Youth, Society and Mobile Media in Asia

This book examines the influence of mobile media technology on the lives of young people in East and North Asia, South East Asia and Australia. It discusses the impact information communication technologies have today on social identity, well-being, participation and exclusion. It explores current media practices and their innovative, transformative and disruptive uses at the local, the regional, the national, and the global level. In particular, it analyses mobile media not as a discrete object, but rather as part of a dynamic communication and information environment in which human-object relations are constantly reconfigured. It covers key theoretical and conceptual themes in youth mobile media research focusing on social, cultural and political aspects, including coverage of key themes such as regulation and technology, practices, pedagogies, aesthetics, social change, and representations of mobile youth. The book includes new accounts of recent research into the uses of mobile media by young people, and how these are situated in a broader socio-political context. Case studies include mobile panics in Australia (the notorious Kings of Wirrabee sexual assault case) and Japan (the scandals of high school girls as teenage prostitutes) in which mobile media use has had significant impact. This book offers an up-to-date examination of the influence of information communication technologies on young people’s lives in the region.

Stephanie Hemelryk Donald is Dean of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne. Her most recent publications include Global Media Studies: Theories and Approaches; Branding Cities: Cosmopolitanism, Parochialism and Social Change; The State of China Atlas; and Little Friends: Children’s Film and Media Culture in China. Theresa Dirndorfer Anderson is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Practices, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia.  Damien Spry is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney, Australia.