Mobile, Media and Everyday Life
Mobile
media has permeated all aspects of our lives. New media, in particular new
mediums of communication and interaction always cause some form of change. This
is to be expected with any form of technological development. However, mobile
media has caused a significant change in our behaviour, culture and
perspectives; change that has shifted our social and communicative experience
entirely. It’s dominance and our reliance has perpetuated these psychological
and physiological changes. This is to the extent that long-standing systems and
structures have been forced to evolve alongside such changes to our everyday
lives, rituals and routines. Traditional media and methods of communication,
structured around socio-cultural hierarchies have been disrupted by the mass
adoption of mobile media. Long-standing notions of space and place have all
been replaced by new forms of spatialisation that put mobile media at its core,
causing a convergence of other forms of media to accommodate. In order to
properly understand the extent of the influence of mobile media, examining the
utility and usage of mobile device and more specifically, the relationship it
plays with society and our surroundings, can provide us with greater insight into
its effects on our everyday lives.
Traditionally
media is structured in a hierarchical fashion, where certain individuals
serving to be the main focus of media. With mobile media and however, a different
approach to hierarchy has occurred (Babe, 2011). Rather than concentrating the
power between a few people, centralised at the top, it is dispersed amongst
many users and decentralised (Hjorth, 2017). Social networks essentially have
replaced social hierarchies. This has been caused by the fluidity of the socio-cultural
hierarchies that have occurred as a by-product of the mass adoption of mobile
media (Schrock, 2015). Once passive audiences that consumed media are now, more
than ever active producers of media.
This ‘participatory
culture’ of users has led not only to changes in the power structures of our
society but also to the manipulation of space and place to reflect the usage
patterns of these ‘active audiences’ (Seth, 2008). Put simply, the use of
mobile media has affected the way in which we use space and how our
surroundings are designed. Traditional views of spatialisation suggest that the
structure of space is generally fixed. With the introduction of mobile media,
the ideas of spatialisation are greatly changed in favour of fluidity of space which
conform to our behaviours and actions (Frizzera, 2015).
For
example, stadiums, which for the sake of convenience can be described as
belonging to the ‘area of sport’, which in itself is a media ritual, are
seemingly areas where traditional notions of hierarchy have existed (Hutchins,
2016). However, with the introduction of mobile technologies, there has been a
shift in this attitude. Rather than the audience passively consuming media at
the stadium, they are now engaging in the sport through mobile media and more
specifically and surprisingly, they themselves have affected the place, that
this the structure and the function of the stadium itself. Wi-Fi hotspots have
been installed and the structure of the games themselves have been changed in
order to accommodate these behavioural changes (Hutchins, 2016). Mobile media
is extraordinarily influential in our everyday lives, even having the power to
affect media rituals and our traditional notions of space (Schrock, 2015).
Games are,
in their simplest forms, simulations of everyday lives and activities (Chick,
2015). As such they play an important role in the way that we learn and
interact with both each other and our surrounding environment. They are
therefore a perspective that should be investigated in order to understand how
the permeation of mobile media has affected our psychology.
Mobile games
play an interesting role in society; they themselves move the category of ‘games’
from niche markets to what is seen as now more mainstream activities (Leaver,
2015). In doing so, they have also changed the traditional notions of media, that
games are a form of simulation (Chick, 2015), towards new views that mobile
games themselves affect our surrounding environment (Leaver, 2015). Pokémon Go
is the most recent example of this manipulation of space (Hjorth, 2017). Our
immersion into mobile media has meant that businesses and more specifically,
developers, have had to create a platform that best conforms to these changes
in our behaviour (Leaver, 2015).
The game reflects
our ever-changing daily patterns that have been affected by the use of mobile
technology; combining mobile media and space, the game uses set loci that
players have to travel to, whilst using the mobile application. As such, our
social experience has been consumed and augmented by the game (Hjorth, 2017).
This has been caused by the domestication of mobile media, that is, the
widespread integration of mobile media into our daily routines and rituals
(Frizzera, 2015). Rather than focusing on surroundings, or on the people around
us, mobile media has caused a shift in our social expression, to that of which
only resonates and is created through mobile media.
The
augmentation of physical space has caused more than just a change in the way we
communicate and interact with our surrounding environment. Mobile media has, in
fact, changed our entire human experience (Frizzera, 2015). Socially, space is
used as a means of connecting to the outside world, that is, connecting with
other people. However, the over presence of mobile media in the public space
has meant a change in the definition of a public space (Hutchins, 2016). As
physical space becomes digitally manipulated by mobile media, our own interpretation
of what it means to be in public versus the private sphere is blurred. The
affordances theory of technology explains this shift in perspective; the
utility of technology in our lives has caused the sacrifice of public space and
what it means to connect with other people and our environment (Schrock, 2015).
An
important part of human expression is not only how we connect with each other
but also the time or the location in which we communicate. With the portability
of mobile media, and its ability to allow us to communicate regardless of
location, distance, or time, has led to our individual agency being greatly
affected (Schrock, 2015). This is because mobile media has affected the traditional
patterns of communications (Babe, 2011). These traditional patterns of
communication were limited by location and time; mobile media however does not
have such restrictions and is therefore allowing communication and movement of
communication to be freer (Zhong, 2013). This however, has meant that
traditional rituals of communication, that may have been restricted only to the
public space or only to the private space have now been shifted and merged
(Frizzera, 2015).
Our
modern-day society is structured, influenced and dependant on mobile media -
such media-centric landscapes are affected by space and time (Babe, 2011). As
mobile media continues to increasingly become an integral part of
communication, frameworks and in-grained systems will change in order to best
accommodate the new audience (Frizzera, 2015). We can look to younger
audiences, those whom have grown up with such technology in order to understand
these developments, with their usage of mobile media being significantly higher
than those of older age groups (Zhong, 2013). Younger audiences have responded
more positively to new advancements in mobile media, whilst older audiences
continue to be less receptive. What this suggests is that the future of mobile
media and its socio-cultural effects, will continue to remain an integral part
of our society.
Mobile
media in itself does not have the power to greatly affect our everyday lives.
Rather, it is its mass adoption and our reliance and immersion into the
technology that has perpetuated its influence, has caused its dominance on our
lives. Our human experience, that is, our communication and interaction with
each other and our surrounding environment is now virtual in nature, with
mobile media at its core. In other words, traditional systems and methods of
communication and interaction have all but been altered greatly by mobile
media. The extent of this can be seen through culture itself being driven by
‘mobile culture’, with audiences becoming more active, the convergence of media
and the disruption of media structures in favour of new mediums. It is
therefore important to understand that mobile media plays a crucial and
evermore important role in our daily routines and as such the ways in which our
behaviours, actions and perspectives change accordingly. Mobile media is still
a relatively new medium and recent technological advancements in mobile media
such as augmented reality games, suggest that further research may be required
in order to properly ascertain future patterns of change that may occur, as
mobile media will continue to play an integral role in our lives for years to
come.
References
· HJorth, L 2017, ‘Pokémon GO: Mobile
media play, place-making and the digital wayfarer’, Mobile Media & Communication, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 3-14, DOI:
10.1177/2050157916680015
· Zhong, B 2013, ‘From smartphones to
iPad: Power users’ disposition toward mobile media devices’, Computers in Human Behaviour, Vol. 29,
No. 4, pp. 1742-1748, DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2012.02.016
· Hutchins, B 2016, ‘‘We don’t need no
stinking smartphones!’ Live stadium sports events, mediatization, and the
non-use of mobile media’, Media Culture
& Society, Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 420-436, DOI: 10.1177/0163443716635862
· Frizzera, L 2015, ‘Mobile media as
new forms of spatialization’, Interdisciplinary
Science Reviews, Vol. 40, No. 1, DOI: 10.1179/0308018814Z.000000000103
· Schrock, A 2015, ‘Communicative
Affordances of Mobile Media: Portability, Availability, Locatability and
Multimediality’, International Journal of
Communication, Vol. 9, Accessed 9 April 2017, <http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/3288/1363>
· Chick, G 2015, ‘Games and Sports’, Explaining Human Culture, Human
Relations Area Files, Yale University, <http://hraf.yale.edu/ehc/summaries/
games-and-sports> accessed [10 May 2017]
· Babe, R 2011, ‘Media, Structures and Power’, University of Toronto Press, Toronto
· Seth, A 2008, ‘Understanding
Participatory Media Using Social Networks’,
Technical Report, University of Ontario
· Leaver, T 2015 ‘Social, Casual and Mobile Games: The Changing Gaming Landscape’,
New York: Bloomsbury Academic, DOI: 10.5040/9781501310591
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