Gerard Goggin is Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. He is the author of New Technologies and the Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Global Mobile Media (Routledge, 2011), Cell Phone Culture (Routledge, 2006), and Digital Disability (UNSW Press, 2003; with Christopher Newell). Larissa Hjorth is an artist, digital ethnographer and Professor in the Games Programs, and Co-Director of RMIT’s Digital Ethnography Research Centre (DERC) with Heather Horst. She is the author of Mobile Media in the Asia-Pacific (Routledge, 2009), Games & Gaming (Berg, 2010), Online@AsiaPacific: Mobile, Social and Locative in the Asia–Pacific region (with Michael Arnold, Routledge, 2013), and Understanding Social Media (with Sam Hinton, Sage, 2013).
The two editors seem to have perfected the art of compilation, and this perfectly refined companion reflects their scholarly experience. They strengthen their guidance by offering examples, and, importantly, they refer the reader to works that cover specific areas of the field. This is useful as the Companion favours breadth over depth. It is a well-founded broad summary for newcomers to the field and an equally well-founded status update for seasoned media scholars looking into the increasingly diverse field of mobile media studies. I welcome the inclusion of the underlying and sometimes rather technical aspects of infrastructures, economies and policies. In short, the Companion addresses everything that goes on behind and beyond the gleaming interfaces of the modern mobile media. - Andreas Lenander AEgidius, MedieKultur Journal of Media and Communication Research [C]hapter contributors address international politics, localization, globalization, cultural geographies, aging and age-related patterns of use, questions of gender and race, art, personal and cultural identity, comparative history, effects on social and kinship patterns, political activism, and economic and structural trends. This is an excellent resource for someone looking for ideas relating to and directions in which to explore mobile media. ... Summing Up: Highly recommended. --P. L. Kantor, Southern Vermont College, in CHOICE The constant developments in mobile media make it an exciting field of scholarship, and this book exploits these exciting energies. - Niall Flynn, LSE Review of Books