The Mobile Phone and Political Participation in Asia: Theorizing the Dynamics of Personalized Technologies and Networked Externality

Abstract

The mobile phone is ubiquitous; the embrace of smartphones, and the iPhone in particular, is a global phenomenon. It is estimated that there soon will be more mobile phones than people in the world. Donner (Inf Soc 24(3):140–159, 2008) characterized mobile phones as “symbols of the modern and the global.” With more than 2.5 billion users, Asia leads the world in mobile phone subscriptions. The increasing saturation of Asian countries by mobile phones with their participatory capacity calls for theorization of the mobile phone’s efficacy as a tool for citizen engagement and participation in political affairs, especially in the search for solutions to problems of pollution, government corruption, and public health risks, to name a few. This introductory chapter will outline the progress of the Asian mobile revolution, with a focus on explicating the impact on political communication of sharing personalized messages via the mobile phone. That is, how personal content on mobile phones and smart devices and the inherent networked nature of the mobile phone will lead to positive externality in terms of civic engagement and political participation. Following the definitions of key analytical concepts, the chapter ends with an overview of each of the chapters in the volume.