The infrastructures of mobile media: Towards a future reseach agenda

Abstract

In this contribution to the inaugural issue of Mobile Media & Communication, I draw upon recent work on mobiles in the global south to illustrate how the ‘third wave’ of mobile communication research requires a renewed focus upon the political and economic dimensions of infrastructures and the subversion of the system by individuals, communities and organizations. Inspired by Susan Leigh Star’s seminal work on the importance of studying infrastructures, I suggest that mobile media scholarship should look to the changes in the technical, social, political, regulatory and other forms of infrastructures that the first two waves’ focus upon novel uses and consumers often rendered invisible.