Perpetual Contact, Light Tie and Strong Control: Mobile Phone Love Story
Date Issued
2011
Date
2011
Author(s)
Huang, Sze-Chi
Abstract
Marshall McLuhan uses the phrase “the medium is the message” to reveal that the usage of different media will lead to different modes of interpersonal connections and actions. This research attempts to explore the relationships between the characteristics of the mobile phone and romantic relationships when the mobile phone has been seen as the most important communicative technology. The core questions, then, are whether mobile phones have changed the ways of communication, the content and the type of contacts between couples, and what the role mobile phones play in romantic relationship is.
Although profound, in-depth conversations may not exist in the “light tie”, the romantic relationship maintained by the “light tie” is not a loose relationship. Instead, via mobile phones, the lovers are thoroughly involved in each other’s life, and at the same time, they acquire the unprecedented ability of controlling their love and lovers. When people can get in touch almost anywhere without annoying waiting and mediations, they have more chances to know the details of daily life of their lovers, such as their immediate expressions of emotions, assistance needed at the moment. But besides disclosing and synchronizing their lovers’ traces intentionally or unintentionally, couples are also given more opportunities to grasp their social life and social network. Furthermore, every contact is also an interweaving and uncovering of each other’s lifestyle and the social setting s/he is in. Nowadays, with the mobile phone, couples are unprecedentedly capable of controlling the details of their lovers’ daily life.
Subjects
mobile phone
romantic relationship
disclosure
disembeddedness
connected relationship
perpetual contact
traceability
affective labor
Type
thesis
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