The transition to visual mobile communication is evident in the screens of mobile phones, which have transformed from small black-and-white displays portraying numbers and letter into big, phone-sized, colourful, high-resolution displays. This is in striking contrast to the fact that only a few decades ago a telephone did not include a screen of any kind.
In this doctoral thesis, visual mobile communication is situated specifically in camera phone photography and photo messaging. The main research question focuses on how the conventions of mobile phone communication are manifested in interpersonal photographic communication when using camera phones. Photo messaging in examined by using framework consisting of two themes: ritual communication and mediated presence. In addition to a theoretically oriented analysis, the study utilizes results from an empirical case study with Finnish camera phone users.