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3. New Media, their materiality, and their contribution to social spaces: between potential and local conditions
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117 3 New Media, their materiality, and their contribution to social spaces: between potential and local conditions As I have tried to show in the previous chapter, societal imaginaries and the perception of space are closely interlinked with practices of the appropriation of physical space, such as practices of physical mobility as migration movements, and virtual mobility as the use of time and space transcending the media of communication and information. In this sense, spaces are according to Bourdieu (1977) frameworks for social practices, but also places for social integration, socialization and reproduction of society, social hierarchies and power relations. The appropriation of physical space is in its topology a reflection and representation of the social space: it is visible, in our example, in the urban topography of New Media – cyber cafés, and mobile phone and computer related businesses. In this chapter, I intend to approach notions and imaginaries of “modernity” related to their material representations, and the respective characteristics of this materiality in the locality. New Media practices are spatial practices, and they contribute to the constitution of local “social spaces”. Such social spaces related to New media are adopted - not only - but in particular by youth, where they display lifestyles and “youth culture”, practices, which point to negotiations on youth’s position in society and their adoption of new coping strategies to overcome feelings of immobility and disconnection (Jua 2003, Burrell 2009). In such ways, New Media spaces are related and oriented to imaginaries and imageries of “faraway places” and potentialities. Furthermore, these spaces are social places where people interact on a face-to-face level and under specific local conditions. Thus, online and offline, mediated and face-to-face, but also public and private spheres intermingle in interesting ways. I will thus explore the contributions of liveness as a potential, in practices of media use and their framing by local conditions. This chapter refers to the second guiding question, which is related to how practices of New Media use impact on a local level, and consequently, how local and translocal sociality intersect. In this sense, New Media technologies contribute to 118 people’s “sense of place”. The data on which this chapter is based has been collected throughout my different stays in Bamenda162 . The materialization of cyber cafés and computer technology in the setting When talking about the phenomenological qualities of places, practices of imaginations and the constitution of social spaces, we should not forget about the material endowments of places. As Larkin (2008:147) expresses, cities and urban space are produced through infrastructures: “(…) shipping, trains, fibre optic lines, warehouses, all exchange is based on such infrastructure. Space gets produced and networked. Infrastructure is the structural condition of the movement of commodities of whatever kind. New electronic communication has intensified these processes”. As a part of urban infrastructure, a very important characteristic of a city is the availability and accessibility of media technologies163 . Media differentiate in their materiality, and how they are perceived by media users regarding their materiality, technology, organization, and cognitive experience. Experiences of New Media are further shaped by the conventions, plus cultural and social modes of their use: shifts may take different forms due to historical developments of media use and practices of socializing. How these media influence social activities and cultural productions depends on how media are embedded into everyday life and practices in the local context. Thereby, according to Emirbayer & Mische (1998:1004), “The agentic orientations of actors (…) may vary in dialogue with the different situational contexts to which (and by means of which) they respond”. It relates to the actors’ dealing with unfolding temporal-relational conditions as contexts for social action, which are set up in mutual interdependencies between agents and structure. In the next two subchapters, I will shed light on New Media technologies’ material 162 I have concentrated especially on youth social spaces during my stay in 2010/11. 163 See figures F3.1, and F3.2, maps and overviews of computer and mobile phone related businesses, as well as public cyber cafés in Bamenda. [3.141.244.201] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 22:56 GMT) 119 features and their peculiarities, and the consequent influence on social and symbolic practices of their use as material objects164 . Computer technologies and internet are spatially bound – which, unlike mobile phones, are not personal and mobile devices165 . Apart from examining the materiality of internet technology in public cyber cafés, I will also relate to the use of...