World attending in interaction: Multitasking, spatializing, narrativizing with mobile devices and Tinder. (September 2015) - Cohen, Leor
Abstract: Studies of new mobilities have emphasized changes in spatialization processes affecting conditions for conversational interaction. Conversations from four Ethiopian-Israeli male teens walking in a northern, peripheral Israeli city to and from pickup games (soccer/football, basketball) at public parks are analyzed. The data selected below all involve talk whilst using a social networking application called Tinder. Analyses follow a narrative practices approach (De Fina and Georgakopoulou, 2008, 2011 ), particularly that of small stories (Georgakopoulou, 2007 ). These teens are found to be world attending (a subtype of breaking-news stories) in voicing their noticings of the perceptible surroundings amidst pursuit of individual local interactional projects, i.e. a one-upmanship often exploitive of narrative practices of projections, i.e., unrealized possibilities, the irrealis . The introduction of mobile devices into conversational interactional space provides an added/resource of potential items (referents) to be attended to and thus creates a continued state of incipient multitasking across offline and online spaces. Highlights: Mobile devices embedded in conversational interaction blur online–offline spaces. The blurring of spaces co-occurs with an incipient state of continued multitasking. Many activities in play at any one moment challenge participants. World attending, i.e., noticing, of online–offline spaces is a recurrent practice. World attendings, a type of breaking news story, co-occur with projections.