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Abstract
In this paper, I consider the problematic of assembling culture from the standpoint of media. Specifically I take the example of mobile media – emergent digital networked technologies that centre on cellular mobile networks, but also intersect with other technologies such as the Internet and portable music and video devices. My particular interest is in these new assemblages of media culture in which mobiles are now centrally implicated. To explore this, I look closely at the case of mobile television – a new media technology battling controversies, indifference and user antipathy in order to find a stable, ‘blackboxed’ form. Media is relatively undertheorized in relation to assemblage, and in mobile media we find an excellent case in point of what exactly is at stake in contemporary constructions of culture and the social.
Notes
1. The ITU provides the most reliable numbers on who uses, and does not use, the mobile phone. However, its figures only provide a baseline picture of active connections – and so do not illuminate key aspects of use and non-use of mobile, that might relate to affordability, cost, coverage, or which features or mobiles are used, where, and by whom