132 Larissa Hjorth and Fumitoshi Kato
Such moblogs can be understood as a “place” for one’s face-work as part of
everyday life modes of presentation (Goffman 1967). The notion of face refers to
an image of self-delineation in terms of approved social attributes. Through the
process of taking and posting a photo, an individual attempts to understand his
or her personhood within an organizational setting. In posting a photo, a member
is constructing and maintaining the relationships with others. An individual’s
postings are not only displaying to other members what he or she has seen but
also, he or she is displaying about him- or herself and his or her understandings
about the relationships with other members.
From the standpoint of developing a qualitative research method, a camera
phone can be understood as a new “gear” for conducting field studies, because it
enables us to record and compile diverse standpoints as a set of photos. Especially,
it can capture a series of micro-moments embedded within an individual’s day-to-
day activities. Particularly, it enables researchers to collect and compile images
of the local community. Once selected and uploaded to social media, visual
images and sharing of them may enhance our awareness about the resources of
the community. Photos compiled can be examined in terms of understanding the
characteristics of the local community, and more interestingly, they lead us to
speculate upon multiple viewpoints of ourselves. Shared images may connect
people together, functioning as a “community builder” and thus adding to the
conversations and narratives in and around environment.
The relevance of mobile media to environmental concerns was particularly
highlighted by the experiences after 3/11 Earthquake in the Tohoku region of
Japan (Gil, Steger, and Slater 2013). The key role played by mobile media in the
context of this particular environmental disaster can be understood as a major
turning point in terms of recognizing the functions and capacities of mobile
communications. While phone lines were not functioning properly directly after
the Earthquake, Hjorth and Kim for instance discovered that social media—such
as twitter and Facebook—were very much “alive” and thus utilized to share
disaster information at hand (Hjorth and Kim 2011).
For example, it was reported that many people working in the Tohoku region
and central business district of Tokyo had to either give up going home or to walk
home while many of the public transportation systems were not working. The
term kitaku-nanmin (“returner refugees”) was coined and used to describe the
ones who had difficulties in getting back home. It was reported that on the very
day of the disaster, approximately 5.1 million people could not reach home. This
phenomenon amounts to about 28 per cent of the people who were outside their
home at the time of the disaster.
Of those who decided to walk home, they often shared information virtually
about ongoing changes in the status of trains and buses, changing their travel routes
accordingly. The event also demonstrated the strengths of the ties generated through
the use of social media via smartphones. Through this experience, many Japanese
citizens created new accounts on social media in order to be prepared for future
possible disaster situations. After the 3/11 incident, the “perpetual contact” (Katz and
Aakhus 2002) of mobile phone–facilitated social media became a key part in many