Mobile Storytelling in an Age of Smartphones

This opening chapter outlines the inspiration from the inaugural International Mobile Storytelling Congress and provides some background information about the emerging field of Mobile Studies. It places this edited collection into a historical contextualization and simultaneously reviews the mobile media festivals and literature that shaped this field. Mobile is connecting and synching people, places and mobilities. This chapter as much as the edited collection follows a network model; it operates as a node within various fields of scholarships and interconnects research in a transdisciplinary manner. Xu and Schleser have been passionate about exploring the opportunities and prospects for Mobile Studies since their first publications.