Daniele Pica

Driving and 'Passengering': Notes on the Ordinary Organization of Car Travel

We spend ever‐increasing periods of our lives travelling in cars, yet quite what it is we do while travelling, aside from driving the vehicle itself, is largely overlooked. Drawing on analyses of video records of a series of quite ordinary episodes of car travel, in this paper we begin to document what happens during car journeys. The material concentrates on situations where people are travelling together in order to examine how social units such as families or relationships such as colleagues or friends are re‐assembled and re‐organised in the small‐scale spaces that are car interiors. Particular attention is paid to the forms of conversation occurring during car journeys and the manner in which they are complicated by seating and visibility arrangements. Finally, the paper touches upon the unusual form of hospitality which emerges in car‐sharing.

Tales from the police: Rhythms of interaction with mobile technologies

There is a need to understand and conceptualize the relationships between work activities, the context of work, and the use of mobile technologies because of the widespread diffusion of mobile information and communication technologies within organizational settings. The police have, since the advent of radio communication systems, deployed mobile technologies to support officers in conducting their jobs and offer an exemplary domain for studying the use of mobile technologies. This paper applies the theory of virtualization as a means to characterize the use of mobile technologies for operational policing. The paper suggests the concept of rhythms of interaction as a method of characterizing the alternation in intensity of communication through and with mobile technologies and the intricate relationships between physical and virtual contexts of work.

On mobility and context of work: exploring mobile police work

This article aims to propose some elements for a theory of mobility. Mobility is the structural attribute of an age that heavily relies on information and mobile devices as identified by observed, cross-contextual research. It pervades most work and social organizations in various cultural and institutional expressions. Organizational structures rely heavily on the relationships of construction and utilization of information and on the context of interaction of the various actors. This paper explores issues of mobility within work activities of two distinct roles in a police force in the UK. Departing from the concept of mobility as interaction, this article seeks to put forth a more comprehensive theory of how to study the phenomenon of mobility within work organizations and across various roles. It advances the idea that mobility is linked strongly to work conditions and that in order to increase such state within organizations, we must use a triangulated analysis to understand both the relation with the environment of work as well as the relation with information.

The rise and fall of collective identity in networked movements: communication protocols, Facebook, and the anti-Berlusconi protest

This paper explores the impact of communication protocols on the development of collective identity in networked movements. It focuses primarily on how communication protocols change patterns of interactions and power relationships among the constituents of social movements. The paper suggests that the communication protocols of commercial social networking media lead to organizational centralization and fragmentation in social movements by eroding one of the preconditions of collective identity, namely solidarity. The empirical material presented is part of a PhD dissertation on a political protest movement and their use of Facebook as a core communication and organizational platform. The data gathering is multi-methodological and relies on both qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques in the form of a historical analysis of interaction patterns, and a content analysis of online conversations among activists.

Social Networks and Participation: A Critical Literature Review

This paper explores the controversial concept of participation in the ecology of contemporary commercial social networking media. It begins by investigating a number of contemporary theories related to social networking media in order to bring forth the assumptions that underline current research. The concept of participation, regardless of the epistemological and the ontological assumptions of the research surveyed, is generally accepted as the necessary pre-condition for the sustainability of social networking media. Specifically, studies from economic, social, cultural, and political perspectives make use of the concept of participation to make sense of the current usage of social networks. However, there is no agreed upon definition of participation across such studies, and in some among the most notable cases, the definitions are either unsubstantiated, reductionist, and/or deterministic. This presents an impediment in furthering the understanding of the role of social networking media in contemporary societies and further fragments the understanding and analysis of the phenomenon. This paper argues that participation is a concept that cannot be understood without a multi-disciplinary approach that takes into consideration and embraces the inherent controversies of participation. By critically analysing a multitude of perspectives on participation, and drawing upon secondary empirical evidence regarding political cases, grassroots campaigns, and business-related issues, this critical survey attempts to develop a balanced definition of participation that can be used as a sensitizing device across different disciplines.