The Global Smartphone

Miller, Daniel; Rabho, Laila Abed; Awondo, Patrick; Vries, Maya de; Duque, Marília; Garvey, Pauline; Haapio‐Kirk, Laura; Hawkins, Charlotte; Otaegui, Alfonso; Walton, Shireen; Wang, Xinyuan

doi:10.2307/j.ctv1b0fvh1

Cited by 67 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Photos from everyday life created feelings of co-presence with small groups of loved ones. The important role of visual material within family and small groups confirms the findings of previous research on relationships at distance (Ahlin, 2018; Miller et al, 2021), which showed that visual communication expresses affection and care and that content often matters less than the act of the communication itself. Similar findings were also presented in Costa’s (2016a) description of social media usage among family members in southeast Turkey who sent photos to each other several times a day whenever they could not see each other face-to-face.…”

Section: Multimodal Scalable Sociality and Polymediasupporting

confidence: 85%

“…This difference might reflect variations in the modes of interaction and socialities, as well as the different impact of the pandemic on people’s life in the two cities. Yet, across the three cities, the increased use of emojis during lockdown reflected a global trend of heightened importance of visual communication to express “care at distance” (Miller et al, 2021; Stark & Crawford, 2015; Walton, 2021). It also demonstrates that emojis facilitated experiences of emotional co-presence and proximity with others at all scales of sociality.…”

Section: Multimodal Scalable Sociality and Polymediamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Scalable Co-presence: WhatsApp and the Mediation of Personal Relationships during the COVID-19 Lockdown

Costa

Valle

Hagedoorn

2022

Social Media + Society

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This article sheds light on how adults in Barcelona (ES), Groningen (NL), and Milan (IT) utilized WhatsApp to compensate for the lack of face-to-face interactions and to fight social isolation during the first 2 months of the COVID-19 lockdown. We argue that practices of WhatsApp usage have multiplied and diversified experiences of co-presence at distance and made group socialities even more important than before. Building on the concepts of “scalable socialities” and “polymedia,” the article formulates the concept of “scalable co-presence” to account for ways in which WhatsApp has enabled multiple experiences of proximity to others across different scales of sociality, from one-to-one to large groups interactions. In this article, we also argue that the concept of “scalable co-presence” is relevant to bring the study of mediated co-presence out of media and migration studies into the broader field of media and cultural studies. With reduction in mobility, increased social distancing, and ubiquitous connectivity, the role of communication technologies in mediating proximity at distance has become crucial for many more people around the world outside the context of transnational migration. The concept is also relevant to acknowledge the increased importance of mediated group interactions and communications in (post)-pandemic digital societies.

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Section: Multimodal Scalable Sociality and Polymediasupporting

confidence: 85%

Section: Multimodal Scalable Sociality and Polymediamentioning

confidence: 99%

Scalable Co-presence: WhatsApp and the Mediation of Personal Relationships during the COVID-19 Lockdown

Costa

Valle

Hagedoorn

2022

Social Media + Society

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“…By showing how a volunteer organization can creatively but professionally intervene in a humanitarian crisis, I build on existing ethnographic literature that focuses on more lay, street-level solidarity with migrants (e.g., Carney, 2021) and practices of care that rely on the ad-hoc "kindness of strangers" (Smith, 2020) rather than a coordinated organization of skilled laborers. Additionally, this research builds on social science literature on the "global smartphone" as an essential component of contemporary subjectivity (Miller et al, 2021), and particularly on WhatsApp as a "technology of life" in the twenty-first century (Cruz and Harindranath, 2020).…”

Section: Previous Research In Immigrant Mental Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Client States: Australia's Offshore Detainees and the Limits of Therapy

Neiman

2023

Med Anthropol Q

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Mental health has become an exceptionally important social and public health issue in Australia. The government has invested billions of dollars in new services, while ubiquitous ad campaigns call on ordinary people to tend to their psychological well‐being. This national valorization of mental health is striking, given the well‐documented psychiatric harm suffered by refugees under Australia's offshore detention regime. This article draws on ethnographic work with a group of volunteer therapists who provide crisis counseling to these detained refugees over WhatsApp, allowing them to intervene in scenarios where therapy is inaccessible but badly needed. Highlighting the predictable challenges and surprising affordances of delivering care in this restrictive and high‐stakes context, I show how my informants forge a genuine therapeutic connection with their clients. While this intervention is meaningful, I argue that the volunteers are aware that it is no substitute for winning political freedom.

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“…As the UCL anthropologists recently proposed, the smartphone is now where we live (Miller et al. 2021). As such, digital theology could be branded as “contextual theology” or even as “constructive” theology in its attempt to bring Christian concepts into conversation with digital culture.…”

Section: Digital Theology Is…mentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital Theology and a Potential Theological Approach to a Metaphysics of Information

Phillips¹

2023

Zygon

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In this article, I offer a background to digital theology and its methodology, exploring especially aspects of transhumanism and metaphysical enquiry. The article moves on to engage with several articles given at the Science and Religion Forum at Birmingham in 2022, especially the Gowland Lecture given by Professor Niels Gregersen and the Peacocke Lecture by Andrew Jackson. Both offer a metaphysical approach to information linked closely to the concept of Logos drawn from the Prologue of John—Jackson focusing on Maximus the Confessor's exploration of phylogenetic logoi; Gregersen on a further development of “Deep Incarnation” through the title “God with Clay” drawn from Bonaventure. The article extends this engagement with John by querying the model of incarnation in “deep incarnation” but building on the Logos/logoi to set out some initial building blocks for an alternative metaphysics of information.

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The Global Smartphone

Abstract: Chapter summaries vi List of figures xii List of abbreviations xix List of contributors xx Series Foreword xxii Acknowledgements xxiv 1. Introduction 1 2. What people say about smartphones 27

Cited by 67 publications

References 15 publications

Scalable Co-presence: WhatsApp and the Mediation of Personal Relationships during the COVID-19 Lockdown

Scalable Co-presence: WhatsApp and the Mediation of Personal Relationships during the COVID-19 Lockdown

Client States: Australia's Offshore Detainees and the Limits of Therapy

Digital Theology and a Potential Theological Approach to a Metaphysics of Information

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