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On the face of it, the notion of non-media-centric media studies appears to be a contradiction in terms. Surely those who are working in media studies will put media at the centre of their investigations and explanations of social life? In the following conversation, three advocates of a non-media-centric approach discuss their ways into the field of media studies at different points in its development, and together they explore their overlapping empirical research interests as well as their theoretical, methodological and pedagogical concerns. Topics that feature in this exchange include the linked mobilities of information, people and commodities, the articulation of material and virtual geographies, and the meaningfulness of everyday, embodied practices. Out of the dialogue emerges a renewed call for media studies that acknowledge the particularities of media, but which are about more than simply studying media and which seek to recover the field’s early spirit of interdisciplinary adventure.

This article presents findings from a qualitative research project on the environmental experiences of trans-European migrants, drawing on conversational interviews with young people who have moved to Britain over recent years from the new European Union Member States in Eastern Europe. It explores these migrants’ practical and emotional relationships with physical (and media) environments, also drawing on the literature of phenomenological geography, in which there is a helpful concern with environmental experiences and associated senses of place. Such experiences and perceptions are not usually objects of reflection in day-to-day social circumstances, precisely because of their routine, familiar and taken-for-granted character. However, transnational migration can bring a profound disturbance of lifeworlds, throwing senses of place into sharp relief. Therefore, a major theme of this article is the close connection between matters of migration and those of place-making in daily living.

This article is concerned with a particular aspect of the relationship between media and mobility. The author draws attention to what he calls the "doubly digital" quality of contemporary media-pointing to the intimate connection between movements through media settings (such as online environments) and movements of the fingers or digits on keyboards, keypads, touch-screens, and so on. His main interest is in mobile, generative ways of the hand that is at home with communication technologies, and in opening up an investigation of media uses as manual activities. In exploring these mobile, generative ways, he also reflects on a range of other manual activities that are apparently unrelated to media use-venturing into the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, and anthropology to discuss phenomenological perspectives on practices of typing, organ and piano playing, and plank sawing. Out of his exploration emerges a focus on embodied, sensuous, practical knowing, and on matters of orientation and habitation (with the author advocating a distinctive nonrepresentational, non-media-centric approach for future studies of media use in everyday life).

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