Embodied Perceptions of Darkness: Multistable Experiences of Mobile Media in the Urban Night

This article considers some of the embodied ways mobile media have been deployed in the urban night. To date, this topic has not received much attention within the fields of mobile media or night studies. The research presented in this article draws on a qualitative research project conducted in Australia from 2016-2020. The project focussed on participants’ use of mobile media in urban spaces at night and conducted a specific analysis of pertinent gendered differences. Throughout my iterative and longitudinal research process, I engaged various phases of data collection to explore participants’ night-time mobile media practices, as well as to consider how darkness and the night impact networked practices in ways that speak to the postphenomenological concept of multistability. I highlight the empirical findings through a series of participant stories,exploring salient insights into embodied perceptions of darkness and various ways of co-optingmobile media practices in the urban night.