Mobile Media, Mobile Texts: Assessing the Abilities Needed to Communicate and Represent in the Contemporary Media Landscape

By examining contemporary changes in the mechanisms and practices of representation and communication, this paper focuses on the copy-and-paste affordance fostered by mobile technologies and digital technologies at large. Its widespread use is affecting radically (1) the acceptability standards of (in)coherent patterns of text production, and (2) the criteria defining successful communication, which coherent cooperation to a mutual understanding is sometimes less relevant than the transformation and reinterpretation of texts according to the sign-maker’s interests in participating to multiple communicative networks. In this light, by pinpointing the abilities required and developed in the use of mobile technologies, the paper hypothesizes possible paths for teaching in such a changed semiotic landscape.