“People live in their heads a lot”: Polymedia, life course, and meanings of home among Melbourne’s older Irish community

Ballantyne, Glenda; Burke, Liam

doi:10.1080/21931674.2016.1277856

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Video calls, which help achieve a type of “real-time co-presence” (Baldassar, 2016), and other types of digitally mediated co-presence (Alinejad, 2019), through instant messages or social media posts, are increasingly popular ways of staying in touch. In migrant households, however, younger people tend to use the internet more than their parents (Ballantyne & Burke, 2017).…”

Section: Digital Divides and Refugee Resettlementmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Language Brokering to Digital Brokering: Refugee Settlement in a Smartphone Age

Worrell

2021

Social Media + Society

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Many young people in migrant families perform language-brokering tasks for their parents to help them overcome their everyday challenges of communicating in a new language. Such informal brokering is typically the result of younger people being more exposed to, and becoming more familiar with, the dominant language of their new country. This article argues that such brokering has a digital equivalent in a migrant setting, in which transnational family communication increasingly relies on a grasp of the dominant “language” of smartphones and social media. Using data drawn from a study of Karen humanitarian migrants who have settled in Australia, younger migrants are shown to have had a greater exposure to, and familiarity with, digital technology than their parents, leading to significant communicative differences between two generations. Such differences, I explain, have created conditions conducive to the performance of a new type of intergenerational support in a migrant context: “digital” brokering. This is demonstrated through young people helping their parents use smartphones, social media, and video-calling apps to maintain transnational relationships after settlement.

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Section: Digital Divides and Refugee Resettlementmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Language Brokering to Digital Brokering: Refugee Settlement in a Smartphone Age

Worrell

2021

Social Media + Society

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“…Polymedia theory was well implemented in numerous other studies (e.g. Baldassar, 2016;Ballantyne and Burke, 2017;Jansson, 2015;Peng, 2016) due to its relevance to the current state of ever-increasing communication tools and the unprecedented choice between them. The theory's main contribution is in the transition from seeing different media tools as discrete technologies towards their analysis as 'a structure of opportunities' (Madianou and Miller, 2013: 174).…”

Section: Polymedia Theory and Its Implementation In Urban Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

Noisy polymedia in urban Ghana: Strategies for choosing and switching between media under unstable infrastructures

Elul

2020

New Media & Society

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This ethnographic article examines how Ghanaian urbanites choose between new media platforms under inadequate infrastructures. By combining participant observation with digital ethnography, the case studies described here show how informants change their media choosing and switching habits due to unstable electricity and dysfunctional inter-city roads. Thus, moral and social choices face an infrastructural ‘noise’ that diverts people’s digital practices. These findings contribute to Madianou and Miller’s theory of polymedia by suggesting that constraints of economy, access, literacy, or infrastructure cannot be exempt from the analysis of media choice, especially in Africa. It suggests the term ‘noisy polymedia’ as an expansive version that acknowledges how people use digital tools under unstable infrastructural conditions. Furthermore, this article demonstrates how smartphones became essential tools for ‘leapfrogging’ inadequate infrastructure in Africa as informants choose strategically between devices, payment plans, applications, and usage patterns.

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Digital Inclusion or Digital Divide for Older Immigrants? A Scoping Review

Chen

Östlund

Frennert

2020

Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population. Technology and Society

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“People live in their heads a lot”: Polymedia, life course, and meanings of home among Melbourne’s older Irish community

Cited by 5 publications

References 29 publications

From Language Brokering to Digital Brokering: Refugee Settlement in a Smartphone Age

From Language Brokering to Digital Brokering: Refugee Settlement in a Smartphone Age

Noisy polymedia in urban Ghana: Strategies for choosing and switching between media under unstable infrastructures

Digital Inclusion or Digital Divide for Older Immigrants? A Scoping Review

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