Smartphone Communities

Participation, Resistance, Mediation
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-94-6372-868-3
Verlag: Amsterdam University Press

Buch, Englisch, 312 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Reihe: MediaMatters

Smartphone Communities places the smartphone - our most personal and ubiquitous medium - at the centre of an in-depth exploration of contemporary community formation. The book ground-breaking contribution lies in theorizing the smartphone not merely as a device, but as a dynamic social infrastructure through which communities are continuously assembled, negotiated, and contested.

Conceptualizing the smartphone user as a mobile, permanently networked subject, the book advances a multi-directional media-theoretical framework that bridges participation theory, fan studies, and visual culture. Focusing primarily on Western, platform-capitalist contexts from the 2010s to the mid-2020s, Anne Ganzert analyzes topical and widely recognizable case studies, including TikTok, Pokémon Go, Tinder, and Habitica. These platforms serve as lenses through which social, economic, and political power relations become visible, from algorithmic governance and data extraction to practices of play, intimacy, self-optimization, and resistance.

Readers will gain a comprehensive understanding of smartphone-based communities through a blend of media theory and empirical analysis. Addressed to undergraduates, postgraduates, scholars of media and cultural studies, as well as non-specialist readers such as librarians and booksellers, the book offers an accessible yet theoretically ambitious account of smartphone-based communities.

Zielgruppe

Academic

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ganzert, Anne

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wissenssoziologie, Wissenschaftssoziologie, Techniksoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Mediensoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften
• Technische Wissenschaften Elektronik | Nachrichtentechnik Nachrichten- und Kommunikationstechnik Drahtlostechnologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Table of Contents

Introduction: Smartphone Participation in Formation

Smartphone Practices, Formations, and Communities

Participation, Resistance, and Smartphone Mediation

Tracking: Datafied Selves, Shared Metrics, and Emergent Collectives

Storytelling: Narratives, Visibility, and Situated Participation

Gaming: Mobility, Play, and Deferred Community

Dating: Intimacy, Proximity, and Relational Assemblages

Debating: Political Expression, Affective Publics, and Contested Participation

Protesting: Mobilisation, Witnessing, and Resistance-in-Motion

Conclusion: Smartphone Communities in Motion

Über Autor(innen)

Dr. Anne Ganzert is head of the research group Web Sleuthing. Media Practices of Crime-Related Online Investigations (DFG) at Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany. Her research focuses on media phenomena, fan studies, crime, gender, participation, and visual culture. Key publications are Serial Pinboarding (2020) and Following (2023).