It's Complicated: A Case Study of Personalisation in an Age of Social and Mobile Media
Larissa Hjorth · Communication, politics & culture · 2011
The rise of personal technologies such as social and mobile media has been accompanied by, and fostered through, the growth in personalisation - most commonly by user created content (UCC). Through UCC, we can gain insight into the ways in which users personalise their media to reflect a sense of place as not just a geographic, spatial notion but also as a social, political and emotional space. Personalisation not only reflects the local and vernacular, it is also a highly gendered activity which highlights the link between personal technologies and domestic technologies (Morley, 2003). While the domestic technologies may have moved out of the home, personalisation practices can still create a sense of belonging and intimacy: in short, mobile intimacy. In the history of personalised, domestic technologies, locations in the Asia-Pacific region such as Japan, South Korea and China have played a pivotal role. By exploring a few examples of personalisation in the form of gendered and generational UCC in the region, this article suggests a reconnection between the personal and the political that reflects a more nuanced sense of place.