Abstract
Unquestionably, the zeitgeist of Web 2.0 is symbolized by the dominance of social networking sites (SNS) and user-created content (UCC). MySpace, Facebook, and Cyworld mini-hompy are but a few examples of SNS that are becoming increasingly part of urban everyday life and interwoven into the historicity of the Internet. Web 2.0 has promised much about new forms of participation, creation, collaboration, and authorship, and yet within each location, we can find examples of both empowerment and exploitation. This is particularly the case in the divergent region of the Asia-Pacific. Rather than the region being a sum of “imagined communities” (Anderson 1983), this paper argues that the distributed social networks of Web 2.0 UCC is formed, informed, and maintained through the perpetual process of “imaging communities.” These imaging communities can be seen in the visual, textual, and aural modes of UCC and can be seen to reflect the region’s new technocultural cartographies.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson B (1983) Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London, Verso
Arrighi G (1994) The long twentieth century: money, power, and the origins of our times. New York, Verso
Arrighi G, Hamashita T, Selden M (eds) (2003) The Resurgence of East Asia: 500, 150 and 50 Year Perspectives. London, Routledge
Boyd D (2003) Reflections on Friendster, Trust and Intimacy. School of Information Management & Systems (SIMS), University of California, Berkeley
Bruns A, (2005) ‘Some Exploratory Notes on Produsers and Produsage’, Snurblog, 3 November 2005. http://snurb.info/index.php?q=node/329. Accessed 10 December 2007
Castells, M. (2001) The Internet Galaxy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Castells M, Fernandez-Ardevol M, Qiu JL, Sey A (2007) Mobile Communication and Society: a Global Perspective. Harvard, Massachussetts, MIT
Cho HJ (2004) Youth, Internet, and Alternative Public Space. The Urban Imaginaries: An Asia-Pacific Research Symposium, Lingnan University, Hong Kong
Chua BH (ed.) (2000) Consumption in Asia. Routledge, London
Chua BH 2006) East Asian Pop Culture: Consumer Communities and Politics of the National. Cultural Space and the Public Sphere: An International Conference, March 15–16, Seoul, South Korea
Dirlik A (2007) Global South: Predicament and Promise. The Global South, Winter 2007, 11: 12–23
Fortunati L (2002) Italy: Stereotypes, True and False. In: Katz JE, Aakhus M (eds) Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communications, Private Talk, Public Performance. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp 42–62
Fortunati L (2008) Gender and the mobile phone. In: Goggin G, Hjorth L (eds) Mobile technologies. London/New York, Routledge, pp 23–35
Giddens A (1992) Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Cambridge, Polity
Goggin G, McLelland M (eds) (2008) Internationalising Internet Studies. London, Routledge
Gregg M (2007) Work where you want: the labour politics of the mobile office. Mobile Media conference, University of Sydney, July
Hafkin NJ (2008) Some thoughts on gender and telecommunications/ICT statistics and indicators. Available via ITU report. http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/global.htm. Accessed 2 March 2008
Hjorth L (2003) Kawaii@keitai. In: Gottlieb N, McLelland M (eds) Japanese Cybercultures. New York, Routledge, pp 50–59
Hjorth L, Kim H (2005a) Being there and being here: gendered customising of mobile 3G practices through a case study in Seoul. Convergence 11:49–55
Hjorth L, Kim H (2005b) Locating mobility: practices of co-presence and the persistence of the postal metaphor in SMS/MMS mobile phone customization in Melbourne. Fibreculture Journal 6. Available via http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue6/issue6_hjorth.html
Hjorth L, Kim H (2006) Snapshots, Cultural Space and the public sphere in Asia conference, March 15–16, Seoul
Hjorth L, Kim H (2007a) ‘Snapshots of almost contact: case study on South Korea’. Special issue (ed.) Goggin G, Continuum 21(2): 227–238.
Hjorth L, Kim H (2007b) ‘Engagement rings: a cross-cultural analysis of camera phone genres, modes of sharing and digital storytelling’. The Future of Digital Media Culture: 7th International Digital Arts and Culture (DAC) Conference, 15 -18th September, Perth, Australia, http://www.beap.org/dac
Hjorth L, Kim H . Mori Y ‘Mobile and immobile imaging communities: a comparative study between mixi and mini-hompy’, (a case study: contact authors for a copy of the paper).
Hochschild AR (2000) ‘Global care chains and emotional surplus value’. In: Hutton W, Giddens A (eds) On The Edge: Living with Global Capitalism, London: Jonathan Cape, pp. 130–146.
Hochschild AR (2003) The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work, California: University of California Press.
Jenkins, H. (2006a) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Intersect, New York: New York University Press.
Jenkins, H. (2006b) Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Essays on Participatory Culture, New York: New York University Press.
International Labour Office (ILO) (2008) ‘Global Employment Trends for Women’, http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/global.htm (accessed 2 March 2008).
Ito, M. (2002) ‘Mobiles and the appropriation of place’. In: receiver magazine, 08, http://www.receiver.vodafone.com (10 December 2003).
Ito, M. (2005) ‘Introduction: Personal, Portable, Pedestrian’. In: Ito M, Okabe D, Matsuda M (eds) Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, pp. 1–16.
Katz J, Sugiyama S (2005) ‘Mobile phones as fashion statements: the co-creation of mobile communication’s public meaning’. In: Ling R, PE Pederson (eds) Mobile Communications: Re-negotiation of the Social Sphere, London: Springer, pp. 63–81.
Kim SD (2003) ‘The Shaping of New Politics in the Era of Mobile and Cyber Communication’. In: Nyírí, K (ed.) Mobile Democracy, Vienna: Passagen Verlag, pp. 317–326.
Lee DH (2005) ‘Women’s making of camera phone culture’. Fibreculture journal 6, http://journal.fibreculture.org (accessed 5 December 2005)
Ling LHM (1999) ‘Sex Machine: Global Hypermasculinity and Images of the Asian Woman in Modernity’. positions 72: 277–306.
Liu M, Zoninsein M (2007) ‘These surfers do it their own way’. Newsweek, December 24th, pp. 40–41.
Matsuda M (2005) ‘Discourses of Keitai in Japan’. In: Ito M, Okabe D, Matsuda M (eds.) Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life, Cambridge, MA: MIT, pp. 19–40.
McLelland M (2006) ‘Race’ on the Japanese Internet: Discussing Korea and Koreans on ‘2-channeru’. AoIR conference, September, Brisbane, Queensland.
Miller D, Slater D (2000) The Internet: an Ethnographic Approach, Oxford and New York: Berg.
Murphie A (2007) ‘Mobility, work and love’. http://researchhub.cofa.unsw.edu.au/ccap/2007/07/10/mobility-work-and-love/. Accessed 30 August 2007
Ong A (2006) ‘Mutations in Citizenship’. Theory, Culture and Society 232–3: 499–531.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2006) OECD broadband statistics. http://www.oecd.org/sti/ict/broadband. Accessed December 2006
Park HW, Kluver R (2009) ‘Bloggers in South Korea’. In: Goggin G, McLelland M (eds) Internationalising Internet Studies, London: Routledge (in press).
Parreñas R (2001) Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration, and Domestic Work, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Parreñas R (2005) Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Pertierra R (2005a) ‘Mobile phones, identity and discursive intimacy’. Human Technology, 1: 23–44.
Pertierra R (2005b) ‘Without a room of your own? buy a cell phone’. In: Lin A (ed.) Proceedings of International Conference on Mobile Communication and Asian Modernities, 7–8 June, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon.
Pertierra R (2006) Transforming Technologies: altered selves, Philippines: De La Salle University Press.
Robison R, Goodman DSG (eds) (1996) The New Rich in Asia, London: Routledge.
Toffler A (1980) The Third Wave, William Morrow and Company, Inc.: New York.
Truong TS (1999) ‘The underbelly of the tiger: gender and demystification of the Asian miracle’. Review of International Political Economy 62: 133–165.
Wajcman J, Bittman M, Brown J (2009) ‘Intimate Connections: The Impact of the Mobile phone on Work Life Boundaries’. In: Goggin G, Hjorth L (eds) Mobile technologies, London/New York: Routledge (in press).
West DM (2006) Global e-government, 2006. Providence, Rhode Island: Center for Public Policy, Brown University.
Wilson R, Dirlik A (eds) (1995) Asia/Pacific As Space of Cultural Production, Durham: Duke University Press.
Yoo S (2009) ‘Online community and community capacity’. In: Goggin G, McLelland M (eds) Internationalising Internet Studies, London: Routledge (in press).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hjorth, L. Web U2: Emerging Online Communities and Gendered Intimacy in the Asia-Pacific region. Know Techn Pol 22, 117–124 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12130-009-9077-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12130-009-9077-9