Friday 17 November
3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
S226 Seminar Room, Department of Media and Communications
John Woolley Building, Level 2 entry off Manning Road
Register here
The adoption of mobile phones in the global south has provided consumers with greater access to interpersonal communication. The shift from basic handsets to smartphones has corresponded with a move to data usage where smartphone users produce, consume and circulate content ranging from images and social media posts to music and videos. Drawing upon recent research in Fiji and Papua New Guinea, this talk examines the consequences of data usage and questions the extent to which smartphones and the demand for data may mitigate some of the meaningful digital, financial and social inclusion that emerged in the access era of mobile telecommunications.
Heather Horst is Professor in the Department of Media in Communications at the University of Sydney, Australia and an Adjunct Professor at the Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT University, Australia. A sociocultural anthropologist by training, her research explores transformations in the telecommunications industry, emergent mobile media practices and the use of digital media for learning across the Pacific, Caribbean and Australia. Her recent publications examining these themes include Digital Anthropology (2012), Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practices (2016), Locating the Mobile (Forthcoming) and The Moral Economy of Mobile Phones in the Pacific (Forthcoming).