As a field, mobile media and communication (MMC) has centrally been concerned with how people use mobile communication technology and the implications for human sociality, psychology, and culture. This article encourages us to think more deeply, and differently, about concepts and practices of mobile media and mobile communication by examining the uses and consequences of MMC among whales. By looking at MMC in the animal world, we gain a new vantage point for thinking about the core elements of mobility, media, and communication, and how they can come together to shape everyday life and survival. By looking beyond the Anthropocene, this more-than-human perspective offers conceptual enrichment for scholarship in the field, while using MMC as a lens for considering how humans (“culture”) and animals (“nature”) are entangled in meaningful ways (natureculture).

Mobile media decision-making is a mid-range, integrative theory that addresses the transformative role of mobile media in contemporary decision-making processes. Accordingly, mobile media augment human cognitive processes by being accessible to users as they move through and act in the world. Moreover, this theory accounts for the emergence of mobile autonomous systems that can move through and act in the world, in the absence of human cognition. As an analytical tool, this theory can be applied to understand specificities of how humans and nonhumans act, move, know, and produce agential change in the world. It can inform scholarship that explores social and material impacts, moral–ethical dimensions, and the design of mobile systems that augment and supplant human decision-making processes.

This article investigates the use of mobile menstruation tracking apps (MMTAs) and addresses pressing concerns about digital surveillance post-Roe vs. Wade. We examine these apps to identify the specific privacy concerns users should consider. We analyze 10 popular MMTAs using the walkthrough method. Our findings are grounded in material feminism and the rhetorics of reproductive justice. We conclude with informed suggestions for navigating these apps in the US given the dangerous reproductive health landscape.