Rethinking media displacement: the tensions between mobile media and face-to-face interaction

Alan César Belo Angeluci,Gejun Huang

doi:10.15448/1980-3729.2015.4.21005

Alan César Belo Angeluci, Gejun Huang

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.15448/1980-3729.2015.4.21005

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Abstract

The neologism of phubbing, a coalesce of phone mediated activities and snubbing effects, caters to the public’s imperative to accentuate the ubiquitous perception of being annoyed, disregard, and offended in light of phone’s presence in co-present situation. Its symptomatic record accompanies important achievements of diffusing mobile media in developing countries, in which young people are one of the most active social groups in this scenario. By incorporating and relating to the theories of media displacement, we focus on the analysis of a Brazilian and Chinese young people survey, pinpointing how they understand and cope with the tensions between mobile media and face-to-face interaction. The results might provide new tissues to the discussions on media displacement.

Highlights

To date, there have emerged tremendous achievements of diffusing mobile phone in developing countries, and young people constitute one of the most active social groups in this scenario
Does displacement prevail in face-to-face interactions? We look into the specific co-present situations where loom or manifest phubbing issues
Concluding remarks In a nutshell, this study manages to unpack the tensions between mobile phone use and face-to-face interaction at a preliminary level

Summary

Introduction

There have emerged tremendous achievements of diffusing mobile phone in developing countries, and young people constitute one of the most active social groups in this scenario. One of the pertinent studies suggests that mobile phone operates as a prime that “activates implicit representations of wider social networks, which in turn crowd out face-to-face conversations” (Przybylski & Weinstein, 2012, p.244). In this vein, young people somewhat lapse into the most salient group bearing the duality of culprit and victim due to their excessive reliance on mobile phone. By incorporating and relating to the theories of media displacement, we focus on Brazilian and Chinese young people to pinpoint their approaches to understand and cope with the tensions between mobile phone and face-toface interaction. The research results in turn might provide new tissues to the long established discussions on media displacement

Methods

Findings

Conclusion