Larissa Hjorth

RMIT University | RMIT · School of Media and Communication

Increasingly, growing older is something we do alongside technologies. Often, through mobile media, our everyday practices of informal caring are being digitally mediated and mediatised. From apps such as Whatsapp to iOS Health, how digital technology is used to provide informal care in later life is poorly understood. Care operates intergeneration...

Pets, companion animals, and “more-than-human” kin play important roles in people’s lives. Animals are familiar and familial—they are often integral family members and can help create communities beyond the family unit. People rely on their pets for emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. More recently, research into the role of animals in t...

Information and communication technology (ICT) competency is crucial for older consumers’ overall well-being. However, mastering ICT can be challenging for older consumers who face cognitive, emotional, and attitudinal barriers. A potential approach for supporting ICT learning behaviour among this aging segment is peer learning. This study draws on...

The ability of older adults to engage with information and communication technologies (ICT) is crucial in today’s more digital and connected world. Anxiety about and failure to adopt and engage with ICT is increasingly likely to be a barrier in daily living for older adults, potentially reducing their freedom as consumers, quality of life, independ...

During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns (2020-2021), almost all facets of life were rendered digital – health, work, schooling, and logistics. In this phenomenon, not only did digital access become synonymous with social inclusion but inequalities were also amplified – particularly in the case of older adults (65 years and over). Contemporary older...

This article explores the self-presentation strategies of young Japanese people (aged 19–21) on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a specific focus on their creative resistance to social constraints. Drawing from ethnographic investigations conducted with Japanese college students, we delve into the creative practices undertaken by the...

Cities have long been key sites for play. Play scholars, urban theorists, designers, and creative practitioners have explored and discussed the important role of city play and urban playgrounds. As organized locations of play, playgrounds stand as an important role in representing cultural and social mores, reflecting the relational, political, and...

This edited collection brings in multiple scholarly perspectives to examine the impact of the pandemic and resulting government policies, especially lockdowns, on one particular cultural sphere: games. The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted virtually every aspect of our lives, regardless of where we live. In the initial months, many industry reports no...

Cities are complex spaces of contesting infrastructures, media, humans and more-than-human interactions. They are places that house multiple visible and invisible cartographies that draw on multisensorial ways of being in the world. In the city, our senses are amplified and intensified in ways that reorient our processes of worlding. Cities have, m...

Purpose This study aims to address the existing gap in co-design frameworks by introducing the EMPOWER framework, a strength-based co-design methodological approach specifically designed to tackle the key empowerment challenges associated with co-designing alongside individuals experiencing vulnerability. The purpose of this study is to provide a s...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, one technology for contact tracing has come to dominate – QR codes. As a technology pioneered in Japan two decades ago and mainstreamed in China, QR codes have quickly become part of quotidian placemaking. While locations such as China have fully incorporated QR code technology into everyday contexts including public t...

Failure is a popular topic of research. It has long been a source of study in !ields such as sociology and anthropology, science and technology studies, privacy and surveillance, cultural, feminist and media studies, art, theatre, !lm, and political science. When things go awry, breakdown, or rupture they lead to valuable insights into the mundane...

The COVID-19 pandemic saw the digital amplify all aspects of our lives—work, sociality, health, intimacy, care, and inequality. In a time of restrictions and physical distancing, the role of the digital for social inclusion—especially for older adults—was heightened with many having to care at a distance. Our study focuses on older adults from Wuha...

As digital inclusion becomes a growing indicator of wellbeing in later life, the ability to understand older adults’ preferences for information and communication technologies (ICTs) and develop strategies to support their digital literacy is critical. The barriers older adults face include their perceived ICT risks and capacity to learn. Complexit...

The pandemic restrictions and lockdowns have seen working from home (WFH) becoming a mundane practice. During the lockdowns, all movement were situated in the rhythms of the domestic and its infinite regresses of 'presence bleed' (Gregg [2011]. Work’s Intimacy. London: Polity.) – informal care of older parents and young children, the gendered natur...

In mid-2016, the streets of cities around the world were populated by digital wayfarers taking part in the augmented reality (AR) game, Pokémon GO. The game popularized the digital overlay technique of AR, in which real-time pedestrian movement is integrated with mobile location-based functionality and network information. In the years that followe...

This digital booklet aims to support older Australians with strategies to increase your digital confidence to connect, as well as assist organisations working with seniors and policy-makers to help reduce the digital divide. We want to help older adults to increase their digital confidence by addressing perceived risks experienced when engaging wit...

This paper takes a design anthropology approach to understanding the learnings, challenges and opportunities Victorians adopted to choreograph practices of care in and through media practice during and after the Australian 2019–2020 bushfire crisis. In doing so, we frame our inquiry from a perspective of how individuals and communities care through...

In this chapter, we seek to conceptualize the shifts in mobile gaming through two key rubrics – ambient play and digital wayfaring—to coalesce the multiple forms of domestic, casual and urban play that constitute mobile gaming. This chapter begins with a contextualization through a short history followed by a discussion of pervasive games as vehicl...

This study explores scenarios of use concerning the play practices of children on mobile devices, and the subsequent domestic tensions that arise out of such practices. In the domestic media landscape, mobile media has increasingly featured in the contested and contradictory practices of the home [Morley (Home territories: Media, mobility and ident...

The wellbeing of higher degree research (HDR) students, or postgraduate students during the COVID-19 pandemic has been of concern. In Australia, international students have queued for food parcels, while headlines report stark drops in international enrolments and the financial bottom line of universities. We undertook a pilot study using ethnograp...

The wellbeing of higher degree research (HDR) students, or postgraduate students during the COVID-19 pandemic has been of concern. In Australia, international students have queued for food parcels, while headlines report stark drops in international enrolments and the financial bottom line of universities. We undertook a pilot study using ethnograp...

Over the past two decades, location-based games have moved from media art fringes to the mass cultural mainstream. Through their locative affordances, these game types enable practices of wayfaring and placemaking, with the capacity to deliver powerful tacit knowledge. These affordances suggest the potential for the development of location-based ga...

Popular media and policy discussions of digital health for supporting older people in the ‘super-aged’ context of Japan often focus on novel technologies in development, such as service robots, AI devices or automated vehicles. Very little research exists on how Japanese people are engaging with these technologies for self-care or the care of other...

Increasingly, mobile media play a crucial role in how we make sense of life, death and afterlife. In times of disaster and trauma, mobile media are on hand as a vehicle for witnessing and companionship in which memories of dead and living are entangled. Mobile media help with continuity bonds – sometimes through perceived connections with the decea...

Workplace diversity and inclusion are recognised as integral to the internal and public-facing success of organizations. The games industry worldwide has been notably slow to embrace reforms to bring diverse work cultures into practice. Not only does the industry rank very low in the diversity of its corporate profile but a series of high-profile c...

Solid-state drives, Bluetooth capabilities, smartphones, “the cloud,” social media platforms, and other digital technologies have fundamentally altered how we share and store digital materials. This article sets an agenda for understanding how people manage the proliferation of digital material in their everyday lives through a close examination of...

In this article we explore preliminary findings from the study COVIDSafe and Beyond: Perceptions and Practices conducted in Australia in 2020. The study involved a survey followed by interviews, and aimed to capture the dynamic ways in which members of the Australian public perceive the impact of Covid practices – especially public health measures...

This rapid research brief synthesises the evidence on whether COVID-19 has had an impact on public sentiment in relation to privacy and the widespread use of data and technology by the government in responding to the public health crisis, be it through tracing, compliance, or enforcement.

Researching everyday media practices is a messy and tricky business fraught with uncertainty. In this panel the authors ask how stories of failure, especially during fieldwork, can be rethought as a meaningful emergent method and approach. How can we productively reframe failure as a core part of the research process that cannot be subsumed into th...

In this paper we explore how smartphone users in Victoria (Australia) used mobile and non-mobile media to find and manage information, emotions and networks during the 2019-2020 Australian summer bushfire crisis. Through arts-based methods that deployed drawing, critical reflection and group discussion, we sought to use techniques that elicit the e...

How mobile games are part of our day-to-day lives and the ways we interact across digital, material, and social landscapes. We often play games on our mobile devices when we have some time to kill—waiting in line, pausing between tasks, stuck on a bus. We play in solitude or in company, alone in a bedroom or with others in the family room. In Ambie...

How are intergenerational relationships playing out in and through the digital rhythms of the household? Through extensive fieldwork in Tokyo, Shanghai and Melbourne, this book ethnographically explores how households are being understood, articulated and defined by digital media practices. It investigates the rise of self-tracking, quantified self...

How are intergenerational relationships playing out in and through the digital rhythms of the household? Through extensive fieldwork in Tokyo, Shanghai and Melbourne, this book ethnographically explores how households are being understood, articulated and defined by digital media practices. It investigates the rise of self-tracking, quantified self...

How are intergenerational relationships playing out in and through the digital rhythms of the household? Through extensive fieldwork in Tokyo, Shanghai and Melbourne, this book ethnographically explores how households are being understood, articulated and defined by digital media practices. It investigates the rise of self-tracking, quantified self...

How are intergenerational relationships playing out in and through the digital rhythms of the household? Through extensive fieldwork in Tokyo, Shanghai and Melbourne, this book ethnographically explores how households are being understood, articulated and defined by digital media practices. It investigates the rise of self-tracking, quantified self...

How are intergenerational relationships playing out in and through the digital rhythms of the household? Through extensive fieldwork in Tokyo, Shanghai and Melbourne, this book ethnographically explores how households are being understood, articulated and defined by digital media practices. It investigates the rise of self-tracking, quantified self...

How are intergenerational relationships playing out in and through the digital rhythms of the household? Through extensive fieldwork in Tokyo, Shanghai and Melbourne, this book ethnographically explores how households are being understood, articulated and defined by digital media practices. It investigates the rise of self-tracking, quantified self...

How are intergenerational relationships playing out in and through the digital rhythms of the household? Through extensive fieldwork in Tokyo, Shanghai and Melbourne, this book ethnographically explores how households are being understood, articulated and defined by digital media practices. It investigates the rise of self-tracking, quantified self...

How are intergenerational relationships playing out in and through the digital rhythms of the household? Through extensive fieldwork in Tokyo, Shanghai and Melbourne, this book ethnographically explores how households are being understood, articulated and defined by digital media practices. It investigates the rise of self-tracking, quantified self...

How are intergenerational relationships playing out in and through the digital rhythms of the household? Through extensive fieldwork in Tokyo, Shanghai and Melbourne, this book ethnographically explores how households are being understood, articulated and defined by digital media practices. It investigates the rise of self-tracking, quantified self...

How are intergenerational relationships playing out in and through the digital rhythms of the household? Through extensive fieldwork in Tokyo, Shanghai and Melbourne, this book ethnographically explores how households are being understood, articulated and defined by digital media practices. It investigates the rise of self-tracking, quantified self...

How are intergenerational relationships playing out in and through the digital rhythms of the household? Through extensive fieldwork in Tokyo, Shanghai and Melbourne, this book ethnographically explores how households are being understood, articulated and defined by digital media practices. It investigates the rise of self-tracking, quantified self...

Imagine yourself wherever you were 20 years ago, and that an entrepreneurial, fresh-faced, and friendly young newsboy comes to your doorstep. He asks you to subscribe to the local paper. There is no cost to this subscription, he says, but, in exchange for community news, the boy must be allowed to come into your house and look at all of your photos...

“Minecraft is undoubtedly one of the most influential games of the past decade. Exploring Minecraft brilliantly situates this multiplatform and multisensory game within today’s pervasive play culture, focusing on its role in players’ everyday lives across domestic and educational spaces, and across cultural and generational contexts. In times of so...

In this chapter we explore the multiple and complex ways in which Minecraft occupies domestic spaces. Through ethnographic research conducted in Australian households we articulate how the game is played in the home as a vehicle for intergenerational literacy and intimacy. In this chapter we explore the multiple and complex ways in which Minecraft...

This chapter provides an overview of the book’s key themes—social play, informal creative literacies and quotidian platformativity. We reflect on what it means to take Minecraft seriously as a cultural phenomenon.

This chapter turns the focus to Understanding Play—that is, providing a more focused and detailed investigation of playful, creative, informal and incidental literacies—and identifies both the interdisciplinary and innovative methodological approaches that are used to analyse and interpret playful literacy practices. We suggest that Minecraft has b...

In this chapter, we explore the creative metagaming and paratextual play practices that surround Minecraft, apprehending the many ways that the game encourages and enables sociality and informal literacies beyond the core gameplay. The terms metagaming and paratextuality describe the way players engage outside the boundaries of the primary game, un...

We then conclude with this chapter which serves as an overview of key themes and insights to be gained from the book, and investigates some of the broader issues for the future of social play, informal creative literacies and quotidian platformativity. We reflect on the recalibration of the digital in light of COVID-19 and social distancing. As we...

This chapter begins with a critical discussion of nascent playful and creative practices within contemporary media culture and reviews the scholarly literature across relevant disciplines (including game studies, media studies, education, visual culture and digital/haptic ethnography). The chapter then identifies diverse modalities of play, includi...

This chapter focuses on Minecraft’s core gameplay and provides a critical exploration of the game’s diverse affordances. Framed around insights gained from our ethnographic research, we examine how the design of the game offers a range of different ways to play. These include: the expressive and inventive power of creative mode, the interactive cha...

In Chap. 7, we turn from the home to consider how the use of Minecraft is being deployed in institutional contexts, including school classrooms, extra-curricular workshops, libraries and museums. In this chapter we draw from workshops and interviews conducted in Victoria (Australia). This context is important as it is the largest educational jurisd...

Digital location—or geolocation—is a fixture of digital platforms and economies, figuring as an organizational logic for content and user experience (e.g., map-based interfaces), native technical affordance (e.g., locational functionalities of GPS-enabled smartphones), and core enabling agent behind the rise of ‘disruptive’ platform enterprises (e....

This article examines the use of Let’s Play (LP) in Manila, Philippines. LP is an emerging genre in which players record, narrate, and broadcast video game play online. While in Western contexts LP is predominantly viewed in domestic settings, our focus is on the distinct manner in which LP is viewed in the Philippines, resulting in unique social a...

Creative Practice Ethnographies focuses on the intersection of creative practice and ethnography and offers new ways to think about the methods, practice, and promise of research in contemporary interdisciplinary contexts. How does creative practice inform new ways of doing ethnography and vice versa? What new forms of expression and engagement are...

Creative Practice Ethnographies focuses on the intersection of creative practice and ethnography and offers new ways to think about the methods, practice, and promise of research in contemporary interdisciplinary contexts. How does creative practice inform new ways of doing ethnography and vice versa? What new forms of expression and engagement are...

Creative Practice Ethnographies focuses on the intersection of creative practice and ethnography and offers new ways to think about the methods, practice, and promise of research in contemporary interdisciplinary contexts. How does creative practice inform new ways of doing ethnography and vice versa? What new forms of expression and engagement are...

Creative Practice Ethnographies focuses on the intersection of creative practice and ethnography and offers new ways to think about the methods, practice, and promise of research in contemporary interdisciplinary contexts. How does creative practice inform new ways of doing ethnography and vice versa? What new forms of expression and engagement are...

Creative Practice Ethnographies focuses on the intersection of creative practice and ethnography and offers new ways to think about the methods, practice, and promise of research in contemporary interdisciplinary contexts. How does creative practice inform new ways of doing ethnography and vice versa? What new forms of expression and engagement are...

Creative Practice Ethnographies focuses on the intersection of creative practice and ethnography and offers new ways to think about the methods, practice, and promise of research in contemporary interdisciplinary contexts. How does creative practice inform new ways of doing ethnography and vice versa? What new forms of expression and engagement are...

Creative Practice Ethnographies focuses on the intersection of creative practice and ethnography and offers new ways to think about the methods, practice, and promise of research in contemporary interdisciplinary contexts. How does creative practice inform new ways of doing ethnography and vice versa? What new forms of expression and engagement are...

Creative Practice Ethnographies focuses on the intersection of creative practice and ethnography and offers new ways to think about the methods, practice, and promise of research in contemporary interdisciplinary contexts. How does creative practice inform new ways of doing ethnography and vice versa? What new forms of expression and engagement are...

Mobile and social media have progressively become vessels for manifesting death and dying in our everyday lives. This article investigates the visual nature of social mobile media as “affective witnessing” by analyzing mobile media use during the 12th June 2016 Orlando Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando Florida (USA). How mobile media serve as wit...

In the sinking of the South Korean MV Sewol boat on 16 April 2014 (known as “Sewol”), mobile phones functioned across multiple forms of haunting—individual, collective, social, and cultural. These hauntings were intimate as they were public. They became repositories for damning camera phone footage taken by the now deceased of procedures gone wrong...

From disasters to celebrations, camera phone practices play a key role in the abundance of shared images globally (Frosh 2015; Hjorth and Hendry 2015; Hjorth and Burgess 2014; Van House et al. 2005). Photography has always had a complicated relationship with death. This paper focuses on how mobile devices, through the broadcasting of troubling mate...

This chapter examines how digital media practices, relating to care and intimacy (the ‘intimate surveillance’), are being played out in the daily lives of intergenerational and cross-cultural families in Melbourne, Australia. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Melbourne with thirteen households in 2015–2016, it considers how ‘doing famil...

Introduction Jessica Chan is 19 years old and lives in the outer suburbs of Melbourne with her mother and father. She is first generation Australian, her Singaporean Chinese mother and her Malaysian Chinese father immigrated to Australia in 1989. She is baking vegetarian curry puffs, while her mother Nancy is stir-frying some chicken for their rela...

Are information and communication technologies (ICTs) connecting families? And what does this mean in terms of family routines, relationships, norms, work, intimacy and privacy? This book takes a life course and generational perspective covering theory, including posthumanism and strong structuration theory, and methodology, including digital and c...

Mobile media has become a crucial part of everyday storytelling. As we move through our daily rhythms and rituals, mobile media weave multiple cartographies—visual, social, spatial and temporal. Far from placeless, the history of mobile media has been one in which the important stories of place and locality are reinforced. By contextualising story-...

In the emerging scholarship on live-streaming sites, the role of gender has been relatively overlooked. This article aims to address this oversight by capturing the controversial rise of nüzhubo (Chinese for ‘female casters’) in the Chinese live-streaming platform, Douyu. Through ethnographic research on Douyu over 2 years, we have witnessed female...

In this article, we explore the material, sensory and corporeal aspects of digital ethnography, primarily in the context of mobile media use in the domestic environment. We align our methodological approach to the ‘sensory turn’ in theory, situated loosely under the rubric of new materialism, and outline the insights that a post-phenomenological me...

When we first entered homes to study mobile games and home automation, we envisaged our projects would focus on humans and various modes of interaction and co-presence. Yet as our research progressed, it became clear that in many homes, humans and their pets are intimately entangled in various forms of digitally mediated kinship. In this chapter we...

From natural disasters to private funerals, digital media are playing a central role in the documentation and commemoration of shared significant events and individual loss experiences. Yet few studies have fully engaged with the increasing role mobile media play in making meanings related to traumatic events across different individual and collect...

In this article, we advance current discussions by bringing together debates about digital play and digital labour. We consider everyday life entanglements of mobile media and digital work and play at home. To develop this argument, we analyse the embodied and affective dimensions of mundane everyday life at home with digital media through the conc...

This is the editor’s introduction for the Special Issue on digital creativity, play and labour in everyday life (SIDigiplay).

Self-monitoring offers benefits in facilitating awareness about physical exercise, but such data-centric activity may not always lead to an enjoyable experience. We introduce EdiPulse a novel system that creates activity treats to offer playful reflections on everyday physical activity through the appealing medium of chocolate. EdiPulse translates...