ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some of the ways in which mobile media contributes to inscribing intimacy as part of new forms of affective practices, including sharing, witnessing, and attunement. In news media of late, it is often the mobile media images of public disasters or microcelebrities that create types of affective witnessing and digital intimate publics. As Hjorth and Michael Arnold have argued, through a revised concept of intimate publics we can understand the competing identities and practices of mobile media that reflect localized and regional histories. So too for Reading, mobile media image sharing transforms how we experience, share, and represent events of emotional significance in our lives during disasters. One of the consequences of the participation of mobile media practices in embodiment processes is that the new habits, disciplines, and skills overflow the previous frames that contained our volatile bodies.
