Self-(re)presentation in Mobile Communication Practices

Abstract

Mobile communication entails multiple and multimedia ways of representing the self: of depicting, performing and making oneself present, to ourselves and to our significant ones, as well as to different connected audiences. This chapter explores how these complex choreographic performances of presentation-representation-embodiment, are the effect of a shared agency between people and mobile media, involving intentions, desires, habits, collective norms and expectations, written and non-written rules, as well as the affordances and constraints of the different digital infrastructures, from mobile devices to apps and platforms, with their commercial and technical requirements. Special attention is given to the choreographic aspect of these performances, for instance in how gender and race are performed in mobile mediated forms of self-(re)presentation, with aesthetic and ethical implications. These choreographies are forms of current digital labor, where the production of images and visibilities prevails, in mobile practices such as the taking and sharing of selfies, and the uses and practices around mobile apps.