Lee Humphreys

Cellphones in public: social interactions in a wireless era

Cellphones provide a unique opportunity to examine how new media both reflect and affect the social world. This study suggests that people map their understanding of common social rules and dilemmas onto new technologies. Over time, these interactions create and reflect a new social landscape. Based upon a year-long observational field study and in-depth interviews, this article examines cellphone usage from two main perspectives: how social norms of interaction in public spaces change and remain the same; and how cellphones become markers for social relations and reflect tacit pre-existing power relations. Informed by Goffmans concept of cross talk and Hoppers caller hegemony, the article analyzes the modifications, innovations and violations of cellphone usage on tacit codes of social interactions.

Mobile social networks and urban public space

The development and proliferation of mobile social networks have the potential to transform ways that people come together and interact in public space. These services allow new kinds of information to flow into public spaces and, as such, can rearrange social and spatial practices. Dodgeball is used as a case study of mobile social networks. Based on a year-long qualitative field study, this article explores how Dodgeball was used to facilitate social congregation in public spaces and begins to expand our understanding of traditional notions of space and social interaction. Drawing on the concept of parochial space, this article examines how ideas of mobile communication and public space are negotiated in the everyday practice and use of mobile social networks.

It's Time to Eat! Using Mobile Games to Promote Healthy Eating

Its never been more important to teach youth the importance of healthy eating habits. Time to Eat, a mobile-phone-based game, motivates children to practice healthy eating habits by letting them care for a virtual pet. Players send the pet photos of the food they consume throughout the day; the foods healthiness determines the games outcome. An examination of the games design provides insight into the potential of deploying health games on mobile phones.

Evolving Mobile Media: Uses and Conceptualizations of the Mobile Internet

Technological convergence has led to the ability to access the internet from a variety of mobile devices. Drawing on the Mobile Phone Appropriation Model (Wirth, von Pape & Karnowski, 2008), we sought to understand how people conceptualize and use the mobile internet by conducting semistructured interviews with 21 mobile internet users, half American and half German in order to explore cross-cultural differences. Findings suggest little cross-cultural difference in use and understanding of the mobile Internet. Users do not perceive the act of “going online” as a significant step, even if it is on a mobile device. They do, however, distinguish between different ways of consuming information online (extractive and immersive), relating them to different situations and devices.

Mobile social media: Future challenges and opportunities

This article explores the future research opportunities and challenges of mobile social media. First, I problematize what constitutes the boundaries of mobile social media. Distinctions between location-based mobile social networks and non-location-based mobile social networks are established to suggest that the mobility of social media is in fact much broader than location alone. Second, several key theoretical questions are identified for future exploration, including micro, meso, and macro-level theories. Lastly, methodological challenges and opportunities are reflected upon and culminate in the call for multi-disciplinary programs of research to fully understand the role of mobile social media in the world today.

Mobile Geotagging: Reexamining Our Interactions with Urban Space

Mobile geotagging services offer people new ways to interact with and through urban space. In this paper, we focus on a mobile geotagging service called Socialight and the social practices associated with it. In-depth interviews and participant observation were conducted in order to explore how Socialights virtual “sticky notes” were used in everyday life. Findings indicated how users communicate about place to help build social familiarity with urban places and communicate through place to allow users to create place-based narratives and engage in identity management. Such findings deepen our understanding of the social production of space and have implications for future location-based mobile services.

Layar-ed places: Using mobile augmented reality to tactically reengage, reproduce, and reappropriate public space

As augmented reality (AR) is becoming technologically possible and publicly available through mobile smartphone and tablet devices, there has been relatively little empirical research studying how people are utilizing mobile AR technologies and forming social practices around mobile AR. This study looks at how mobile AR can potentially mediate the everyday practices of urban life. Through qualitative interviews with users of Layar, a mobile AR browser, we found several emerging uses. First, users are creating content on Layar in ways that communicate about and through place, which shapes their relationship and interpretations of places around them. Second, we found a growing segment of users creating augmented content that historicizes and challenges the meanings of place, while inserting their own narratives of place. Studying emerging uses of AR deepens our understanding of how emerging media may complicate practices, experiences, and relationships in the spatial landscape.

Connecting, Coordinating, Cataloguing: Communicative Practices on Mobile Social Networks

This article draws on Georg Simmels sociological framework for social interaction in public space to situate socially mediated interactions within a historical and theoretical context. Based on 5 case studies of mobile interactions with social networks, this article explores how these mobile interactions with social networks are practiced and experienced in everyday life. Together these case studies suggest 3 kinds of communicative practices associated with mobile social networks: connecting, coordinating, and cataloguing. These practices are associated with the social, physical, and informational aspects of public social interaction respectively. The article concludes with implications of these practices for socially mediated interaction in public space.

Social Topography in a Wireless Era: The Negotiation of Public and Private Space

Talking on the phone is usually a private activity, but it becomes a public activity when using a cellphone in certain spaces. Unlike a traditional payphone in public, cellphones do not have privacy booths. Therefore, the ways in which people respond to cellphone calls in public spaces provide markers for social topographical space. In this study I explore how cellphone users negotiate privacy when using cellphones in public space and how those within the proximity of the caller negotiate space in response to these callers. Based on a year-long study involving observation fieldwork and in-depth interviews, I discuss the flexibility with which people constantly negotiate their private and public sense of self when using and responding to cellphones in public spaces.

Reframing Social Groups, Closure, and Stabilization in the Social Construction of Technology

This paper complicates, extends, and modifies Pinch and Bijker’s original social construction of technology, specifically their concepts of relevant social groups, closure, and stabilization, in order to gain insight into long‐term processes of how we use and understand technology. First, this paper identifies four broad categories of relevant social groups in the social construction of technology based on stake holdings and compares them according to their activities, resources, and directionality. Second, the paper discusses the distinctions between closure and stabilization of technological artifacts, introducing temporary closure and structural flexibility as a means of understanding how different technologies can relate to each other. Third, using Rosch’s cognitive approach to categorization, the paper suggests structural flexibility as a means of operationalizing stabilization. These reconceptualizations offer researchers a broader scale with which to understand the social construction of technology.