Beyond platform-centrism and digital universalism

The relational affordances of mobile social media publics

Datos Bibliográficos

ID20508340
AutoresWendy Willems (0000-0001-5439-1332, London School of Economics and Political Science, autor de correspondencia)
Año2021
Volumen24
Número12
Páginas1677-1693
Fecha de publicación2021-09-10
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInformation Communication & Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1369-118X • E-ISSN: 1468-4462
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1369118x.2020.1718177
OpenAlexW3003026711
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas43
Referencias citadas33

In debates on digital affordances, mobile devices and social media platforms are often treated as separate (physical or digital) objects which function independently from each other and from the environments in which they are used (‘platform-centrism’). However, mobile phone use has increasingly been dominated by social media apps while social media are frequently accessed via mobile devices, particularly in Global South contexts where users often rely on mobile-only internet access via subsidized/zero-rated social media data bundles. Furthermore, the affordances of mobile social media are shaped by the physical, mediated and political contexts in which they are used. Technological affordances are far from universal (‘digital universalism’) but take on different shapes across the globe. Drawing on research carried out during the September 2011 Zambian elections, this article introduces the notion of ‘relational affordance’ to emphasize the interplay between mobile social media, users and their varied contexts. Despite the relatively low number of mobile internet users at the time, the Facebook group of the popular, privately-owned Zambian television station, Muvi TV, quickly emerged as a fast-paced forum for the sharing of information on the elections. Three ‘relational affordances’ – infrastructure, home-based access and temporality – help to explain the emergence of this active mobile social media public. This analysis challenges previous accounts of mobile social media publics which identified negative (constraining) affordances like the control exerted by Facebook page administrators and positive (enabling) affordances such as the ‘always-on’ nature of mobile social media use and their ‘on-the-go’ access in public spaces

Affordance · Digital media · Human–computer interaction · Internet privacy · Mobile media · Mobile phone · Political science · Social media · Sociology · Telecommunications · The Internet · World Wide Web · Computer Science · E-Government and Public Services · Media Studies and Communication · Social Media and Politics