[Air-L] Research on Skype

[Mirca Madianou]

Hi Robyn 

You may wish to look at 'Migration and new media: transnational families and polymedia (2012) which I co-authored with Danny Miller. The book is an ethnography of Philippine transnational families: migrant women based in the UK and their left-behind children - and how these long distance family relationships are experienced and reconstituted via new communication technologies such as skype. 

Although the book is not only about skype, it features heavily as its arrival made a huge difference to our participants, especially parents with young children. The book analyses skype as one platform in the environment of converging technologies which users navigate to manage their relationships (we named this environment polymedia). In chapter 7 we compare skype's affordances to those of the other technologies you mention below. http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415679299/  

I'd be interested to hear more about your work as it progresses, 

All the best 

Mirca

Dr. Mirca Madianou
Senior Lecturer and Director of Postgraduate Research Studies 
Department of Media and Communication 
University of Leicester 
2.01 Bankfield House 
132 New Walk 
Leicester LE1 7JA

Email: mm499 at le.ac.uk
Tel. 0116 223 1619
http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/media/people/dr-mirca-madianou
New Book: Migration and New Media: Transnational Families and Polymedia (with Daniel Miller): http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415679299/


On 3 Feb 2013, at 20:04, Robyn Longhurst wrote:

> Hi everyone
> 
> I am relatively new on this list. My name is Robyn Longhurst and I am
> social and cultural geographer at Waikato University (NZ) who is
> interested in screen, media and communication.
> 
> I am wondering if anyone is able to direct me to any work on Skype. I
> am currently setting up a project that aims is to advance dialogue
> between human geographers and media studies by examining how family
> and household members in New Zealand are currently using Skype to
> reconfigure their everyday familial, social, gendered, sexual,
> inter-generational, emotional and affectual geographies.
> 
> I am especially interested in if there is there something
> qualitatively different about the ‘real-time’ video communication
> offered by Skype - hearing, and seeing the lived flesh of the ‘real’
> person and space on the screen - rather than just written, text and
> phone communication, that is changing everyday familial geographies
> and relationships?
> 
> If anyone knows of any literature on Skype that might be relevant I’d
> be enormously grateful and willing to share information with others
> who might also be interested. Thanks in advance.
> 
> Best wishes
> Robyn
> 
> Robyn Longhurst
> Professor of Geography
> Editor-in-Chief: Gender, Place and Culture:
> A Journal of Feminist Geography
> Geography Programme
> School of Social Sciences
> Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
> The University of Waikato
> Private Bag 3105
> Hamilton 3240
> Aotearoa New Zealand
> 
> Tel +64 7 856 2889 Ext 8306
> Fax +64 7 8384633
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