Mobile Media During the Pandemic: Four Scenarios to Help Us Imagine a Mobile Media Future Towards Liberation

Abstract

Together, our projects pose the question of what else can be possible as a way to rearrange the power relations that have contributed to the asymmetric flows of information and resources to some instead of others. We are inspired by indigenous scholars’ claim that “decolonization is not a metaphor” because liberation should not be a metaphor: it should be a possibility. We, panelists, hope to engage conversations that address the future of the internet, especially the future of mobile communication with the lessons learned from studies. Panelists offer a close reading of four scenarios: in South Korea among residents whose locative data tell a story about their comings and goings, among International Exchange Students mobile media use during the on-set of travel bans, in China among rural-to-urban female migrant workers, and in Brazil among those who used the Unified Slum Dashboard to called attention for proper government intervention. Among our research methods are interviews, observations, content analysis, and case study to bring attention to and make institutional space for voices and accounts of community engagement that have been marginalized or overlooked. Our findings share a common theme that mobile media simultaneously can liberate and complicate our mobility choices, especially during a global pandemic, but that it can be a civic media in which liberation can be possible through more careful policies that take minoritized experiences into consideration for future policies.