Hello all, Here is a quick report on my trip to the US. I got to attend several different mobile related events all the way from a doctorial defense to a focus group to two conferences.
Enjoy Rich L. Washington and visit with Naomi Baron and Amanda Lenert The first stop on the trip was a visit to Washington DC. I meth with Naomi Baron of American University and the author of Always on. William said of her book Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World, "If you have one book to give to a lover of the lingo, latch on to "Always On, Language in an Online and Mobile World." We were able to discuss a range of topics regarding mobile communication. In addition, we hooked up at lunch with Amanda Lenert of the Pew project on internet and American life. I have a cooperative project going with Amanda and Pew regarding mobile use in the US. We were able to discuss that and to have a very stimulating lunch. Milwaukee and the AoIR conference >From Washington I traveled to the AoIR conference. The first order of business >was hosting along with Heather Horst a pre-conference to help develop papers >for our upcoming edition of New Media and Society. We heard from ten of the >authors and got a better sense of where the papers were going. There is some >interesting stuff being developed with regards the study of mobile phones in >the global south. A link to the pre-conference site is at: https://sites.google.com/site/aoir09mobilepreconference/ In addition, I got to have breakfast with my favorite philosopher, Charles Ess. Charles is ending is reign as the head of AoIR. We had a good conversation and basically ended up beefing up one another's reading lists. He is a great source of information on the ethics of ICT use. In addition, I saw my colleagues Gitte Stald and Lisbeth Klastrup and met with a nice set of other researchers. Rutgers conference: Mobile Communication and Social Policy: An International Conferenceon mobile communication It turns out that this year is the tenth anniversary of the conference associated with Jim Katz's article collection Perpetual Contact. Jim has gathered a new conference called: Mobile Communication and Social Policy: An International Conference. There were a lot of the mobile phone researchers at the conference and a lot of interesting papers. One of the most interesting was the paper by Ang, Tekwani and Wang on the effect of cutting the mobile network in Nepal. It is really unfair to mention only this one since there were many other papers that are worthy of mention. The home page for the conference is at: http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/news/mobile-communication-and-social-policy-an-international-conference.html Some of the twitter feed is at: http://twitter.com/search?q=%23MCSP Atlanta and visit to Georgia Tech and a focus group with teens The next stop on my trip was Atlanta. I was there to meet with people at Georgia Tech. It University has a student exchange agreement with them, so it was good to talk with the people there and to get a sense of the place. I was able to meet with Jay Bolter (remediation), Ian Bogost who is interested in gaming and gaming platforms and Carl DiSalvo who is writing on design and the development of publics. I also met with David Jimison who is interested in wireless technologies and public spaces, and their affect on communities and activism. In addition I met up with Scott Campbell and Amanda Lenhart for two focus groups. We are working on teens and mobile communication. We had a teen boy's and a teen girl's group. The boys group was sort of normal focus group format. The girl's group, however, took on shades of being participant observation. I was sitting next to one of the girls and I saw that she was keeping up a nice flow of text messages as the focus group proceeded. I asked the others and it turns that most of them were busy keeping up with their social lives while we were doing the focus group. Interesting stuff. Toronto and a visit with Barry Wellman, the Faculty of Information and Rhonda McEwen's dissertation The final stop was in Toronto. There I met with Barry Wellman and gave a lecture in his class. In addition I gave a talk to the Faculty of Information including David J. Phillips, Nadia Caidi and Kelly Lyons. The real focus of the trip was to be in the examination committee for Rhonda McEwen's dissertation. Rhonda has done a longitudinal study of student's use of mobile communication and the transition. A review of the dissertation follows. This thesis examines the role of mobile communication in the lives of teens as they make the transition from high school to the university. In addition, the thesis examines the situation of the same students one year later. The major question considered in the thesis is the way in which the mobile phone affects the cohesion of the teens' social networks. McEwen outlines three major questions that she is interested in considering. These are 1) the degree to which mobile phones are used to maintain or extend personal networks, 2) the information practices used by first year students and 3) how students support and facilitate personal network changes during their first year at college. This thesis focused on ego-based networks. There were 173 students who participated in the first wave and about 150 in the second. Thus, while there is not a huge sample, there are a good number of cases upon which to base the analysis. McEwen is to be congratulated since this is one of the few longitudinal studies of mobile phone use that has been done. In spite of the moderate number of cases, this data is unique and it allows for better insight into causality. The area of interest is an important one. The rise of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has given new life to the question of social cohesion. It is not clear whether the internet, the TV and indeed the mobile phone support or detract from our ability to develop and maintain social ties. Much of the research on the TV, for example, asserts that it isolates people. Work on the internet seems to cut in both directions. Interestingly, work on the use of mobile telephony is the one area where there seems to be come consensus that the technology supports the maintenance of social cohesion. McEwen's analysis is another brick in that edifice. Her work indicates that the mobile phone fosters pre-existing ties such as family and high school friends. Mobile phone use increases social network cohesion by providing the means of maintaining ties and thereby allowing the students to mitigate loneliness. It gives the students direct access to predictable social connections and in this way it gives them emotional support. The mobile phone is seen as a stabilizing influence in everyday life. Following from McEwen's analysis, not having a mobile phone makes a person more isolated. Interestingly, there is also the notion that the mobile phone also shields the students from the development of new ties. Thus, in a life phase where there has traditionally been shedding of older connections and the development of new ties, the mobile phone is, in a sense, a conservative force. It may have the effect of hindering students from cultivating the new interests and friendships that the university may offer. This is one area that might be a focus of further study. If social connections are near at hand, then the logical form of contact is simply face to face. An alternative assertion here is that increased face to face interaction also spills over to increased mobile phone contact. Teasing out the fundamental mechanism in this set of interactions is a worthy question. McEwen addresses part of this by noting that those students who have face to face interaction with their parents have a marked use of the mobile phone in that context. It might be that we need better understanding of the pre-existing nature of relationships in order to understand this. It might be that ongoing relationships with what we might call "foundational" others are a central pillar that is also supported via mobile interaction. By contrast, daily interaction with, for example, dorm mates is not nearly as central to the individual. Thus, even though there is more real time spent with them, they do not have the same central position and thus there is not the same inclination to use mobile communication. A related question is the way that exchanging the mobile phone number is obviously a loaded issue for these teens. By examining this, McEwen has given us insight into the way that they go about the arrangement of social boundaries. Her interviews show that there is a very careful calibration associated with giving out the number in some situations. This is particularly the case associated with giving out the number of a person of the opposite sex. Following from McEwen's interviews, it is done with thought and care. Giving out a mobile number to a person too quickly can be seen as being too forward. Other forms of mediation are perhaps more appropriate in those situations. In other cases, such as when there is clearly a function nature to the information, it is not as problematic. Rich L. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mobile-society" group. 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