Jean Burgess & Larissa Hjorth 
Studying Mobile Media 
Cultural Technologies, Mobile Communication, and the iPhone

The i Phone represents an important moment in both the short history of mobile media and the long history of cultural technologies. Like the Walkman of the 1980s, it marks a juncture in which notions about identity, individualism, lifestyle and sociality require rearticulation. this book explores not only the i Phone’s particular characteristics, uses and "affects, " but also how the "i Phone moment" functions as a barometer for broader patterns of change. In the i Phone moment, this study considers the convergent trajectories in the evolution of digital and mobile culture, and their implications for future scholarship. Through the lens of the i Phone-as a symbol, culture and a set of material practices around contemporary convergent mobile media-the essays collected here explore the most productive theoretical and methodological approaches for grasping media practice, consumer culture and networked communication in the twenty-first century.