ABSTRACT
It was always the intention of this research to consider the example of extended separation represented by Filipino transnational parenting, not only to challenge our assumptions as to the nature of parenting, but also as a means to think more deeply about the consequences of new communication technologies. As it happens, this research aim has coincided with a radical and unprecedented transformation of media such that it is perhaps only in the past two or three years that we are finally reaching the situation we propose to term ‘polymedia’, which we would argue demands a very different kind of theorisation from that of earlier periods of communication. One trend in recent theories of new media has been the focus on the vertical dimension, investigating changes in media over time. A clear example would be the theory of remediation (Bolter and Grusin, 2000; see also Marvin, 1988), which is concerned with how one medium comes to influence the next. Our aim is to look at the more horizontal dimension, alongside recent work such as Baym (2010) and Gershon (2010), that is, how each medium finds a niche in relation to the properties of co-existing other media. In the previous chapter we examined in some detail the affordances and usage of each individual medium for long-distance communication. However, through our analysis it also became clear that few people would rely on only a single medium for communicating, while the trend was increasingly towards using, and choosing between, a plethora of different media. Therefore, although it is important to understand the functionalities of any particular medium, it is no longer possible to assume that its affordances might frame a long-distance relationship in a particular way. In order to understand the process of mediation, we need to look at the entire range of media as a communicative environment.
