Gerard Goggin

Adapting the mobile phone: The iPhone and its consumption

In this paper, I look at the Apple iPhone as a fascinating instance of adaptation, especially as it relates to digital cultures. A theme in the rise of the mobile, or cell, phone has been how it underscores the active role that people play in the orchestration and use of culture. The gambit of the iPhone is that the mobile phone itself will be decisively remade, and through this that media culture will itself be reformed. To make sense of this rapturous reception, I examine the iPhone as a notable instance of consuming culture. The paper discusses the double sense in which the iPhone functions both as a signal adaptation of the mobile phone at the same time as it introduces new practices and politics of adaptation.

Global Mobile Media

@contents: Selected Contents: List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Chapter 1. Introduction: Mobiles as global media Part I Mobiles and the New Media Economies Chapter 2. Power and mobile media: structures, networks, and control Chapter 3. Cultural economy of mobiles: new relations of production and consumption Part II Mobile Media Cultures Chapter 4. Mobile music: ringtones, music players, and the sound of everything Chapter 5. The mobile invention of television: post-broadcasting and audiovisual politics Chapter 6. Mobile gaming: playing the portable Chapter 7. Mobile Internet: new social technologies Part III Politics of Mobile Media Networks Chapter 8. The computer, the Internet, and the mobile: the case of the iPhone Chapter 9. The mobile commons? Open networked cultures beyond the politics of code Chapter 10. Conclusion: Culture garden - for mobile media futures Notes Bibliography Index

An End to Disabling Policies? Toward Enlightened Universal Service

This article argues that an enlightened, inclusive vision of universal service is possible by learning lessons from disability. Telecommunications policy has historically built in norms that needlessly exclude people who are regarded as having a disability and therefore being outside of the mainstream. Accordingly, universal service policies focus on availability and affordability of telecommunications services, rather than on their accessibility and functionality. The article shows how rethinking universal service through disability can lead to inclusive policies that benefit everybody.

Ubiquitous apps: politics of openness in global mobile cultures

Smartphones are a central element of mobile ubiquity, with mobile applications (‘apps’) becoming especially important. This article discusses the concept of iPhone apps, and other apps, as cultural platforms. Apps are highly significant for emerging cultures of mobile ubiquity, yet these platforms are constituted and controlled by major transnational global mobile media corporations. The article looks at the characteristics, constraints and limits of apps as they have emerged from 2008–2011, arguing that we need to carefully examine the terms of openness as they are constituted at the intersection of such mobile hardware, software and content. Finally, it offers a critique of apps, suggesting it is time to reconceive our ideas about apps and mobile Internet generally.

Crippling Paralympics?: Media, Disability and Olympism

While clearly not intended to do so, the Paralympics and the notion of disability associated with them provides significant opportunity for ethical reflection on how far society has not come regarding disability. Yet, this opportunity to explore disability has rarely been taken up. Instead, the overwhelming representation of people with disability within mainstream media is found in portrayals of brave, elite athletes who overcome their disability. As has been suggested by earlier studies of media and disability, such media representations fit well within the established power relations which oppress people with disability in society. While there have been some changes and improvements, we contend that, overwhelmingly, the separation between the Paralympics and Olympics is not questioned, and that if the Paralympics are reported at all, disabling media representations still very much persist.

Mobile phones and community development: a contact zone between media and citizenship

Mobile phones have already been used widely around the world for activism, social and economic development, and new cultural and communicative forms. Despite this widespread use of mobile phones, they remain a relatively un-theorised and un-discussed phenomenon in community and citizens media. This paper considers how mobile phones have been taken up by citizens to create new forms of expression and power. The specific focus is the use of mobile phones in community development, with examples including the Grameenphone, agriculture and markets, the Filipino diasporic community, HIV/AIDS healthcare, and mobile phones in activism and as media. It is argued that mobile phones form a contact zone between traditional concepts of community and citizen media, on the one hand, and emerging movements in citizenship, democracy, governance, and development, on the other hand.

Premium rate culture: the new business of mobile interactivity:

This article considers a neglected but crucial aspect of the new business of mobile interactivity: the premium rate data services industry. It provides an international anatomy of this industry model and the ways in which it has been used to capitalize upon the surprising success of short message service (SMS) to provide a basis for the development of consumer markets for mobile data services. It situates this analysis within a wider consideration of the role of premium rate culture in the social shaping of interactivity in convergent media. Specifically, it looks at how premium rate services are being constructed in relation to telecommunications, television and the internet. The article concludes that although premium rate culture has rejuvenated innovation in broadcast television, potentially it may constrain the interactive potential of the mobile internet.

The Business of Digital Disability

The paradox of disability and inclusive information technology is considered. If we are now possessed of greater knowledge about disability and design, why is accessible and inclusive technology so difficult to bring about? Is it because inclusive technology is not profitable, and so unattractive for businesses and unsustainable as an industry? Or is the answer more education and awareness? This paper seeks to reframe dominant approaches to disability, information technology, and policy, by offering a thesis centred upon the power relations of disability and the crucial role played by disabilitys cultural and social constitution. In explaining and testing the theory, we look at case studies from telecommunications, mobile phones, and the Internet.

Disability and the Media

1. Introduction: Why Does Disability Matter for Media? 2. Understanding Disability and Media 3. Medias Role in Disability 4. The News on Disability 5. Beyond Disabled Broadcasting 6. Disability and Media Work 7. Conclusion: Doing Justice to Disability and Media

Editorial comment: Disability, identity, and interdependence: ICTs and new social forms

Our ideas of identity, the body, dependence and independence, welfare and ability are undergoing rapid transformation; new social forms are emerging in which information and communications technolo...