media might have on social intimacies in a region that contains some of the most technologically advanced as well as the most technologically behind societies in the world. In summary, this book allows readers to take a comparative approach to understanding the complexity of the glocal intimacies that are emerging from the ways people in Asia use mobile media to reconfigure their local ties and to enact global relationships. This volume will benefit students, academics, and researchers who are keen in media and communication, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, and Asian studies. “This exciting and much-needed book will greatly advance our efforts to decolonise media and communications research. The chapters offer empirically rich and nuanced accounts that challenge the dominant paradigms about mediated intimacy.” Mirca Madianou, Goldsmiths, University of London “This collection develops the original concept of ‘glocal intimacies’ to describe how mobile media have become a crucial site where new social intimacies are enacted, reinforced and transformed in Asia. It introduces fresh empirical research from emerging scholars to furnish deep theoretical insights into these imaginaries and practices.” Audrey Yue, National University of Singapore

Gerard Goggin has produced an incisive and penetrating overview of the world according to mobiles. Covering sight, sound and status, plus a host of other issues, he provides a provocative analysis of how mobile communication gadgets come to play such a prominent role in our lives. Any scholar of New Media will want to read this book – James Katz, Department of Communication, Rutgers University, USA With billions of users worldwide, the cell phone is not only a successful communications technology; it is also key to the future of media. Global Mobile Media offers an overview of the complex topic of mobile media, looking at the emerging industry structures, new media economies, mobile media cultures and network politics of cell phones as they move centre-stage in media industries. The development, adoption and significance of cell phones for society and culture have been registered in a growing body of work. Where existing books have focused on communication, and on the social and cultural aspects of mobile media, Global Mobile Media looks at the media dimensions. Goggin provides a pioneering yet measured evaluation of how cell phone corporations, media interests, users and policy makers are together shaping a new media dispensation. Global Mobile Media successfully places new mobile media historically, socially and culturally in a wider field of portable media technologies through extensive case studies, including: the rise of smartphones, with a detailed discussion of the Apple iPhone and how it has catalysed a new phase in convergent media, audiences and innovation the new agenda in cultural politics and media policy, featuring topics such as iPhone apps and control, mobile commons, and open mobile networks a succinct map of the political economy of mobile media, identifying key players, patterns of ownership and control, institutions, and issues a critical account of cell phones’ involvement in and contribution to much-discussed new forms of production and consumption, such as user-generated content, p2p networks, open and free source software networks an anatomy of how cell phones relate to other online media, particularly the Internet and wireless technologies. Global Mobile Media is an engaging, accessible text which will be of immense interest to upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in Communication Studies, Cultural Studies and Media Studies, as well as those taking New Media courses.

The last decade has witnessed the rise of the cell phone from a mode of communication to an indispensable multimedia device, and this phenomenon has led to the burgeoning of mobile communication studies in media, cultural studies, and communication departments across the academy. The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media seeks to be the definitive publication for scholars and students interested in comprehending all the various aspects of mobile media. This collection, which gathers together original articles by a global roster of contributors from a variety of disciplines, sets out to contextualize the increasingly convergent areas surrounding social, geosocial, and mobile media discourses. Features include: comprehensive and interdisciplinary models and approaches for analyzing mobile media; wide-ranging case studies that draw from this truly global field, including China, Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, as well as Europe, the UK, and the US; a consideration of mobile media as part of broader media ecologies and histories; chapters setting out the economic and policy underpinnings of mobile media; explorations of the artistic and creative dimensions of mobile media; studies of emerging issues such as ecological sustainability; up-to-date overviews on social and locative media by pioneers in the field. Drawn from a range of theoretical, artistic, and cultural approaches, The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media will serve as a crucial reference text to inform and orient those interested in this quickly expanding and far-reaching field.

The iPhone represents an important moment in both the short history of mobile media and the long history of cultural technologies. Like the Walkman of the 1980s, it marks a juncture in which notions about identity, individualism, lifestyle and sociality require rearticulation. this book explores not only the iPhone’s particular characteristics, uses and "affects," but also how the "iPhone moment" functions as a barometer for broader patterns of change. In the iPhone moment, this study considers the convergent trajectories in the evolution of digital and mobile culture, and their implications for future scholarship. Through the lens of the iPhone—as a symbol, culture and a set of material practices around contemporary convergent mobile media—the essays collected here explore the most productive theoretical and methodological approaches for grasping media practice, consumer culture and networked communication in the twenty-first century.

In less than a decade, mobile technology has revolutionized our cultures, societies, and economies by impacting both personal and professional aspects of human life. Mobile technology has therefore become the fastest diffusing technology in history, expanding and transforming existent possibilities by making technology accessible and ubiquitous. Emerging Perspectives on the Mobile Content Evolution seeks a better understanding of the centrality of mobile content in the recent and coming evolution of both the ICT ecosystem and the media industry. This publication appeals to a broad audience within the interdisciplinary field of media studies, covering topic areas such as journalism, marketing and advertising, broadcasting, information management, media management, media economics, media- and technology-related public policies, media sociology, audience/consumption studies, and arts. This publication presents a multi-disciplinary discussion through a collection of academic chapters covering topics such as mobile communications and entrepreneurship, reflection on wearables and innovation, personal and mobile healthcare, mobile journalism and innovation, and behavioral targeting in the mobile ecosystem.

How wireless technology is redefining the relationship of communication, technology, and society around the world—in everyday work and life, in youth culture, in politics, and in the developing world. Wireless networks are the fastest growing communications technology in history. Are mobile phones expressions of identity, fashionable gadgets, tools for life—or all of the above? Mobile Communication and Society looks at how the possibility of multimodal communication from anywhere to anywhere at any time affects everyday life at home, at work, and at school, and raises broader concerns about politics and culture both global and local. Drawing on data gathered from around the world, the authors explore who has access to wireless technology, and why, and analyze the patterns of social differentiation seen in unequal access.They explore the social effects of wireless communication—what it means for family life, for example, when everyone is constantly in touch, or for the idea of an office when workers can work anywhere. Is the technological ability to multitask further compressing time in our already hurried existence? The authors consider the rise of a mobile youth culture based on peer-to-peer networks, with its own language of texting, and its own values. They examine the phenomenon of flash mobs, and the possible political implications. And they look at the relationship between communication and development and the possibility that developing countries could "leapfrog" directly to wireless and satellite technology. This sweeping book—moving easily in its analysis from the United States to China, from Europe to Latin America and Africa—answers the key questions about our transformation into a mobile network society.