Bodies and Mobile Media

Have you ever considered how mobile media change what we see, hear and pay attention to in urban spaces, or how they alter our pedestrian movement through the city? Over the last decade, mobile media and communication technologies have become deeply integral to our perception and bodily experience of the world. In this original book, Ingrid Richardson and Rowan Wilken explore mobile media as a lens through which to understand how embodiment both shapes, and is shaped by, media experience. Bodies and Mobile Media offers a unique approach by focusing on specific sensory affordances and body parts – including the eyes, ears, face, hands and feet – to consider the uneven ratios of sensory perception at work in our engagement with mobile devices. Each chapter provides rich and accessible narratives of mobile media practices interwoven with current scholarship in media studies and phenomenology, with a concluding chapter that considers mobile media use holistically as a synaesthetic experience. The book thus serves as an important work of knowledge translation, by interpreting theoretical insights about the body-technology relation. This knowledge translation is crucial, the authors argue, if we are to critically understand how our perception and experience of the world is mediated by technology. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in Media, Communication and Cultural Studies.