Mobile and Digital Communication: Approaches to Public and Private

i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i José Ricardo Carvalheiro & Ana Serrano Tellería (Eds.) Mobile and Digital Communication: Approaches to Public and Private LabCom Books 2015 i i i i i i i i Livros LabCom Covilhã, UBI, LabCom, Livros LabCom www.livroslabcom.ubi.pt DIREÇÃO: José Ricardo Carvalheiro SÉRIE: Pesquisas em Comunicação TÍTULO: Mobile and Digital Communication: Approaches to Public and Private EDITORES: José Ricardo Carvalheiro & Ana Serrano Tellería ANO: 2015 ISBN 978-989-654-235-1 (Papel) 978-989-654-237-5 (pdf) 978-989-654-236-8 (epub) DEPÓSITO LEGAL: 395067/15 TIRAGEM: Print-on-demand DESIGN DE CAPA: Madalena Sena PAGINAÇÃO: Filomena Matos Chapter 1: Copyright James E. Katz & Elizabeth Thomas Crocker. All rights reserved. Chapters 2 to 10: i i i i i i i i Contents Introduction1 1. Skype in Daily Life: general patterns, emerging uses, and concerns James E. Katz & Elizabeth Thomas Crocker 5 2. Mobile Communication and Network Privatism: A Literature Re- view of the Implications for Diverse, Weak and New Ties Scott W. Campbell 25 3. Digital Self-Portraits, Exposure and the Modulation of Intimacy Amparo Lasén 61 4. All What We Send Is Selfie: Images in the Age of Immediate Reproduction Gaby David 79 5. Persona, Celebrity, and Selfies in Social Justice: Authenticity in Celebrity Activism Samita Nandy 101 6. Mass and Multitudes: “Old” and “New” Ways of Being in Public João Carlos Correia 123 7. Effectiveness of Crowdsourcing for the Appearance of a New Pu- blic Sphere Koldo Meso A., Simón Peña F. & Diana Rivero S. 139 i i i i i i i i i 8. Joining the Spheres: The Smartphone between Public and Private Gil Baptista Ferreira 159 9. Liquid Spheres or Constelations? Reflections on Mobile Devices Ana Serrano Tellería 173 10. Privatism against Privacy? Technology and Culture in Mobile Communications José Ricardo Carvalheiro 199 Notes on contributors Mobile and Digital Communication 223 ii i i i i i i i i Introduction Today, the proliferation of mobile digital communication devices is an area of experimentation by social actors, a field in which commercial and state orga- nizations explore new paths. At the same time, it is the backdrop for potential transformations in the public/private dichotomy; hybrid contexts emerge from it that, in the absence of better terms, can be called semi-public and semi- private. It is therefore also a fertile ground for an academic approach. We are not, however, dealing with narratives about the effects of technology or the “revolutions” that it supposedly causes, nor with fearful or catas- trophic visions of the near future. But this does not mean ignoring the links between technological changes and cultural transformations, nor does it rule out the idea that the characteristics of technology have implications for its uses in the light of the concepts of public and private, as has happened in the past. The media historian Patrice Flichy identified a point of wide-reaching change when, at the beginning of the 20th century, instant, remote communication technologies shifted from the prevalence of point-to-point transmissions to broadcast transmissions (the shift from telephone and telegraph communications between two points to radio broadcasting). As point-to-point communication is mediated, it is possible to extend privacy conditions using technology. Broadcasting, however, thanks to its disseminating nature, introduced the content of transmissions to public communication contexts. In any case, the technological spectrum maintained different and clearly separate methods for private communication and public communication. It was not long before the domestication of broadcast reception – boosted by a radio industry, and later a television industry, directed towards family use – instituted the conditions of what Raymond Williams called “mobile priva- tization“. In other words, it produced, in society, a combination of growing 1 i i i i i i i i 2 Mobile and Digital Communication: Approaches to Public and Private mobility (including mobility of communication content) and a downturn in sociability in public, with radio and television communication flows (which are public) channeled into the private spaces of the domestic universe. Among the different transformations that accompanied the expansion of the internet decades later, the most famous is certainly the metaphor of communication in a network. It should be noted here that the product of that network is the convergence, in the same medium, of point-to-point communications and broadcast transmission. In other words, communications that are primarily private and the different scopes of public communication are technologically brought closer together. At first, the mobile phone continued to be exactly that: a wireless telephone, providing increased possibilities of point-to-point communication throughout physical space. The development of mobile digital devices in a network with simultaneous access to broadcast sources produced suitable conditions, however, for further types of expansion. Firstly, an increase in cons- tant entwining and switching, using the same device, between point-to-point (and therefore private) communication and public communication. Secondly, a spread of those practices to a greater number of times and spaces of everyday life, in which they mix and connect to the private and public situations of the “physical” world. Thirdly, the circulation of content that, because it is digital, is undifferentiated and can be mixed together due to its technical nature and the overlapping of communication channels. Finally, an increase in the long, long history of commodification of all that content, which extends acts of consumerism and commercial exchange to a range of new spaces and times that were previously separate from commercial forces. A very brief historical summary such as this is enough to note how temp- ting – and potentially simplistic – it is to draw parallels and relationships of cause and effect between technological transformation and changes in communication rationales. But it is also enough to make it clear that the types of communicating vessel systems that form public and private “spheres” consti- tute a multifaceted, complex system that is connected to an almost intractable range of issues. The fact is that all these facets of mobile technology – ubiquity, multi- mediality, multidirectionality – form a context in which trends to renegotiate, defend, adapt or challenge notions of public and private are developed by individuals in their everyday lives and by social institutions through their rules www.livroslabcom.ubi.pt i i i i i i i i José Ricardo Carvalheiro & Ana Serrano Tellería (Eds.) 3 and goals. This book, which brings together presentations from the confe- rence “Public and Private in Mobile Communications”, held in March 2015 at Beira Interior University, Portugal, particularly favors discussions on the uses that individuals make of mobile devices in their everyday practices. However, as a background issue, it also includes the sometimes implicit approach about the transformations that connect new technologies to certain cultural practices, forms of interaction and political uses. In fact, as happened in the past with other technological innovations, it is practically impossible to discuss the penetration of mobile devices and their social appropriations without the pers- pective of a historical side, even if it is “only” an epistemological background. In chapter one, James Katz and Elizabeth Crocker discuss the daily uses of Skype. Looking for the factors that have made it more successful than previous video call systems, Katz and Crocker consider how the use of Skype is creating new forms of interaction, but they suggest that most people expect this communication to remain private and impermanent. In chapter two, Scott Campbell explores the implications of mobile communication for social network connectivity, offering the concept of network privatism to characterize theoretical propositions that mobile media usage constrains contact with ties that are diverse, weak and new. Reviewing avai- lable empirical findings, Campbell concludes that there is limited support for such propositions. The convergence of mobile telephony, digital photography and social media is the topic of chapter 3, in which Amparo Lasén examines self-portrait practices as an everyday activity. Lasén argues that self-photography, once ex- clusively used for artistic purposes, has become not only a banal and playful habit, but has also developed visual forms of communication which provide new ways of modulating intimacy and challenge relationships with the public/private divide. Chapter 4 is another qualitative approach to image exchanges in vernacu- lar everyday life, in which Gaby David focuses specifically on Parisian teena- gers’ uses of the Snapchat application. David observes the mechanisms that youngsters use to control the privacy and sharing of their images, and detects an increasing trend towards envisaging personal mobile images less as a physical asset and more as part of an ephemeral flow that aims to forego saving personal data. Livros LabCom i i i i i i i i 4 Mobile and Digital Communication: Approaches to Public and Private In chapter 5, Samita Nandy explores the connections between celebrity photography and the public sphere, analyzing uses of self-portraits as a form of activism. Tackling the field of the aesthetics and politics of fame, Nandy shows how selfies in mobile communication can act as reflective biographical accounts and become cultural productions that are able to play a relevant role in advocating social causes. Public action is present again in chapter 6, in which João Carlos Correia recovers the ‘old’ concept of mass and considers it in the context of digital media. Mass behavior is taken as a form of sociability and it is proposed as a relevant notion for analyzing some forms of digital interaction, whether in the field of political activism or in other phenomena such as hooliganism.

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