Family Life in Polymedia

This chapter explores the consequences of social and mobile media for families separated because of work. The way in which transnational families maintain long distance relationships has been transformed by the increasingly ubiquitous presence of communication environments, understood here as polymedia. Drawing on long-term ethnographic work with transnational families, I will argue that polymedia become integral to the way family relationships are enacted and experienced. Although communication technologies do not solve the problems associated with long-term separation they do engender new forms of co-presence and intimacy which have powerful emotional consequences - both positive and negative - for relationships at a distance. Transnational families come into being in (rather than with) polymedia, revealing aspects of mediation that are relevant for personal relationships more broadly

A second-order disaster? Digital technologies during the Covid-19 pandemic

One of the most striking features of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom has been the disproportionate way in which it has affected Black, Asian, ethnic minority, and working class people. In this article, I argue that digital technologies and data practices in the response to COVID-19 amplify social inequalities, which are already accentuated by the pandemic, thus leading to a “second-order disaster”—a human-made disaster which further traps disadvantaged people into precarity. Inequalities are reproduced both in the everyday uses of technology for distance learning and remote work as well as in the public health response. Applications such as contact tracing apps raise concerns about “function creep”—the reuse of data for different purposes than the one for which they were originally collected—while they normalize surveillance which has been traditionally used on marginalized communities. The outsourcing of the digital public health response consolidates the arrival of the privatized digital welfare state, which increases risks of potential discrimination

Mediating the nation: news, audiences and identities in contemporary Greece

This thesis investigates the relationship between media and identities in contemporary Greece. Acknowledging the diversity of Greek society, the study follows the circulation of discourses about the nation and belonging and contrasts the articulation of identities at a local level with the discourses about the nation in the national media. Through a series of case studies I examine how people of Greek, Cypriot and Turkish origins living in Athens articulate their identities through everyday practices and media use. At the same time I investigate the television news discourse which is nationalized, largely projecting an essentialist representation of identity that does not reflect the complexity of the society it claims to describe. The study follows the shifts in peoples' discourses according to context and observes that it is in their encounters with the news media, compared to other contexts, that some of the informants express a more closed discourse about difference and belonging. This points to the power of the media, through a number of practices, to raise the boundaries for inclusion and exclusion in public life. Hence, while for the majority of the Greek speakers the news is a common point of reference, for the Turkish speakers it is often a reminder of their `second class citizenship' and exclusion from public life. Public discourse, much dominated by the media in the case of Greece, is a complex web of power relations, subject to constant negotiation. This is an interdisciplinary study that draws upon a number of theories and approaches by means' of a theoretical and methodological triangulation. The thesis aims to contribute primarily to two literatures, namely media and audience studies —particularly the developments towards a theory of mediation — and the literature that addresses the relationship between media and identity. In the light of the analysis of the empirical findings the study argues that neither of the hitherto dominant paradigms in theorising the relationship between media and identity (namely, strong media/weak identities and weak media/powerful identities) is adequate to describe what emerges as a multifaceted process. What is proposed is an approach that takes into account both a top-down and a bottom-up perspective. Media and identities should be understood in a dialectical fashion where neither is foregrounded from the start. The concepts of culture and the nation are understood through a historical perspective that recognises their constructedness and diversity. Identity is conceptualised as relational and performative rather than fixed and stable

Polymedia Communication Among Transnational Families: What Are the Long-Term Consequences for Migration?

This chapter investigates the cumulative consequences of new communication technologies for the phenomenon of migration. Drawing on a seven-year-long comparative and multi-sited ethnography of long-distance communication within Filipino transnational families, I demonstrate that the recent convergence in new communication technologies has profound consequences not just for the migrants and their left-behind families but for the phenomenon of migration itself. Although new media cannot solve the fundamentally social problems of family separation, they are increasingly used as justifications for key decisions relating to migration or settlement in the host country. The chapter brings together research with migrants and institutional actors and shows that transnational communication through new media has become implicated in making female migration more socially acceptable while ultimately influencing patterns of migration

Полимедиа: новый подход к пониманию цифровых средств комму-никации в межличностном общении / пер. с англ. А.Пауковой, В. Чумаковой

В статье развивается новая теория полимедиа, позволяющая понять последствия использования цифровых средств коммуникации в межличностной коммуникации. Основываясь на результатах сравнительной этнографии филиппинских и карибских транснациональных семей, авторы намечают контуры теории полимедиа и показывают, что пользователи распоряжаются новыми медиа как коммуникативной средой аффордансов, а не как постоянно растущим списком разрозненных технологий. Как следствие, теория полимедиа позволяет сместить акцент с ограничений, налагаемых каждым типом медиа, на социальные, эмоциональные и моральные последствия выбора между этими различными типами. Так как выбор средств коммуникации движим определенным коммуникативным намерением, управление полимедиасредой становится неразрывно связанным с тем, как люди переживают отношения и выстраивают их. В конечном счете полимедиа скорее позволяет пересмотреть соотношение социального и технологического, нежели констатирует отдельно взятые технологические изменения

Finding a Voice Through Humanitarian Technologies? Communication Technologies and Participation in Disaster Recovery

Voice—understood as the ability to give an account of oneself and participate in social processes—is increasingly recognized as significant for humanitarian action and disaster recovery. Giving disaster-affected people the opportunity to make their voices heard has the potential to democratize humanitarianism and correct the power asymmetries on which it is based. Humanitarian agencies have embraced interactive communication technologies as tools for voice and participation. Drawing on a yearlong ethnography with communities affected by super-Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, this article assesses the potential of new communication technologies for voice. Our findings highlight a disconnect between assumptions about technology present in humanitarian policies and the actual uses of technology by affected populations. The article traces the factors that facilitate, or hinder, participation and finds that communication technologies enable voice only if other parameters, such as a strong civil society, are present. Further, we observe that opportunities for voice are stratified, mapping onto existing social inequalities

Humanitarian Technologies: Understanding the Role of Digital Media in Disaster Recovery

On November 8th 2013 Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. To date, Haiyan remains the strongest storm ever recorded with over 6,300 casualties and more than 12 million people displaced or otherwise affected. Within minutes after Haiyan’s landfall, the web was also flooded with optimism, particularly about the promise of communication technologies in disaster recovery and humanitarian relief. Such optimism is recent although it predates Haiyan. The 2013 World Disasters Report uses the term \u27humanitarian technology\u27 to refer to the empowering nature of digital technologies such as mobile phones and social media for disaster recovery. It is claimed that interactive technologies enable affected communities to participate in their own recovery, respond to their own problems and ‘make their voices heard.’ Digital technologies are welcomed for their potential to catalyze a ‘powerN shift’ in humanitarianism by building feedback structures that empower local communities to hold humanitarian and government agencies into account. Despite the enthusiasm regarding the role of digital technologies as tools for disaster recovery there is little evidence to assess their impact. The ‘Humanitarian Technologies Project’ examines the optimistic account of communication technologies by providing empirical evidence on the uses of communication technologies by affected populations as well as stakeholders involved in the Haiyan recovery. Funded by an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Urgency Grant, our project investigated the consequences of communication technologies for disaster recovery in the following critical areas: 1) information dissemination; 2) collective problemNsolving; 3) redistribution of resources; 4) accountability and transparency of humanitarian efforts; 5) voice and empowerment of affected populations

Mobile phone parenting: Reconfiguring relationships between Filipina migrant mothers and their left-behind children

The Philippines is an intensely migrant society with an annual migration of one million people, leading to over a tenth of the population working abroad. Many of these emigrants are mothers who often have children left behind. Family separation is now recognized as one of the social costs of migration affecting the global south. Relationships within such transnational families depend on long-distance communication and there is an increasing optimism among Filipino government agencies and telecommunications companies about the consequences of mobile phones for transnational families. This article draws on comparative research with UK-based Filipina migrants - mainly domestic workers and nurses - and their left-behind children in the Philippines. Our methodology allowed us to directly compare the experience of mothers and their children. The article concludes that while mothers feel empowered that the phone has allowed them to partially reconstruct their role as parents, their children are significantly more ambivalent about the consequences of transnational communication