Society for the Social Study of Mobile Communications


The Society for the Social Study of Mobile Communication (SSSMC) is intended to facilitate the international advancement of cross-disciplinary mobile communication studies. It is intended to serve as a resource and to support a network of scholarly research as to the social consequences of mobile communication.




Saturday, January 1, 2005

Everyday Innovators: Researching the role of users in shaping ICTs

Leslie Haddon, Enid Mante, Bartolomeo Sapio, Kari-Hans Kommonen, Leopoldina Fortunati, and Annevi Kant (Eds.)

Book Description
Everyday Innovators explores the active role of people, collectively and individually, in shaping the use of information and communication technologies. It examines issues around acquiring and using that knowledge of users, how we should conceptualise the role of users and understand the forms and limitations of their participation. To what extent should we think of users as being innovative and creative? To what extent is this routine or exceptional, confined to particular group of users or part of many people's experience of technologies' Where does the nature of the ICT or the particularities of its design impose constraints on the active role that users can play in their interaction with devices and services? Where do the horizons and orientations of the users influence or limit what they want and expect of their ICTs and how they use them? This book enables a cross-fertilisation of perspectives from different disciplines and aims to provide new insights into the role of users, drawing out both applied and theoretical implications.

Citation:

Haddon, L., Mante, E., Sapio, B., Kommonen, K-H, Fortunati, L. & Kant, A. (Eds.)(2005). Everyday Innovators: Researching the role of users in shaping ICTs. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.


The Inside Text

The Inside Text: Social, Cultural and Design Perspectives on SMS

R. Harper, L. Palen and A. Taylor (Eds.)

Book Description
SMS or Text is one of the most popular forms of messaging. Yet, despite its immense popularity, SMS has remained unexamined by science. Not only that, but the commercial organisations, who have been forced to offer SMS by a demanding public, have had very little idea why it has been successful. Indeed, they have, until very recently, planned to replace SMS with other messaging services such as MMS.

This book is the first to bring together scientific studies into the values that "texting" provides, examining both cultural variation in countries as different as the Philippines and Germany, as well as the differences between SMS and other communications channels like Instant Messaging and the traditional letter. It presents usability and design research which explores how SMS will evolve and what is likely to be the pattern of person-to-person messaging in the future. In short, Inside Text is a fundamental resource for anyone interested in mobile communications at the start of the 21st Century

The book will be of interest to anyone in the CHI, CSCW and mobile communications research areas, as well as sociologists, anthropologists, communications scientists and policy makers.

Citation:

Harper, R., Palen, L., & Taylor, A. (Eds.) (2005). The inside text: Social, cultural and design perspectives on SMS. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.


Mobile Communications

Mobile Communications: Re-Negotiation of the Social Sphere.

Rich Ling and Per E. Pedersen (Eds.)

Book Description
This book surveys some of the broader issues associated with the adoption & use of mobile communication, & explores developing areas of inquiry. Mobile communications are looked at in the context of other types of mediated interaction, demonstrating the uniqueness of this form of communication & how it is influencing the renegotiation of the social sphere. The book considers how mobile communication has impacted on society and reflects on how it is used (& sometimes resented) in various public & private spaces. It provides an in-depth analysis of specific areas which complement our understanding of the phenomena including:-The psychological dimensions of mobile communication (addiction, proclivity to be disturbed by others' use of the mobile phone), -The linguistics of mobile communication, & -The understanding of mobile communication’s commercialisation. A valuable addition to any researcher’s or professional’s reading material in the area of interaction of technology & society.

Citation:

Ling, R., & Pedersen, P. E. (Eds.) (2005). Mobile communications: Re-negotiation of the social sphere. Surrey, UK: Springer.


When Mobile Came

When Mobile Came: The Cultural and Social Impact of Mobile Communication (Mobile communication & society, 1).

Shin Dong Kim

Book Description
When mobile arrived into our daily lives... The mobile phone perhaps is the fastest diffused medium in the entire history of human communication. Where lined telephones took over a century to reach the majority of people in developed societies starting in the late 19th century, it took less than a decade for mobile phones to sneak into peoples' pockets and bags. Since the diffusion process took such short terms in many developed countries, the study of the initial stages of diffusion was not easy in many cases. By the time scholars turned their attention to the phenomenon of mobile communication, people were already largely hooked up to the machine. The papers collected in this volume provide a valuable report in that sense.

Citation:

Kim, S. D. (2005). When mobile came: The cultural and social impact of mobile communication (Mobile communication & society, 1). CommunicationBooks.


A Sense of Place

A Sense of Place
The Global and the Local in Mobile Communication

Herausgegeben von Kristóf Nyíri

Reihe Passagen Philosophie
Issues of placelessness, the spatial and social relations created by television’s emergence as a dominant medium, have been around since the mid-1980s. With the triumphant march of mobile telephony these issues today appear to gain new significance, and are seen in a new light. Social science focussing on mobile communication increasingly recognizes that the mobile telephone is not only a revolutionary instrument that connects people globally, it is also a powerful tool for connections on a more local scale: an organizer of life in small spaces and communities. The volume contains papers by, among others, Joshua Meyrowitz, Albert-László Barabási, Mark Poster, and James Katz.

Citation:

Nyiri, K. (Ed.) (2005). A sense of place: The global and the local in mobile communication. Vienna: Passagen Verlag.