The media practice of ‘KaTalk’ in the face of Facebook: young Koreans’ use of mobile app platforms in a transnational context

Abstract

This study explores how young people in transnational contexts use communication applications (apps) through mobile platforms built into the smartphone. Drawing on qualitative interviews with young adults from transnational South Korean families in Canada, the study examines how young people use, and create meanings with, different apps in transnational contexts. In the study, the participants frequently used the Korean-based mobile platform of Kakao, as well as the globally popular Facebook, to mediate different human networks and emotions. By appropriating different mobile platforms, they sought to widen their peer networks in Canada and to maintain diasporic ties with their country of origin and/or ethnic communities in the host society. The young Koreans’ negotiation of the different app platforms illustrates a unique process of global–local and cultural–technological articulations in the appropriation of technology.

Keywords:

• application (app)
• Facebook
• KakaoTalk (KaTalk)
• platform
• transnational youth

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kyong Yoon

Dr. Kyong Yoon is affiliated to the University of British Columbia Okanagan. [email protected]