Mediated mobilities

Abstract

In this article we introduce the themed issue ‘Mediated Mobilities’. We begin by articulating some of the potential relationships between media and mobility critically addressing the key conceptual distinctions that underpin them and the methodological demands placed on media studies when exploring the complex ways in which mobility is embedded in contemporary media ecologies. In the first instance we consider precisely what is meant by mobility, and, more specifically, interrogate the dynamic relationship between mediated mobility and immobility. We then move on to develop a methodological framework or agenda for research on mediated mobilities. This framework traces how existing analytical trajectories in media studies research need to be developed and synthesized in order to be able to account for the multiple modes of mobility facilitated by media technologies, texts, institutions and audiences. In the last part of the article we examine the development of innovative methodologies and forms of analysis that give emphasis to movement and trajectory, but also human and algorithmic agency.

Introduction to the Special Issue: “Transnational Family Care ‘On Hold’? Intergenerational Relationships and Obligations in the Context of Immobility Regimes”

“…Drawing on Keightley and Reading (2014), Cabalquinto (2020) discusses how technologically mediated mobilities such as mobile device use are informed by social, economic, political, and technological forces. Applying the concept of 'standby mothering', Cabalquinto discusses the different forces that shape the affective and technology dependent care practices of left-behind mothers, analyzing the intertwining processes of temporalities of migration, socio-technological affordances and personal strategies that enable the provision of mobile caregiving.…”

“…Furthermore, the use of new technologies can reconfigure and re-shape the intergenerational relationship and the form of family care. Referring to the concept of mediated mobilities (Keightley & Reading, 2014), Cabalquinto shows how new media and ICTs, particularly mobile devices and networked communication platforms, structure and reshape the temporalities of family care among household members at a distance. Furthermore, the use of the plethora of ICTs is also a site of negotiation between emotional closeness and distance, between sharing everything of each other's lives and withholding information (Baldassar, 2007).…”

Walking Through, Going Along and Scrolling Back: Ephemeral mobilities in digital ethnography

“…Accordingly, first we explore the role of digital traces in media studies and argue that ethnography should put digital traces to work while remaining sensitive to what is not traced and made immediately visible. Then we will provide an overview of how spatial and mobile metaphors have been used in media studies, paying particular attention to the concepts of "mediated mobility" (Keightley & Reading, 2014;Sheller, 2018) and "wayfaring" (Moores, 2014). Inspired by these, we suggest four dimensions along which ethnographers can construct the ephemeral aspects of mediated mobilities.…”

Older People's Digital Lives

“…In analysing the motivations, perceptions and outcomes of multigenerational and portable care practices, I deploy a critical mediated mobilities lens (Keightley & Reading, 2014). I identify the role social structures and technological affordances (Keightley & Reading, 2014) in shaping mobile practices. In the first instance, mobile caregiving is understood as shaped by care regimes in a multigenerational household, including familial or gendered expectations (Merla, 2014).…”