ABSTRACT
Contemporary debates in media studies recognise media abundance as a central characteristic of modern everyday life. In some cultures and cities more than in others, it has become diffi cult to imagine a variety of routines without media, from practical engagement like reading newspapers in a local deli or ‘tweeting’ about personal news online whilst in public transport to citing current media contents in everyday talk during a walk in the street, often interrupted by a mobile phone ringing. However, the stark contradiction between the claims quoted above demonstrates that behind the taken-for-granted fi gure of ‘media user’ in public space there is a subject which is, in fact, still profoundly unknown. In this chapter I provide a compendious interdisciplinary tour through some of the relevant conceptual landscape for a closer understanding of the urban media experience. Firstly, I seek to understand the particular ways in which the growing presence of screens visually reconfi gures urban sceneries. Secondly, I discuss how urban experience is, by consequence of mediation, implicated in being a member of media audiences and vice versa.
