Lee Humphreys has a new essay in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, called “Connecting, Coordinating, Cataloguing: Communicative Practices on Mobile Social Networks.” This piece will be of great interest to the Culture Digitally crowd, especially those drawn to questions of the micropractices of digital life. Here’s the abstract:

This article draws on Georg Simmel’s sociological framework for social interaction in public space to situate socially mediated interactions within a historical and theoretical context. Based on 5 case studies of mobile interactions with social networks, this article explores how these mobile interactions with social networks are practiced and experienced in everyday life. Together these case studies suggest 3 kinds of communicative practices associated with mobile social networks: connecting, coordinating, and cataloguing. These practices are associated with the social, physical, and informational aspects of public social interaction respectively. The article concludes with implications of these practices for socially mediated interaction in public space.