Cosmopolitan Sonic Intimacies: Listening as Civic Infrastructure in Diasporic Mobile Media

Mobile media scholarship has extensively theorised textual and visual intimacies, yet sound remains underexamined as a modality through which migrants sustain transnational belonging. This article develops an account of sonic intimacy —forms of connection mediated through voice, music, and acoustic atmosphere via mobile platforms—and argues that recurrent listening practices operate as civic infrastructure in diasporic life. It builds on Malcolm James's analysis of sonic intimacy in Black British diasporic sound cultures and extends Pertierra's concept of discursive intimacy, situating both within mobile sound and mobile messaging research. Drawing on sonic ethnographic research with Sri Lankan migrant communities in Melbourne, including 30 interviews, participant sound recordings, and platform artefact analysis, the article examines listening across political mobilisation, religious ritual, and everyday mobile use. WhatsApp voice messages, YouTube temple archives, and TikTok remixes are shown to sustain recognition, belonging, participation, and audibility—the four dimensions through which listening becomes infrastructural. Cosmopolitan sonic intimacy emerges as an outcome of these practices rather than a competing framework: Migrants from CALD backgrounds cultivate cosmopolitan sensibilities through everyday listening practices rather than elite consumption. The article contributes to mobile media scholarship by demonstrating that sound operates as a primary rather than supplementary modality of platform-mediated intimacy and that attending to it reveals dimensions of mobile life invisible to text-focused analysis.