As an example of convergence, the mobile phone—especially in the form of smartphone—is now ushering in new promises of seamlessness between engagement with technology and everyday common experiences. This seamlessness is not only about how one transitions between the worlds of the device and the physical environment but it also captures the transition and convergences between devices as well (i.e. laptop to smartphone, smartphone to tablet). This volume argues, however, that these transitions are far from seamless. We see divisions between online and offline, virtual and actual, here and there, taking on different cartographies, emergent forms of seams. It is these seams that this volume acknowledges, challenges and explores—socially, culturally, technologically and historically—as we move to a deeper understanding of the role and impact of mobile communication’s saturation throughout the world.

Global Media, Biopolitics and Affect shows how mediations of bodily vulnerability have become a strong political force in contemporary societies. In discussions and struggles concerning war involvement, healthcare issues, charity, democracy movements, contested national pasts, and climate change, performances of bodily vulnerability is increasingly used by citizens to raise awareness, create sympathy, encourage political action, and to circulate information in global media networks. The book thus argues that bodily vulnerability can serve as a catalyst for affectively charging and disseminating particular political events or issues by means of media. To investigate how, when and why that happens, and to evaluate the long-term social impacts of mediating bodily vulnerability, the book offers a theoretical framework for understanding the role of bodily vulnerability in contemporary digital media culture. Likewise, it presents a range of close empirical case studies in the areas of illness blogging, global protests after the killing of Neda Agda Soltan in Iran, charity communication, green media activism, online war commemoration and digital witnessing related to conflicts in Sarajevo and Ukraine.

Internet-based applications such as blogs, social network sites, online chat forums, text messages, microblogs, and location-based communication services used from computers and smart phones represent central resources for organizing daily life and making sense of ourselves and the social worlds we inhabit. This interdisciplinary book explores the meanings of social media as a communicative condition for users in their daily lives; first, through a theoretical framework approaching social media as communicative genres and second, through empirical case studies of personal blogs, Twitter, and Facebook as key instances of the category of "social media," which is still taking shape. Lomborg combines micro-analyses of the communicative functionalities of social media and their place in ordinary people’s wider patterns of media usage and everyday practices.

Not only is locative media one of the fastest growing areas in digital technology, but questions of location and location-awareness are increasingly central to our contemporary engagements with online and mobile media, and indeed media and culture generally. This volume is a comprehensive account of the various location-based technologies, services, applications, and cultures, as media, with an aim to identify, inventory, explore, and critique their cultural, economic, political, social, and policy dimensions internationally. In particular, the collection is organized around the perception that the growth of locative media gives rise to a number of crucial questions concerning the areas of culture, economy, and policy.

Death and Digital Media provides a critical overview of how people mourn, commemorate and interact with the dead through digital media. It maps the historical and shifting landscape of digital death, considering a wide range of social, commercial and institutional responses to technological innovations. The authors examine multiple digital platforms and offer a series of case studies drawn from North America, Europe and Australia. The book delivers fresh insight and analysis from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on anthropology, sociology, science and technology studies, human-computer interaction, and media studies. It is key reading for students and scholars in these disciplines, as well as for professionals working in bereavement support capacities.

Audiobooks are rapidly gaining popularity with widely accessible digital downloading and streaming services. This book engages with the digital form of audiobooks, framing audiobook listening as both a remediation of literature and an everyday activity that creates new reading experiences that can be compared to listening to music or the radio. Have and Stougaard Pedersen challenge the historical notion that audiobook listening is a compensatory activity or a second-rate reading experience, while seeking to establish a dialogue between sound studies and media studies, comparative literature, aesthetics, and sociology.

With digital media becoming ever more prevalent, it is essential to study policy and marketing strategies tailored to this new development. In this volume, contributors examine government policy for a range of media, including digital television, IPTV, mobile TV, and OTT TV. They also address marketing strategies that can harness the unique nature of digital media’s innovation, production design, and accessibility. They draw on case studies in Asia, North America, and Europe to offer best practices for both policy and marketing strategies.