Mobiles Facing Death: Affective Witnessing And The Intimate Companionship Of Devices

From disasters to celebrations, camera phone practices play a key role in the abundance of shared images globally (Frosh 2015; Hjorth and Hendry 2015; Hjorth and Burgess 2014; Van House et al. 2005). Photography has always had a complicated relationship with death. This paper focuses on how mobile devices, through the broadcasting of troubling material, can simultaneously lead to misrecognition of the self (Wendt 2015) alongside an often-public evidentiary experience of trauma and grief. In this paper we will focus on the companionship of mobile devices in users’ most desperate hours. Use of mobile devices in crisis situations generate affective responses and uses. We will draw from case studies to highlight the power of the mobile to not only remind us that media has always been social, but that mobile media is challenging how the social is constituted by the political and the personal, and the ethical mediation between both. The ethical, psychological, moral and existential challenges that this new kind of witnessing poses will be explored

“Must-Read” Mobile Technology Research: A Field Guide

As research on mobile technologies has grown dramatically, and the field has matured, there is a need for a reference work to offer an accessible guide to this research; a “rough guide,” or map, to its contours. There is the need for the key works by students, researchers coming fresh to the area, and those wishing to explore the area more deeply. In the spirit of the Routledge Major Works enterprise, for this first time this collection brings together in one easy-to-access set, the essential, “must-read” articles on one of the great technologies of our time. This set aims to bring together the dispersed work across the many disciplines that study mobile technologies. It aims to put them into historical, intellectual, and international context. As such we hope that it will provide a valuable research tool and pedagogic resource. To achieve this, we have aimed to integrate foundational texts and diverse perspectives, as well as the most significant and pioneering new material, to provide researchers, teachers, students, and practitioners alike with the best-known as well as the most crucial yet overlooked materials on this vital topic. In this introductory chapter, we explain how we have approached the difficult task of selecting papers for this Major Works: Mobile Technologies collection. Before we do discuss our concepts and procedures for selection, let’s step back to provide critical context. What is the field of mobile technologies research? How did it begin, and how has it evolved? While still quite a spring chicken amidst much older and venerable academic fields, what are its traditions, theoretical approaches and methods? What are its foundational and orienting concepts? Who are its cast of characters, and key figures, institutions, and research outlets? And what are its notable twists and turns, epistemic breaks and ruptures? What are the significant new developments worth watching, and what can one read, and engage with, to understand where research is heading

Mobile Technologies

Table of Contents of Gerard Goggin, Rich Ling, and Larissa Hjorth, eds., Mobile Technologies: Major Works, 4 vols., Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies Series, New York: Routledge, 2015Australian Research Counci

“Must-Read” Mobile Technology Research: A Field Guide

As research on mobile technologies has grown dramatically, and the field has matured, there is a need for a reference work to offer an accessible guide to this research; a “rough guide,” or map, to its contours. There is the need for the key works by students, researchers coming fresh to the area, and those wishing to explore the area more deeply. In the spirit of the Routledge Major Works enterprise, for this first time this collection brings together in one easy-to-access set, the essential, “must-read” articles on one of the great technologies of our time. This set aims to bring together the dispersed work across the many disciplines that study mobile technologies. It aims to put them into historical, intellectual, and international context. As such we hope that it will provide a valuable research tool and pedagogic resource. To achieve this, we have aimed to integrate foundational texts and diverse perspectives, as well as the most significant and pioneering new material, to provide researchers, teachers, students, and practitioners alike with the best-known as well as the most crucial yet overlooked materials on this vital topic. In this introductory chapter, we explain how we have approached the difficult task of selecting papers for this Major Works: Mobile Technologies collection. Before we do discuss our concepts and procedures for selection, let’s step back to provide critical context. What is the field of mobile technologies research? How did it begin, and how has it evolved? While still quite a spring chicken amidst much older and venerable academic fields, what are its traditions, theoretical approaches and methods? What are its foundational and orienting concepts? Who are its cast of characters, and key figures, institutions, and research outlets? And what are its notable twists and turns, epistemic breaks and ruptures? What are the significant new developments worth watching, and what can one read, and engage with, to understand where research is heading

Mobile Technologies

Table of Contents of Gerard Goggin, Rich Ling, and Larissa Hjorth, eds., Mobile Technologies: Major Works, 4 vols., Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies Series, New York: Routledge, 2015Australian Research Counci

The art of tacit learning in serious location-based games

Over the past two decades, location-based games have moved from media art fringes to the mass cultural mainstream. Through their locative affordances, these game types enable practices of wayfaring and placemaking, with the capacity to deliver powerful tacit knowledge. These affordances suggest the potential for the development of location-based games in educational contexts. This paper presents three cases studies—TIMeR and Wayfinder Live and Pet Playing four Placemaking—to illustrate how each uses elements of wayfaring and placemaking to bring new opportunities for education through a tacit knowledge approach

Being at home with privacy : privacy and mundane intimacy through same-sex locative media practices

Smartphones have ushered in new forms of locative media through the overlay of global positioning system digital media onto physical places. Whereas mobile communication research has focused on corporate, hierarchical, or government surveillance, emerging studies examine the ways locative media practices relate to privacy and surveillance in everyday, intimate contexts. Studies of same-sex forms of intimacy in and through locative media practices have largely attended to the growth and use of male hook-up apps, but have overlooked same-sex female relationships. Beyond hook-up apps, mundane forms of intimacy in same-sex relationships have also received scant attention. This article draws from a broader ethnographic study in Australia over three years exploring the use (and non-use) of locative media in households as part of their management of privacy, connection, and intimacy with family and friends. By moving the discussion about intimacy beyond hook-up apps, this article focuses on locative media practices of use and non-use by female same-sex couples

Unprepared for the depth of my feelings' - capturing grief in older people through research poetry

Background: Older people are more likely to experience bereavements than any other age group. However, in healthcare and society, their grief experiences and support needs receive limited attention. Through innovative, arts-based research poetry, this study aimed to capture older people's bereavement stories and the effects of grief on their physical and mental health. Method: Semi-structured in-depth interviews with 18 bereaved older adults were analysed using thematic and poetic narrative analysis, following a five-step approach of immersion, creation, critical reflection, ethics and engagement. Results: Research poems were used to illustrate three themes of bereavement experiences among older adults: feeling unprepared, accumulation of losses and ripple effects of grief. While half of participants reported that the death of their family member was expected, many felt unprepared despite having experienced multiple bereavements throughout their life. Instead, the accumulation of losses had a compounding effect on their health and well-being. While these ripple effects of grief focussed on emotional and mental health consequences, many also reported physical health effects like the onset of a new condition or the worsening of an existing one. In its most extreme form, grief was connected with a perceived increased mortality risk. Conclusions: By using poetry to draw attention to the intense and often long-lasting effects of grief on older people's health and well-being, this article offers emotional, engaging and immersive insights into their unique bereavement experiences and thereby challenges the notion that grief has an expiry date. © 2022 The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Geriatrics Society. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected]

Visual generational genres

Chapter 7 considers the role of generational literacies and etiquettes around visual genres. For example in our study, younger participants tended to take and share more pictures, while older participants tended to take less but comment more on their children’s images. Here, generational understandings of co-present gift giving rituals can be found