Apps. Gerard Goggin

      Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

      Polity Press

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      Medford, MA 02155, USA

      All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

      ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3848-5

      ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3849-2 (pb)

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Goggin, Gerard, 1964- author.

      Title: Apps : from mobile phones to digital lives / Gerard Goggin.

      Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA, USA : Polity, 2021. | Series: Digital media and society series | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “A trailblazing study of one of the most ubiquitous modern technologies”-- Provided by publisher.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2020054803 (print) | LCCN 2020054804 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509538485 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509538492 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509538508 (epub)

      Subjects: LCSH: Mobile computing--Social aspects. | Application software--Social aspects. | Smartphones--Social aspects. | Digital media.

      Classification: LCC HM851 .G6448 2021 (print) | LCC HM851 (ebook) | DDC 302.23/1--dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020054803

      LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020054804

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Tables

      3.1 Top 10 apps of the 2010s, worldwide, by downloads and spend

      3.2 Top 10 apps worldwide, by downloads, 2015 and 2020

      3.3 Top 10 apps worldwide, by revenue, 2015 and 2020

      3.4 Top 20 digital platform companies by market capitalization, 2020

      3.5 Top 10 Android app stores in China, by monthly average users, 2020

      5.1 Top 10 grossing dating apps worldwide by overall revenue, 2020

      5.2 Top 9 dating apps in China, 2020

Acknowledgments

      In this book I bring together ideas that I have garnered and mused upon since at least 2007–2008. That was the time when the smartphone took off, and subsequently apps have proliferated, spread, and become implacably installed at the center of contemporary digital infrastructures, which in turn now underpin many societies globally.

      I am grateful for the rich body of work on mobile communication and media and for many conversations, exchanges, and critiques I have been fortunate to have from friends and colleagues in this field, which has come into existence in the early 00s. This book functions as the third volume in a series and takes up many of the concepts, technologies, and ideas I explored in Cell Phone Culture in 2006 and Global Mobile Media in 2011.

      My thanks to Cherry Baylosis, Xu Wei Wei (apps in China), and Punit Jagasia (apps in India) for their research assistance. I am especially grateful to Rosemary Curtis for her peerless research advice and for the preparation and proofing of the manuscript.

      I would like to acknowledge the support of the University of Sydney, especially through a Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and DVC Research Compact Funding award for the project titled “Emerging Social Technology.” Earlier funding from the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC) for the research workshop “Social and Mobile Media in Southeast Asia” (co-convened with Lim Sun Sun) proved germinal, and I am grateful to its director, Professor Michele Ford, for this award.

The book was written after I took up a position at the superb Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. In a practical and government-of-the-self sense, the COVID-19 circuit breaker left me no option but to finish the book. The angle afforded by Singapore, an entrepôt and a global crossroads, has proved enormously helpful. My thanks to various colleagues, especially Rich Ling, and to the thoughtful and engaged students in my courses, “Global Media Issues and Policy” and “Digital Media Governance,” for many informative conversations.

      It has been a pleasure to publish my first book with Polity. Sincere thanks to Mary Savigar for giving me the idea in the first place, for inviting me to consider it, for providing feedback, and for commissioning the project. I owe Ellen McDonald-Kramer a special debt of gratitude for her unstinting support and thoughtful advice through the process. Thanks to the reviewers for their helpful feedback.

      Finally, thanks to my family, Bianca, Liam, and Jacqui, for their love, support, and interest especially during the close-quarter circuit breaker period of the COVID pandemic.

      Gerard Goggin

      Wee Kim Wee School of Information and Communication

      Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

March 2021

chapter one Introduction

      On Saturday, June 20, 2020, US President Donald Trump was looking forward to a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which he had been widely publicizing via his Twitter account. Only a disappointing 6,200 supporters turned up, leaving many empty seats conspicuously vacant in a stadium with a capacity of 19,000. The shortfall was credited to a prank by TikTok users and K-pop fans, who apparently booked half a million tickets for the rally, causing rally organizers to wildly overestimate attendance (Andrews, 2020). While the exact nature of this digital activism success is tricky to pin down (Madison & Klang, 2020), there’s no doubt that this was an important moment of worldwide recognition of the influence of an app.

From mundane, everyday videos of teens idling and improvising, TikTok quickly established itself as major force in popular culture, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, gaining a reputation for its signature abbreviated, hilarious, and whip-smart videos. Like YouTube before it, TikTok gained a following across many countries. Rajiv Rao, contributor to the Indian tech blog ZDNet, sung its praises: “TikTok introduced India to everyday stars from small towns and villages, and across genders, classes, and castes” (Rao, 2020). TikTok’s vibrant base of users provided a platform to social activism, a high-water mark being the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, which exceeded 12 billion views in mid-2020, before the prank on Trump’s Tulsa event. Along the way, TikTok has been embroiled in considerable debate on its conservative and narrow norms of gender, race, class, and money—and hence on its contradictory role in reproducing and potentially supporting challenges to inequality and injustice (Kennedy, 2020).