The MicroSDs of Solomon Islands An Offline Remittance Economy of Digital Multi-Media
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Geoffrey Hobbis
Abstract
Based on twelve months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, this article investigates the offline circulation of digital media files in Solomon Islands. It explores how circular temporary labour migration drives the acquisition, movement and consumption of digital media, and how these media files contribute to moral controversies. Before the rapid proliferation of mobile phones in 2010, people living in rural environments had limited access to electronic media and the male village elite controlled access to this media, especially foreign movies. Mobile phones, on the other hand, are individually owned and encourage private consumption of media files. At the same time, migrants living in urban areas can easily obtain digital media files and have started integrating them into remittance networks. Access to electronic media in rural areas has exploded. Because foreign visual media are associated with urban, morally ambivalent lifestyles, this proliferation has also fuelled moral uncertainties among rural residents. This article suggests that to understand these moral controversies, and their significance in contemporary Solomon Islands, it is crucial to account for the mobility of digital media files offline and alongside the movements of temporary labourers.
© 2018 by transcript Verlag
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelei
- Content
- Introduction Mobile Digital Practices. Situating People, Things, and Data
- I. Field Research and Case Studies
- The MicroSDs of Solomon Islands An Offline Remittance Economy of Digital Multi-Media
- In the Footsteps of Smartphone-Users Traces of a Deferred Community in Ingress and Pokémon Go
- Digital Mediation, Soft Cabs, and Spatial Labour
- So ‘Hot’ Right Now Reflections on Virality and Sociality from Transnational Digital China
- Twitter in Place Examining Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Plaza through Social Media Activism
- Screen Screen Tourism
- Audiences, Aesthetics and Affordances Analysing Practices of Visual Communication on Social Media
- Mobile Mediated Visualities An Empirical Study of Visual Practices on Instagram
- ‘Re-appropriating’ Facebook? Web API mashups as Collective Cultural Practice
- II. Entering the Field
- Situating Hobby Drone Practices
- The Inchoate Field of Digital Offline A Reflection on Studying Mobile Media Practices of Digital Subalterns in India
- Mad Practices and Mobilities Bringing Voices to Digital Ethnography
- An Experimental Autoethnography of Mobile Freelancing
- III. In Conversation with …
- The Practice of Practice
- Biographical Notes
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelei
- Content
- Introduction Mobile Digital Practices. Situating People, Things, and Data
- I. Field Research and Case Studies
- The MicroSDs of Solomon Islands An Offline Remittance Economy of Digital Multi-Media
- In the Footsteps of Smartphone-Users Traces of a Deferred Community in Ingress and Pokémon Go
- Digital Mediation, Soft Cabs, and Spatial Labour
- So ‘Hot’ Right Now Reflections on Virality and Sociality from Transnational Digital China
- Twitter in Place Examining Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Plaza through Social Media Activism
- Screen Screen Tourism
- Audiences, Aesthetics and Affordances Analysing Practices of Visual Communication on Social Media
- Mobile Mediated Visualities An Empirical Study of Visual Practices on Instagram
- ‘Re-appropriating’ Facebook? Web API mashups as Collective Cultural Practice
- II. Entering the Field
- Situating Hobby Drone Practices
- The Inchoate Field of Digital Offline A Reflection on Studying Mobile Media Practices of Digital Subalterns in India
- Mad Practices and Mobilities Bringing Voices to Digital Ethnography
- An Experimental Autoethnography of Mobile Freelancing
- III. In Conversation with …
- The Practice of Practice
- Biographical Notes
