Everyday communication management and perceptions of use

Abstract

For media users enjoying a context of near constant connection across a changing set of platforms, the management of that communication environment is a central concern in the management of everyday life. The multiplication and divergence of possible uses across these platforms emerge alongside the increasing cross-media integration of informational, interactive and entertainment practices with interpersonal communication. The individual’s perception of that environment of increasingly differentiated communication possibilities becomes a site for managing and partially negotiating the limits, form and organization of one’s social world. Expanding upon Gershon’s (2010) notion of media ideologies, this article focuses on the increasing divergence of the perceived and preferred uses of media technologies. The analytical terms ‘social tool’ and ‘social device’ are deployed to tease apart the central ordering experience of perceived ‘mutual engagement’ within media practices. The perceived presence or lack thereof within such engagement serves to recursively delimit and order the media user’s social landscape, pointing to further reflexive management of one’s own media ideology through a highly idiosyncratic ‘relational ordering’ of perceived and preferred platform uses, amidst social and technological change.