“Korea, China, and Japan share a traditionally collective (Hofstede), interdependent (Markus and Kitayama), and high-contextual (Hall) culture, as opposed to individual, independent, and low-contextual cultures, which are predominantly evident in the West. ”

“In individualistic cultures, the self remains the predominant focus of facework over others; therefore, the nature of facework is self-oriented in most communicative situations. Conversely, in collectivistic cultures, focus exists in duality: firstly to maintain one’s face as an appropriate member of the social network; and secondly, to save the faces of the significant others in a similar manner (Gudykunst and Matsumoto; Ting-Toomey and Kurogi). This particular aspect is manifested in many different customs of East Asia. In Chinese culture, this dual facework functions as one of the cardinal element of guanxi (关系), a central concept of social relation; in Japan, it is socially expected of a mature individual to have honne (本音) – true feelings that one is expected to keep inside only – and tatemae (建前) – socially expected face; in the case of Korea, nunchi (눈치) – ability to interpret others’ social cues – is an essential social component. What needs to be emphasised here is that the self that is constructed, sustained, and distributed via network technologies – the mobile phone provides a more immediate means than wired devices – is consequential to the user’s facework strategies.”

“By entering the mobile media network, the user automatically turns into an active node of the network society, a participant in transforming the ever-evolving media ecology of various strata. As Jenkins et al. assert, “it matters what tools are available to a culture, but it matters more what that culture chooses to do with those tools” (7). In studying transformations of contemporary society, there are at least three fundamental elements of consideration stemming from today’s prevalent and expanding mobile interactivity: mobility, playful participation, and techno-social contextualisation. The intersection of these elements is precisely where the fundamental sources of future socio-cultural transformations can be found, and therefore where rigorous inter-disciplinary explorations must take place.”