Portable Communities: The Social Dynamics of Online and Mobile Connectedness (review)

There is little doubt that networked technologies have enabled people to connect in new ways. From the earliest days of the internet, scholars have worked to make sense of online communities and how people leverage technology to engage in a vast array of everyday practices. In that tradition, Mary Chayko's Portable Communities seeks to explore "the social dynamics of online and mobile connectedness."

The primary contribution that Chayko tries to make concerns the framing of this historical trajectory. She introduces the phrase "portable communities" in opposition to Howard Rheingold's "virtual communities" to challenge assumptions embedded in the latter. Chayko argues that there is a tendency to view that which is virtual as "imaginary" and "not real" (although she does not take up an alternative reading: "not physical"). She rightly points out — and highlights throughout the book — that mediated connections are very much real. As such, she believes that labeling such communities as "virtual" sends a "damaging message."(10)

While her critique of "virtual" is well-taken, her choice of "portable communities" creates unnecessary confusion. She defines portable communities as "groups whose members connect via online and mobile technologies whether they meet face-to-face frequently, occasionally, or never."(8) The goal of such a move is to get away from frameworks that focus explicitly on the online component of connections or those that create an unnecessary dichotomy. Yet, both "communities" and "portable" send mixed signals. Although she introduces "communities" as collections of people and uses "portable communities" in this vein, she also employs "online communities" to refer to online spaces where people gather. Furthermore, because the term "portable" is typically used in relation to mobile devices, this word carries its own baggage.

It's also difficult to understand why portability is the most salient shift to highlight. Communities have never been wholly co-present and, as such, they've always been partially imagined. Taking the community with you is not as significant as being able to access it regardless of physical location. As such, mediating technologies (and especially mobile ones) erase the need to think of location when thinking of community, making portability seem like an odd choice as it is explicitly about location and movement. What Chayko may really be getting at is the emergence of ever-present communities thanks to mediating technologies.

Chayko also introduces the phrase "sociomental" in opposition to "virtual" to emphasize the imagined or cognitive construction of social exchanges. "Sociomental space is the cognitive analog to physical space. It is a kind of mental habitat where portable communities "gather" and where cyberspace can be said to be situated."(22) In laying out this argument, she focuses on the in-betweenness of mediated social life. She argues that technology alters people's sense of presence or togetherness, creating a cognitive connectedness that feels quite distinct.

With these conceptual frameworks in place, Chayko then turns to consider different dynamics of communities. She covers a broad terrain, providing a contemporary map of the central issues that commonly emerge when scholars examine life online: intimacy, connection and support; hanging out and playing; socializing, flirting and dating; privacy, control and availability; identity and self-expression; and inequality and power. The bulk of the book weaves together the perspectives of 87 informants, the public accounts of others through blogs and traditional media, and the voices of other scholars' informants as found in their publications. Chayko's informants are primarily American adults drawn from convenience and snowballing; her interviews are conducted online. Rather than using these different voices to anchor her own claims, Chayko primarily draws on others' words to shed light on, and highlight the contributions made by, previous scholars investigating mediated sociality. In essence, the voices are exemplary glue that help craft a contiguous story from the claims made about mediated interaction over the years.

While the voices Chayko use enrich the narrative, her choice to label her informants by what they do (e...