Introduction The Reconstruction of Space and Time through Mobile Communication Practices

Author(s):  
Rich Ling ◽  
Scott W. Campbell
KronoScope ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-157
Author(s):  
Mats Edenius ◽  
Hans Rämö

AbstractBased on extensive studies on the new working conditions for senior managers in a leading telecommunication company, and a previously unstudied form of mobile management practice by the use of mobile handheld smartphones (handling calls, data, emails, sms), this paper focuses on unexpected time-saving limitations and other constraints that result from the implementation and internalization of the mobile devices. Aspects of independence that were initially anticipated from the use of mobile smartphones are increasingly offset, not only by the well-known time pressure of swiftly filtering, replying and being online, but also by some less known and unexpected limiting and constraining factors of temporal freedom.


Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Hall ◽  
Natalie Pennington

This article reviews literature associated with mundane mobile maintenance, entrapment, and hyper-coordination. Licoppe and Huertin (2001) and Ling and Ytrri (2002) first noted the important role of mobile phones in users' personal relationships. Much more than a device to make voice calls, the mobile phone has become highly integrated into the everyday interactions of vast segments of the global population. But with greater connectivity comes the possibility of dependency and anxiety. The integration and domestication of mobile phones can lead to heightened expectations of interpersonal connection and availability, which may result in feelings of entrapment and guilt. By providing a foundation in the earliest research on these inter-related topics and highlighting recent key studies, this article provides a thorough background of research on this subset of mobile communication practices.


2020 ◽  
pp. 026858092096200
Author(s):  
Ana Velitchkova

Contemporary thinkers are pessimistic about the endurance of transnational communities. The deviant case of the century-and-a-half-old transnational Esperanto community features a process that can explain transnational community survival: rationalization. Rationalization manifests in Esperantists reproducing a form of community logic integrating symbols, principles (justifications, values, etc.), communication practices and technologies, and organization centered on the Esperanto language. The Esperanto language and community logic enable unifying Esperanto activities across space and time. The Esperanto case suggests that community rationalization and language rationalization – an element thereof – are global phenomena integral to modernity. Having affected communities and language too, rationalization as a global process appears to be more extensive than previously suggested. Transnational communities can endure as manifestations of a global community institutional order organizing social life alongside but largely independently of nation-states, science, professions, and religion.


Author(s):  
Carolyn Marvin

This chapter discusses how digital technologiesrevisit the role that space and mobility play in communication processes. Digital research tools make it possible to develop innovative research approaches and a richer empirical and theoretical understanding of how space shapes social dynamics. The argument centers on the tensions between the unimpeded sweep of mobile communication across space and time and the sticky local embeddedness that characterizes on-the-ground bodies, political cultures, and social networks. The discussion sketches out exciting new research frontiers while paying attention to cautions that must be observed going forward.


Author(s):  
Keri K. Stephens

There are four contributions of this book that are illustrated in this chapter. Being able to provide a two and a half–decade longitudinal perspective on how mobile devices have diffused into organizations allows a big-picture understanding of communication practices. The chapter shows how the society-level phenomenon of information technology consumerization, combined with norms of connectedness, can be overlaid with the struggles for control that organizations and individuals experience. The data also illustrates the nuances of the affordance of reachability and that people must learn to negotiate their unavailability as well as their availability. Perceived acceptability of mobile communication at work is harder to negotiate but still possible, depending on the level of job prestige and job-role requirements. Finally, there’s a dialectic of control because organizations and their members have both dependence on and control over one another. It’s a seesaw, a tug-of-war, and a negotiation for mobile-communication control.


Author(s):  
Amparo Lasén

Mobile communication entails multiple and multimedia ways of representing the self: of depicting, performing, and making oneself present, to ourselves and to our significant ones, as well as to different connected audiences. This chapter explores how these complex choreographic performances of presentation–representation–embodiment, are the effect of a shared agency between people and mobile media, involving intentions, desires, habits, collective norms and expectations, written and non-written rules, as well as the affordances and constraints of the different digital infrastructures, from mobile devices to apps and platforms, with their commercial and technical requirements. Special attention is given to the choreographic aspect of these performances, for instance, how gender and race are performed in mobile-mediated forms of self-(re)presentation, with aesthetic and ethical implications. These choreographies are forms of current digital labor, where the production of images and visibilities prevails, in mobile practices such as the taking and sharing of selfies and the uses and practices around mobile apps.


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