Barbara Scifo

Il modellamento sociale del camera phone da parte dell'utenza giovanile: la diffusione di una nuova cultura comunicativa

The paper aims to show some of the findings of a sociological research based on a non-standard methodology on the processes of incorporation of new camera phones and MMS communication in the space, time and relation structures of Italian young users’ everyday experience. The research, begun in May 2003 and finished in October 2003, was financed by Motorola and carried out by Osservatorio sulla Comunicazione, the media research centre at the Universita Cattolica in Milan. The field work (group and individual in-depth and non-directive interviews) has been conducted in Milan in two different phases and it has involved 70 boys and girls aged to 14 from 34, owners of the new devices (but we haven’t overlooked to listen also the resistants). In particular, the second phase of the research has been presented when the earlier forms of technological artefact and communication practices naturalisation have been emerged. The research shows the double nature of camera phone as technology of the self and as a sharing technology. Not only is it an increasingly personal technology, but a collective technology, a resource for the local interaction and face to face sociality as well. Exploring MMS communication practices, on one hand the paper shows how MMS messages - as a technology for access to, and sharing of, place and situation and for sharing objects and people - are deeply set in actual experience, underlining the importance of the physical and social context for their comprehension; moreover they are interpreted as a way of appropriating other people’s experience. On the other hand MMS communication results not only a playful and socializing technology, but also a technology enabling action, information, co-ordination, emergency management. As a new linguistic resource we can actually distinguish different visual forms: performative MMS messages, informative MMS messages; problem solving MMS messages.