Anne Mette Thorhauge

Smartphone log data in a qualitative perspective

Log data from smartphones have primarily been used in large-scale research designs to draw statistical inferences from hundreds or even thousands of participants. In this article, we argue that more qualitatively oriented designs can also benefit greatly from integrating these rich data sources into studies of smartphones in everyday life. Through an illustrative study, we explore a more nuanced perspective on what can be considered “log data” and how these types of data can be collected and analysed. A qualitative approach to log data analysis offers researchers new opportunities to situate smartphone use within people’s practices, norms, and routines. This is of relevance both to studies focusing on smartphones as cultural objects in everyday life and studies that use such devices as proxies for social behaviour more generally. We argue that log data, for instance in in-depth interviews, may serve as cues to instigate discussion and reflection as well as act as resources for contextualizing and organizing related empirical material. In the discussion, the advantages of a qualitative perspective for research designs are assessed in relation to issues of validity. Further perspectives on the promises of log data from various devices are proposed.

The Rules of the Game—The Rules of the Player

This article presents a critical view of the concept of rules in game studies on the basis of a case study of role-playing across media. Role-playing in its traditional form is a complex activity including a game system and a number of communicative conventions where one player takes the role of the game manager in order to implement the rules and provide a world for the other players. In online role-playing games, a programmed system simulates the rule system as well as part of the game manager’s tasks, while the rest of the activity is up to the players to define. Some aspects may translate more or less unproblematically across media, others are transformed by the introduction of the programmed system. This reveals some important perspectives on the sort of rules that can be simulated in a programmed system and what this means to the concept of rules in game studies.