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Thesis: The mobile phone is a medium in itself
01.06.2010
In her thesis ”The mobile phone: a medium in itself” Virpi Oksman, Research Scientist from VTT, examines the integration of the mobile phone into everyday life as a communication device and as media. It focuses on the uses of the mobile phone as a pervasive multimedia tool and its relationship to other media in the changing media landscape. Oksman presented her thesis at the University of Tampere on 28 May, 2010.
The empirical material of the dissertation consists of 1,600 interviews of
Finnish people conducted between 1997 and 2007. The research sample includes
teenagers, young adults, families and senior citizens from different
socio-economic backgrounds. In addition, media diaries and photographic
materials, such as 1200 mms messages were collected. Log data was collected to
reveal the time and duration of actual occurrences of mobile media service
such as mobile TV use.
In media studies the mobile phone has
been perceived as a sub-media to traditional media. As a medium it has its own
specific characteristics and social functions, although its uses may vary in
different contexts and cultures. However, this argument does not mean that the
mobile phone is a medium without user involvements. The role of user
innovations has been important in constructing the mobile phone’s role in the
media field: for instance, text messaging has brought a new kind of social
interaction and media form with it.
Indeed, the mobile phone
has influenced the ways in which we can interact with other media. The mobile
phone is located between personal, social and mass media, and can serve
personal, peer-to-peer and mass communication purposes in different
communications situations. The mobile phone is not only a developing tool for
citizenship journalism and participatory media making, but also a channel
between traditional and new media, as it, in some cases enables the
interactivity of television.
Text messaging has been
incorporated into television and, in some cases, also into newspapers. It
seems that the mobile phone as a personal and ubiquitous technology may lower
the threshold for participating in media making. The role of the mobile phone
as a tool in digital storytelling has become more important as the number of
reader’s own photographs as news material in newspapers has increased. The
newspaper offices and other media have to find a solution how to act with the
increasing content produced by their audience; for instance, how to find the
important news and verify the reliability and originality of the material.
Yet,
the physical user interface of the mobile phone is quite different from other
media. This means that in the media production stage, the media content has to
be tailored so that it can be accessed with a mobile phone and read on their
small-screen user interfaces. Currently, there are problems related to the
immature technology, such as mobile web browsing problems. Usability issues
regarding small-screen user interfaces are particularly important.
The
mobile phone enables an instantaneous news, information and discussion channel
for the mass media. Indeed, the role of the mobile phone in participatory
media making could be further developed in media companies. Furthermore, the
possibilities of mobile phones are not yet fully utilized in crisis
communication. More likely, the role of the mobile phone as an interactive
link between the personal user and social and mass media will increase in the
future.
Publication “The mobile phone – a medium in itself”:
http://www.vtt.fi/inf/pdf/publications/2010/P737.pdf