Wising up: revising mobile media in an age of smartphones

The evolution of mobile communication in the twenty-first century has been marked by its uneven transition into mobile media – often called ‘smartphones’. Once upon a time mobile phones were little more than mobile landlines. It wasn’t long before smartphones symbolized media convergence par excellence. In this movement towards smartphone cultures, the realm of mobile communication studies has vastly expanded to encompass game, social, and locative media practices. Through the mobile frame, contexts and practices of being ‘online’ shift, impacting upon various disciplines such as internet studies. As smartphones usher in a new phase of casual and social media games such as Angry Birds, so too are practices of co-present engagement transforming not only how games are played and by whom, but also the nature of games studies inquiry. With the emergence of second-generation locative-based services like Foursquare expanding upon the potentialities of Global Positioning Systems (GPS), our experience of place and notions of privacy come into focus.