Mobile phones and the inexorable advance of multimodal connectedness

The aim of this article is to put mobile phones and uses of other new media into the broader context of cross-cultural comparison. The article focuses on two countries (Sweden and the USA) and on leisure and sociability. A problem with studies narrowly focusing on mobile phones is that the mobile’s uses cannot easily be separated from uses of other information and communication technologies (ICTs), as when ICTs compete for time spent or when key functions such as maintaining relationships are distributed across devices. Therefore the concept of multimodal connectedness is introduced to examine the whole range of ICTs. Once we can see how various technologies for maintaining relationships complement each other, we often find that convergences outweigh divergences between cultures. The implications for cross-cultural comparison are that we can distinguish between culture in an anthropological sense (that is, as a unique way of life) as against mediated culture, where there are increasingly common patterns of multimodally communicative relationships across cultures, even if differences also persist.