Mobile Networked Creativity: Developing a theoretical framework for understanding creativity as survival
Mobile networked creativity is an emergent practice that arises from the ongoing relationships among people and people with technologies—or networked resources. In this paper, we propose a concept of creativity as emerging from serendipity and mobility. We focus on how unplanned or emergent uses of digital technologies reveal how creative practices emerge, particularly in the context of mobile phone use where people are also physically mobile and yet connected via the internet. This concept of creativity as a constant process of becoming is a “recursive organization” that can be seen in groups such as migrants, or people living in disenfranchised communities that survive in make-shift locations such refugee camps or slums. Contrary to the affluent and capitalistic-embedded traditional ideas of creativity, mobile networked creativity is a practice that is most often found in situations of economic hardship, power imbalances, and immobilities.