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Mobile Socialities

Sun, May 27, 9:30 to 10:45, Hilton Old Town, Floor: M, Mozart II

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Mobile socialities is an emergent concept that addresses the phenomena of people on the move and the role of mobile media in everyday life. People are on the move across national borders, for example economic and forced migration or tourism; people are on the move across social class, where there are opportunities and barriers to mobility within working and living conditions; and people are on the move in public and private spheres, at home and workspaces. These movements question, and sometimes reinforce, existing notions of boundaries, differences and power relations. In such mobile contexts, we find media entangled in our lived realities, for example in mobile media and place, knowledge work and mobile spaces, or mobile media and time.
Mobile socialities bridges fields of research in media and cultural studies, mobile communication and mobilities to offer a contextual and material approach to the structures and processes of mobile media and social relations. As a bridging concept, mobile socialities emphasizes the socio-cultural within the overlapping spheres of mobilities and mobile communications.
The researchers in this panel address mobile socialites through empirical and theoretical analysis of different cases, including mobile media and time as a power chronography, Couchsurfing as an example of mobile communications directed at connecting people to place, the blurred boundaries between work place-space within mobile communications, and transnational audiences for global drama. Their work explores the concept of mobile socialities as something concerned with not only fluidity or scale, but also the possibilities and barriers to being mobile. Researchers explores different methods for studying (im)mobilities, e.g. contextualisation or staying close to the research object or subject. In such a way, the researchers address the flow and stillness of digital technologies and our lived realities, and the power dynamics of emerging forms of the social in mobile times.

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