1. Mobile Phone—A tool
for intimacy
Yuan Gao
z3402057

2. Mobile phone in your life
Questions: what you usually use mobile phones
for, and whether you feel close or distance to
others when you use various platforms? eg:
Skype, Facebook, Twitter/Weibo, games, SMS,
ordinary talking/voice

4. Reading
The Mouring After: A case study of social media
in the 3.11 earthquake disaster in Japan -----
Larissa Hjorth
A brief introduction of Larissa Hjorth
“While personal technologies such as the
mobile phone are rewriting the relationship
between mobility and intimacy, it is important to
recognize that the intimate copresence
enacted by mobile technologies should be
viewed as part of a lineage of technologies of
propinquity”
“It is important to contextualize the so-called
migration of intimacy toward the public as
signposted by social media”

5. Key Concepts
Mobile intimacy: is the ability to be
intimate across distances of time and
space.
Intimate copresence: is keyed to the
personal, pervasive, and intimate nature
of social connections via handheld
devices, such as mobile photo sharing
Migration of intimacy: is the
transformation represent the hijacking of
the personal away from a space
between people to a subset of social
technologies.

6. how helpful are social mobile media in
maintaining mobile intimacy in times of crisis
management?
Japan Earthquake 3.11
Queensland Flood

7. Discuss question
How do you think social mobile media would help
you in maintaining relationships?

8. The role of Mobile Media
1. Intimacy
2. Copresence
3. Remediation

9. Mobile intimacy
Previously, the personal relationship were „lean
forward‟
Now, Smartphones, Mobile phones are intimate
our interactions and connections
We use it for multiple communications, eg. Email,
photo sharing, social networking…
A tool for shrinking a physical distance
Connections with family

10. Mobile Copresence
The integration of the „Virtual‟ as a
pervasive presence in everyday practice
and place
Combine remote and networked relations
as a persistent presence
They turn place and setting into a
„Real/Virtual‟ hybrid
Mobile phone using are technosocial
practices, merging remote or mediated
relations and physically co-present relations.

11. Mobile copresence
No t just seeing who‟s near
by

12. Mobile Remediation
The boundaries between old and
new media
New media lies in the way they
remediate older media
New media as an improvement
and a complete break with old
media? NO
Mobile Remediation sets the
grounds for conceptualizing the
relationship between old and new
media not as oppositional but as
part of a media genealogy

13. Conclusion
Mobile social media provide new channels for
affective cultures in the form of mobile
intimacy, they also extend on earlier media
practices and rituals such as the postcard.

14. References
„Twitter, Facebook Become Vital During Japan Earthquake‟, viewed on 24th August 2012, <
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/11/twitter-facebook-become-v_n_834767.html>.
„Tsunami Devastates Japan: How Social Media reacted‟, viewed on 24th August 2012, <
http://progressivemediaconcepts.com/2011/03/tsunami-devastates-japan-how-social-media-reacted/>.
„Social Media Helps with Japan Relief Efforts‟, viewed on 24th August 2012, < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liK5DUvwX-I>.
„Social media helps communication during Qld flood‟, viewed on 24th August 2012, <
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNAPKmkPaOQ>.
„News on Japanese Earthquake‟, Facebook group, viewed on 23rd August 2012, <
http://www.facebook.com/groups/208461079168366/>.
Qld flood info, public page on Facebook, viewed on 24th August 2012, < http://www.facebook.com/pages/Qld-Flood-Info-Western-
Region/373732639320347>.
Bell, Genevieve (2006) „The Age of the Thumb: A Cultural Reading of Mobile Technologies from Asia‟, Knowledge, Technology, &
Policy, 19(2), pp.41-57.
Lloyd, C 2010, „Intimate mobile connections: A tool for intimacy‟, viewed on 23rd August 2012, <
http://www.canberra.edu.au/anzca2010/attachments/pdf/Intimate-mobile-connections.pdf>.
Hjorth, Larissa and Kim, Kyoung-hwa Yonnie 2011, „The Mouring After: A case study of social media in the 3.11 earthquake disaster
in Japan‟, Television and New Media, 12(6):552-559.
Gerard C, Raiti, 2007, „Mobile Intimacy: Theories on the Economics of Emotion with Examples from Asia‟, Volume 10, Issue 1.