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- Title
Postal Presence: A Case Study of Mobile Customisation and Gender in Melbourne.
- Authors
Hjorth, Larissa
- Abstract
Larrissa Hjorth's study of mobile phone personalisation in an Australian sample group sees the sending of text (SMS) and picture (MMS) messages as crucial to the maintenance of personal social connections. At the centre of this activity is the mobile phone itself, both as a machine for sending messages, and as an artefact that displays a message about the individual users via the personalisation choices they have made. By choosing screensavers, ringtones and faceplates for their phone, Hjorth documents how the users in her study are able to manage the display of their own identity (a fetishisation of the object). Hjorth sees this personalisation as a performative act, which proves that gender and identity are not innate, but are constantly practised, rehearsed and expressed in everyday life. In the case of the mobile phone, personalisation is therefore seen as an extension of this performative acting of gender and identity, the phone taking on the practised identity of the individual and, through its broadcast of these individual identities via faceplates and ringtones, disseminating this into the immediate social environment of the user.
- Subjects
MOBILE communication systems; CELL phones; TELECOMMUNICATION; TEXT messages; RING tones; GENDER identity; LIFESTYLES
- Publication
Knowledge, Technology & Policy, 2006, Vol 19, Issue 2, p29
- ISSN
1946-4789
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s12130-006-1022-6