Mood and Mobility

<b>An argument that as we engage with social media on our digital devices we receive modify intensify and transmit moods.</b> <p/>We are active with our mobile devices; we play games watch films listen to music check social media and tap screens and keyboards while we are on the move. In<i> Mood and Mobility</i> Richard Coyne argues that not only do we communicate process information and entertain ourselves through devices and social media; we also receive modify intensify and transmit moods. Designers practitioners educators researchers and users should pay more attention to the moods created around our smartphones tablets and laptops. <p/>Drawing on research from a range of disciplines including experimental psychology phenomenology cultural theory and architecture Coyne shows that users of social media are not simply passive receivers of moods; they are complicit in making moods. Devoting each chapter to a particular mood--from curiosity and pleasure to anxiety and melancholy--Coyne shows that devices and technologies do affect people's moods although not always directly. He shows that mood effects are transitional; different moods suit different occasions and derive character from emotional shifts. Furthermore moods are active; we enlist all the resources of human sociability to create moods. And finally the discourse about mood is deeply reflexive; in a kind of meta-moodiness we talk about our moods and have feelings about them. Mood in Coyne's distinctive telling provides a new way to look at the ever-changing world of ubiquitous digital technologies.