Welcome to the seminar ”Mobile media and everyday lives: Bridging Finland and Japan”!
TIME: Thursday December 3, 2015, 9.00 – 11.00 am
VENUE: Lecture room 15 , University of Helsinki main building, Fabianinkatu 33, Helsinki (no pre-registration needed)
ORGANIZER: Communication Research Centre CRC, University of Helsinki
CONTACT: Mikko Villi, mikko.villi[at]helsinki.fi
Finland and Japan have been leading bodies in deploying mobile technology in people’s everyday lives. This seminar will focus on a cross-cultural dialogue between mobile scholars from the two countries, exploring the most-up-to-date challenges and diverse approaches in mobile media research. Presentations will be given on recent issues in mobile media and technology research to offer participants practical ideas of undergoing questions, as well as to invite for further discussion. The goal of the seminar is to open up a more extensive conversation about the changing landscape of mobile practices and future prospects for mobile technology.
Presentations
• Yonnie Kyoung-hwa Kim – A reflexive approach towards mobile everyday practices in Japan
• Tomoyuki Okada – The rise and fall of Japanese ’smart’ mobile phones: Why are Japanese mobile-phone manufacturers defeated by Apple, Samsung and others?
• Heikki Kynäslahti and Sara Sintonen – The elements of mobility in everyday life
• Mikko Villi – Mobile media consumption and the digital transition in Finland and Japan
Speakers
• Yonnie Kyoung-hwa Kim is an assistant professor at Kanda University of International Studies, Chiba, Japan. Her present research interests include mobile media, technology history, mobile technology, and visual culture, performance, and practices of everyday life. She has worked for media companies both in South Korea and Japan for years before joining the academe, of which extensive experiences are outlined in her book Media in Social History (Seoul: Darun, 2013).
• Tomoyuki Okada is a visiting professor at the Department of Media at Aalto University and a professor of the Faculty of Informatics at Kansai University, Japan. He has been working on media studies and sociology of culture. His publications include Understanding Keitai Society: Mobile Communication and Society (as co-editor) and The EXPO What I Loved: Unofficial documents of EXPO 2005, Aichi, Japan (as co-editor), Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life (as contributor of a chapter).
• Adjunct professor, university lecturer Heikki Kynäslahti is the director of the Media Education Research Group at the Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki.
• Adjunct professor Sara Sintonen works as a university lecturer and researcher at the Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki. Her main interest is digital culture and media education, and their pedagogical, research-based development.
• Mikko Villi is the director of the Communication Research Centre CRC at the Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki. His work is focused on themes related to media management, journalism, photography, new communication technology and new forms of communication, concentrating on mobile, visual and social media.
Presentation slides
Seminar report by MGC student Irene Hau.