“Media is not simply a technical add-on or facilitator that delivers messages (content) from one place to another; on the contrary, it is one of the important determinants of the social fabric.”1
In this determination made by Harold A. Innis, the emphasis on "one of the determinants of the social fabric" is a very appropriate expression for communication technologies. Imagine you are in any public space. You will find that the vast majority of people in leisure time are interested in mobile phones, which can be considered as the flagship of mobile communication technologies. There may be many reasons for this, and it can be explained with many concepts and theoretical approaches. The subject I would like to focus on in this article is that individuals fill their free time with cinematic content through mobile communication tools.
Mobile is the Turkish word for 'mobile', which means portable, mobile, dynamic in English. In simple terms, mobile communication tools can be called tools2 that enable us to communicate wherever we want, without the need for any connection, and the most well-known examples are mobile phones, tablets, laptop computers, smart watches, e-book readers (such as kindle) and their derivatives. According to the data of the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK), there are 83 million 614 thousand 362 people living in Turkey today, and according to the Information Technologies Institute (BTK), the total number of mobile subscribers in Turkey in the first quarter of 2021 is 83 million 498 thousand 288. 66 million 347 thousand 319 people are mobile internet users.4
In his studies, Harold A. Innis states that societies are in struggle with the elements of 'time' and 'space'. In Innis' approach, the struggle of communication tools with these two elements is of critical importance for social fabric change. It can be said that mobile communication tools are successful in combating both elements. In this success, it is clear that in addition to the technical possibilities of stationary (non-mobile) tools, which we can call the previous 'preparers', individual 'digital borns' also act as accelerators in tissue change.
Considering the relationship between cinema or other audio-visual content and mobile communication tools, almost all video player environments (streaming platforms) that contain cinematic and audio-visual content designed for the web today have a mobile foot. To concisely, YouTube was created on the web in 2005, a mobile application was created in January 2007, Netflix, which has been providing media services since 1997, started to use the internet in 2007 and its mobile application was created in 2011, just like YouTube. Contrary to these two very familiar formations, some formations are born as mobile applications and then move to the web. In order to embody this situation, 'Gain' and 'Quibi' platforms can be given as examples. Gain5, which started broadcasting in January 2021, started to serve on the web in March of the same year.6
The critical point in the struggle of mobile communication technologies with time and space-related elements is mobile internet connection. Users can do whatever they want from anywhere as long as they have an internet connection. This situation is no different when it comes to the consumption of cinema and other audio-visual media content. At this point, it would be appropriate to include the concept of Over The Top (OTT, with an approximate translation) in the fight against space and time-dependent elements. OTT is a technology that allows users to consume the content they want, whenever they want. With this technology, the user can download any content to their device once with an internet connection and then consume that content wherever and whenever they want7. For example, users can download an album from Spotify, a series from Netflix, a video from YouTube to their device at a point where there is a Wi-fi connection, and then consume the downloaded content without an internet connection. Undoubtedly, OTT's greatest trademark is thinking wherever you want, whenever you want, on any device.
Innis may not have even dreamed of the technical possibilities we have today, but Innis saw the essential element of conflict, the situation that must be transcended: time and space.
Today, we have many platforms where we can consume audio-visual content with our mobile communication tools: Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vimeo, Cineshort, BluTV, PuhuTV… Individuals in free time can consume whatever content they want on all mentioned platforms. It should be accepted that this situation is a 'tissue change' situation. Moreover, even if we can trace its foundation back to the 1960s, it took us about 10 years to reach the current result.
