Spatial Stories with Nomadic Narrators: Affect, Snapchat, and Feeling Embodiment in Youth Mobile Composing

Abstract

While the vast majority of scholarship on mobile media, social semiotics, and multimodality highlights work done behind the screen, few studies have considered the embodied processes of youth composing with and through mobile technology. This study, drawn from a larger critical qualitative connective ethnography, works to fill a paucity of literature by examining how one youth participant, Ben, uses the digital mobile application Snapchat to create and compose a myriad of phenomenological experiences. By partnering approaches from queer phenomenology and multimodal (inter)action analysis, this paper illuminates how the affective intensities and push-and-pull of orientations deliver a narrative that is enfolded by several felt moments. By illuminating the rich processes of embodied composing with mobile media and accounting for the spatio-temporal scales and traversals that Ben navigates to architect his experience, this article works to spotlight how youth composers tell spatial stories and map nomadic narratives to explore their own embodied experiences with and through mobile media.

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