New Tech, New Ties

New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile Communication is Reshaping Social Cohesion.

Rich Ling

Book Description
The message of this book is simple: the mobile phone strengthens social bonds among family and friends. With a traditional land-line telephone, we place calls to a location and ask hopefully if someone is "there"; with a mobile phone, we have instant and perpetual access to friends and family regardless of where they are. But when we are engaged in these intimate conversations with absent friends, what happens to our relationship with the people who are actually in the same room with us?

In New Tech, New Ties, Rich Ling examines how the mobile telephone affects both kinds of interactions--those mediated by mobile communication and those that are face to face. Ling finds that through the use of various social rituals the mobile telephone strengthens social ties within the circle of friends and family--sometimes at the expense of interaction with those who are physically present--and creates what he calls "bounded solidarity."

Ling argues that mobile communication helps to engender and develop social cohesion within the family and the peer group. Drawing on the work of Emile Durkheim, Erving Goffman, and Randall Collins, Ling shows that ritual interaction is a catalyst for the development of social bonding. From this perspective, he examines how mobile communication affects face-to-face ritual situations and how ritual is used in interaction mediated by mobile communication. He looks at the evidence, including interviews and observations from around the world, that documents the effect of mobile communication on social bonding and also examines some of the other possibly problematic issues raised by tighter social cohesion in small groups.

About the Author
Rich Ling is Senior Researcher at the Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor and Adjunct Research Scientist at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Mobile Connection: The Cell Phone's Impact on Society.

Citation:

Ling, R. (2008). New tech, new ties: How mobile communication is reshaping social cohesion. The MIT Press.

Integration and Ubiquity

Integration and Ubiquity
Towards a Philosophy of Telecommunications Convergence

Herausgegeben von Kristóf Nyíri

Reihe Passagen Philosophie
Mobile communications are rapidly merging with fixed-line telephony, the internet, and entertainment. Telecommunications convergence is a many-faceted process, creating radically novel and complex patterns of mediated culture, posing new challenges to the humanities.

While the triumphal march of mobile telephony continues – by 2008 more than half of the world's population had become mobile phone users – mobile communications are merging with fixed-line telephony, the internet, and entertainment. Telecommunications convergence is a many-faceted process, creating radically novel and complex patterns of mediated culture, posing new challenges to the humanities. The various dimensions of convergence – digital, technological, socio-cultural, linguistic; of content, devices, businesses, markets, even of scientific theories – do not fuse seamlessly. The volume contains papers by, among others, Mark Turner, Gerard Goggin, Zoltán Kövecses, Dieter Mersch, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, and Anthony Townsend.

Citation:

Nyíri, K. (Ed.) (2008). Integration and ubiquity: Towards a philosophy of telecommunications convergence. Vienna: Passagen Verlag.

After the Mobile Phone

After the Mobile Phone?: Social Changes and the Development of Mobile Communication

Maren Hartmann, Patrick Rössler, and Joachim R. Höflich (Eds.)

Book Description
After the Mobile Phone? Social Changes and the Development of Mobile Communication is a book that looks beyond. It looks beyond in terms of the coming developments concerning mobile technologies, of changes in the mobile media markets, of new aspects of mobile media uses. Moreover, it expands existing theoretical frameworks, since it uses diverse approaches from social sciences, from media studies, from technology studies, etc. After the Mobile Phone? also goes beyond the usual work on mobile media as it looks at wider societal appropriation processes. It is an up-to-date survey of how mobile media are used, produced and imagined. The authors in this book represent a range of well-known scholars in the field. They come from diverse backgrounds and represent a number of different countries.

The Editors

Maren Hartmann is Assistant Professor of Communication Sociology at the University of the Arts (UdK) Berlin.

Patrick Rössler is Professor of Communication Science/Empirical Media Research at the University of Erfurt.

Joachim R. Höflich is Professor of Communication Science/Media Integration at the University of Erfurt.

Citation:

Hartmann, M. Rössler, P., & Höflich, J. R. (Eds.) (2008). After the mobile phone?: Social changes and the development of mobile communication. Berlin, Germany: Frank & Timme.

Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies

Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies

James E. Katz (Eds.)

Book Description
Mobile communication has become mainstream and even omnipresent. It is arguably the most successful and certainly the most rapidly adopted new technology in the world: more than one of every three people worldwide possesses a mobile phone. This volume offers a comprehensive view of the cultural, family, and interpersonal consequences of mobile communication across the globe. Leading scholars analyze the effect of mobile communication on all parts of life, from the relationship between literacy and the textual features of mobile phones to the use of ringtones as a form of social exchange, from the "aspirational consumption" of middle class families in India to the belief in parts of Africa and Asia that mobile phones can communicate with the dead.

The contributors explore the ways mobile communication profoundly affects the tempo, structure, and process of daily life around the world. They discuss the impact of mobile communication on social networks, other communication strategies, traditional forms of social organization, and political activities. They consider how quickly miraculous technologies come to seem ordinary and even necessary--and how ordinary technology comes to seem mysterious and even miraculous. The chapters cut across social issues and geographical regions; they highlight use by the elite and the masses, utilitarian and expressive functions, and political and operational consequences. Taken together, the chapters demonstrate how mobile communication has affected the quality of life in both exotic and humdrum settings, and how it increasingly occupies center stage in people’s lives around the world.

About the Author
James E. Katz is Chair of the Department of Communication at Rutgers University and director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies. He is the author of Magic in the Air: Mobile Communication and the Transformation of Social Life and coauthor of Social Consequences of Internet Use (MIT Press, 2002).

Citation:

Katz, J. E. (Ed.) (2008). Handbook of mobile communication studies. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

The Wonder Phone

The Wonder Phone in the Land of Miracles: Mobile Telephony in Israel (New Media: Policy and Social Research Issues).

Akiba A. Cohen, Dafna Lemish, and Amit M. Schejter

Product Description
Studies conducted over several years in Israel explored social aspects of the developing mobile phone phenomenon. Using a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods the research examined the place that the 'Wonder Phone' has been occupying in many facets of life. It was concluded that the mobile is 'not only talk' - as a recent campaign slogan of one of Israel's mobile providers suggests. Rather, it is a medium through which Israelis define their gendered and national identities; it offers an experience of 'being there' and a security net holding family members and loved ones together, especially in terms of terror and war; and it provides a lifeline during existential crises around which rituals of mourning are crystallized.In analyzing the mobile phone as it is contextualized in Israeli society, two opposing social forces can clearly be seen: on the one hand, the mobile is an expression of late modernity and globalization; but on the other hand it is recruited as a tool - as well as a symbol - for the expression of locality and patriotic sentiments.

Citation:

Cohen, A. A., Lemish, D., & Schejter, A. M. (2008). The wonder phone in the land of miracles: Mobile telephony in Israel (New media: Policy and social research issues). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

The Reconstruction of Space and Time

The Reconstruction of Space and Time: Mobile Communication Practices

Rich Ling and Scott Campbell (Eds.)

Product Description
One of the most significant and obvious examples of how mobile communication influences our understanding of time and space is how we coordinate with one another. Mobile communication enables us to call specific individuals, not general places. Regardless of location, we are able to make contact with almost anyone, almost anywhere. This advancement has changed, and continues to change, human interaction. Now, instead of agreeing on a particular time well beforehand, we can interatively work out the most convenient time and place to meet at the last possible moment - on the way to the meeting or once we arrive at the destination.In their early days, mobile devices were primarily used for various types of emergency situations and for work. In some cases, the device was an essential element in various business operations or used so that overseas workers could communicate with their families. The distance between a remote posting and the people back home was suddenly and dramatically reduced. People began to share these devices not necessarily out of economic issues, but also questions of family and interpersonal dynamics.The process of sharing decisions as to who is a legitimate partner makes the nature of relationships more explicit. By examining the economy of sharing, we not only see how sharing mobile phones restructures social space, but are also given insight into an individual's web of interactions. This cutting-edge book deals with modern ways of thinking about communication and human interaction; it will illuminate the ways in which mobile communication alters our experience with space and time.

About the Author
Rich Ling is a sociologist at Telenor's research institute near Olso, Norway and has been Pohs visiting professor of communication at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author of New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile Communication is Reshaping Social Cohesion and The Mobile Connection: The Cell Phone's Impact on Society.
Scott W. Campbell is assistant professor and Pohs fellow of telecommunications in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan. His research has been published in the journals Communication Education, Communication Monographs, International Journal of Communication, Journal of Applied Communication Research, New Media & Society, and others.

Citation:

Ling, R., & Campbell, S. C. (Eds.) (2008). The reconstruction of space and time: Mobile communication practices. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.