From social media to media socialities in mobile work : aspiration in the cases of Australian mining and Everest tourism industries

This chapter contributes to the emerging framework of mobile socialities by examining digital media as communicative affordances of portability, availability, locatability and multimediality (Schrock, 2015) within socialities created by new forms of labour and leisure. Imbricated in relationships within home, work and leisure, mobile media have been theorised in terms of the different forms of privacy and intimacy they enable. As 'scalable sociality', social media varies degrees of communication between sizes of social groups and levels of privacy (Miller et al., 2016). In this chapter, I critically revisit theorisations of mobile and social media to argue that in addition to facilitating new forms of socialities, digital media have also created the potential for shifting aspirations within these new socialities, based on the intimacies they enable. I draw on case studies of from two industries that are sustained by mobile livelihoods, where workers commute regionally for weeks at a time: Australian coal mining and Mount Everest tourism. Digital media's role these forms of work facilitate intimate socialities of temporary and enduring relationships, and emotional geographies created by sustained periods of time at home and work.