The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media

Book excerpt: The last decade has witnessed the rise of the cell phone from a mode of communication to an indispensable multimedia device, and this phenomenon has led to the burgeoning of mobile communication studies in media, cultural studies, and communication departments across the academy. The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media seeks to be the definitive publication for scholars and students interested in comprehending all the various aspects of mobile media. This collection, which gathers together original articles by a global roster of contributors from a variety of disciplines, sets out to contextualize the increasingly convergent areas surrounding social, geosocial, and mobile media discourses. Features include: comprehensive and interdisciplinary models and approaches for analyzing mobile media; wide-ranging case studies that draw from this truly global field, including China, Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, as well as Europe, the UK, and the US; a consideration of mobile media as part of broader media ecologies and histories; chapters setting out the economic and policy underpinnings of mobile media; explorations of the artistic and creative dimensions of mobile media; studies of emerging issues such as ecological sustainability; up-to-date overviews on social and locative media by pioneers in the field. Drawn from a range of theoretical, artistic, and cultural approaches, The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media will serve as a crucial reference text to inform and orient those interested in this quickly expanding and far-reaching field.