Smartphones as polymedia

Abstract

This article investigates whether smartphones function as environments of polymedia (Madianou & Miller, 2012) and assesses their consequences for transnational families. Drawing on research with UK-based Filipino migrants, the article observes that users treat smartphones as integrated environments of communicative opportunities and exploit the differences within media in order to express emotions and manage their relationships with their family members who remain in the Philippines. For smartphone users, being online emerges as the default position and there is evidence that new media become constitutive of relationships in situations of extreme separation. However, technology cannot overcome difficulties that are fundamentally social. Moreover, the article observes the emergence of a new 'care divide' between those who own smartphones and those who do not. © 2014 International Communication Association.