Via: "Axel Bruns"
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 19 March 2007
M/C - Media and Culture
is proud to present issue one in volume ten of
M/C Journal
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/
'mobile' - Edited by Larissa Hjorth and Olivia Khoo

Convergence has become part of burgeoning mobile media. The mobile phone has come of age. As an integral component of visual media cultures, camera phone practices are arguably both extending and creating emerging ways of seeing and representing. In media footage of late, camera phones have been heralded as providing everyday users with the possibility of self- expression and voice in the once unidirectional model of mass media. In addition, the "exchange" and gift-giving economy underpinning mobile phone practices is further enunciated by the camera phone's ability to "share" moments between intimates (and strangers) through various contextual frameworks and archives from MMS, blogs, virtual community sites to actual face-to-face digital storytelling.

This issue of M/C Journal explores the role of convergent mobile technologies in the Asia-Pacific region. The issue explores the socio- cultural particularities of various adaptations of mobile media, from case studies on mobile communication in the Asia Pacific, to cross-cultural analyses of the transborder flows of mobile media production, representation and consumption.