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Copyright of Družboslovne Razprave is the property of Druzboslovne Razprave and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We highlight the complex and multidirectional dynamics of transnational familyhood where flows of care involve multilateral negotiations of competing interests, aspirations, and subjectivities. Drawing on the findings from a mixed-method study among migrant-sending families in the Philippines , we explore how the discourses and practices of transnational parenting are negotiated and contested from the perspective of left-behind children and proximate non-parental carers. By attending to the way 'proxy' but proximate care in the homeland intersects with the long-distance care provided by migrant parents, we show how a 'hierarchy of care access' is facilitated by differential use of and access to ICTs. This creates disparities in the way care is received, given, and experienced. This not only reveals the mediating power of communication technologies in shaping care relationships and normative familial values that hold together the transnational family, but complicates binary understandings of proximity and distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines images circulated through mobile media to emphasise the emotion work invested into familial relationships that are defined by place. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Trinidad, the article contributes a cross-cultural perspective to literature in digital visual communication and digital media in family relationships that has typically focused on peer-to-peer relationships between youth or that has focused on nuclear households in predominantly Western contexts. The consequences of uses of digital media platforms are strongly intertwined with the category of relationship (mother and daughter, or couples for example), their cultural inflections, relationship hierarchies and the life-stages of individuals. Digital visual communication functions to navigate, maintain and acknowledge relationships that varies across different platforms. The more public uses of images over Facebook to the more private circulation of images over WhatsApp provide examples that illustrate positive aspects of intimacy through constant contact as well as ambivalent feelings of obligation to reciprocate communication compelled by the availability afforded by mobile media. This article advances the understanding of the relationship between emotions, intimacy and mobile media by revealing how norms, ideals and expectations of familyhood and digital practices that are often essentialised are context-driven and specific. • The digital circulation of images illustrate 'kinwork' and 'doing family' practices. • Increased communication can also result in ambivalence for family members. • Families collectively perpetuate and display ideals of correct relationships. • The conditions of polymedia facilitate family relationships to varying degrees. • Motivations and expectations for digital exchanges are highly culturally contextual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The VoIP and instant messaging platform Discord has seen immense user growth over the past few years, including among fans involved with transformative works. Analyzing Discord from a framework of polymedia and play provides new insights into what Discord affords these fans and how they navigate the platform as part of their fan practices. It shows how the platform has been adopted and adapted in ways that facilitate fan play and allow for play moods to be created, strengthened, or maintained. Discord provides a suitable playground for fans, because it allows fans to negotiate closed online spaces where they can play freely, without outside disruption. These spaces can be organized in ways that distinguish between play and nonplay and maintain fannish principles of warning and consent. In addition, Discord provides an extra dimension to the experience of taking part in fan fiction exchanges, creating a compelling, collective mood in servers that people can continually come back to. Positioning this within a broader network of platforms and affordances that fans navigate shows how Discord fulfills particular needs and niches, especially with regard to Not Safe For Work material. More generally, this study provides a framework for understanding the reciprocal and dynamic relationships between users, affordances, rules, and structures in contemporary platform society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Mens en Maatschappij is the property of Amsterdam University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

"Polymedia", a concept introduced by Madianou and Miller (2012), refers to the everyday conditions of abundant media resources. Whereas such conditions imply that the classificatory processes concerning media as cultural properties become increasingly complex, few studies have tried to produce a general picture of how interpersonal media practices are part of sociocultural reproduction. This study is based on a nationwide survey conducted in Sweden in 2012 and focuses on mediated communication among "polymedia couples" (39 percent of all Swedish couples). The article demonstrates that sociocultural factors are important for explaining media uses, also when media accessibility is more or less unlimited, and pinpoints how preferences for certain modalities of communication are linked to other lifestyle practices as markers of taste. Most notably, email communication attains a higher sociocultural status than online chat functions and social media, testifying to the enduring significance of asynchronous, text-based communication in a longer format as a culturally distinctive mode of intimate communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]