Mobile Communication And The Family

This volume captures the domestication of mobile communication technologies by families in Asia, and its implications for family interactions and relationships. It showcases research on families across a spectrum of socio-economic profiles, from both rural and urban areas, offering insights on children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly. While mobile communication diffuses through Asia at a blistering pace, families in the region are also experiencing significant changes in light of unprecedented economic growth, globalisation, urbanisation and demographic shifts. Asia is therefore at the crossroads of technological transformation and social change. This book analyses the interactions of these two contemporaneous trends from the perspective of the family, covering a range of family types including nuclear, multi-generational, transnational, and multi-local, spanning the continuum from the media-rich to the media have-less.

This volume captures the domestication of mobile communication technologies by families in Asia, and its implications for family interactions and relationships. It showcases research on families across a spectrum of socio-economic profiles, from both rural and urban areas, offering insights on children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly. While mobile communication diffuses through Asia at a blistering pace, families in the region are also experiencing significant changes in light of unprecedented economic growth, globalisation, urbanisation and demographic shifts. Asia is therefore at the crossroads of technological transformation and social change. This book analyses the interactions of these two contemporaneous trends from the perspective of the family, covering a range of family types including nuclear, multi-generational, transnational, and multi-local, spanning the continuum from the media-rich to the media have-less. “Too long the subject of myths and stereotypes, Asian families? lives are here sensitively analyzed in all their diversity in order to grasp how culture shapes and is shaped by the meaningful appropriation of new digital technologies within the home. In this welcome volume, authors expert across a range of countries and cultures unpack the emerging practices of technology domestication and use that matter to children and their families. Gender, religion, tradition and migration emerge as striking sources of asymmet ry, while emotional and relational bonds are often enhanced rather than undermined by families? uses of technology.” Sonia Livingstone, Professor, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics “Ranging from the dilemmas of Filipino mothers who are trying to manage their families while overseas, to the struggle for control between Indonesian children and their parents over cell phone use ? and most everything in between ? this savvy collection of insightful studies from Asia lends new depth and insight concerning the paradoxes of mobile communication. As such, it is an important, nuanced addition to the understanding of the way communication technology challenges and re-creates social relationships.” Professor James Katz, Feld Family Professor of Emerging Media & Executive Director, Center for Mobile Communication Studies, Boston University.

How wireless technology is redefining the relationship of communication, technology, and society around the world—in everyday work and life, in youth culture, in politics, and in the developing world. Wireless networks are the fastest growing communications technology in history. Are mobile phones expressions of identity, fashionable gadgets, tools for life—or all of the above? Mobile Communication and Society looks at how the possibility of multimodal communication from anywhere to anywhere at any time affects everyday life at home, at work, and at school, and raises broader concerns about politics and culture both global and local. Drawing on data gathered from around the world, the authors explore who has access to wireless technology, and why, and analyze the patterns of social differentiation seen in unequal access.They explore the social effects of wireless communication—what it means for family life, for example, when everyone is constantly in touch, or for the idea of an office when workers can work anywhere. Is the technological ability to multitask further compressing time in our already hurried existence? The authors consider the rise of a mobile youth culture based on peer-to-peer networks, with its own language of texting, and its own values. They examine the phenomenon of flash mobs, and the possible political implications. And they look at the relationship between communication and development and the possibility that developing countries could "leapfrog" directly to wireless and satellite technology. This sweeping book—moving easily in its analysis from the United States to China, from Europe to Latin America and Africa—answers the key questions about our transformation into a mobile network society.

How communication technologies meant to empower people with speech disorders—to give voice to the voiceless—are still subject to disempowering structural inequalities. Mobile technologies are often hailed as a way to “give voice to the voiceless.” Behind the praise, though, are beliefs about technology as a gateway to opportunity and voice as a metaphor for agency and self-representation. In Giving Voice, Meryl Alper explores these assumptions by looking closely at one such case—the use of the Apple iPad and mobile app Proloquo2Go, which converts icons and text into synthetic speech, by children with disabilities (including autism and cerebral palsy) and their families. She finds that despite claims to empowerment, the hardware and software are still subject to disempowering structural inequalities. Views of technology as a great equalizer, she illustrates, rarely account for all the ways that culture, law, policy, and even technology itself can reinforce disparity, particularly for those with disabilities. Alper explores, among other things, alternative understandings of voice, the surprising sociotechnical importance of the iPad case, and convergences and divergences in the lives of parents across class. She shows that working-class and low-income parents understand the app and other communication technologies differently from upper- and middle-class parents, and that the institutional ecosystem reflects a bias toward those more privileged. Handing someone a talking tablet computer does not in itself give that person a voice. Alper finds that the ability to mobilize social, economic, and cultural capital shapes the extent to which individuals can not only speak but be heard.

In the few short decades since their commercial deployment, 5 billion people—about three-quarters of all humanity, including children—have become mobile phone users. No technology has even approached the mobile phone's wildfire success. Effects of this success are apparent everywhere, ranging from accident scenes and earthquake rescue efforts to demeanor in the classroom and at dinner tables. No one interested in the next generation of issues provoked by the mobile communication revolution will want to miss this important new collection of essays.The mobile phone has given near-transcendent power to ordinary people. All aspects of social life have been touched by mobile technology. An ever-growing host of tracking, immersion, gaming, and commercial applications are becoming available. The community of mobile communication scholars has blossomed from a handful of pioneers a decade ago to a large and dynamic intellectual community that spans the globe. Area researchers have gained much insight into cultural, symbolic, and social interaction aspects of mobile communication as well as its relevance to commerce.To address the social policy dimension of the mobile communication revolution, this volume presents analyses by leading thinkers in the field. The volume offers novel and keen insights into the topic. Subjects include the role of mobiles in policy formation and evaluation in several areas including the mobile-digital divide and political campaigns. Also explored are processes and policy implications of mobiles in creating or alleviating social problems including social isolation and family dispersion. Other chapters analyze social policies for mobile devices, including attempts to regulate the use of the technology and to understand and moderate its potential harm to human health. The contributors' scope ranges across five continents and they address concerns at local, national, and international levels.

This volume offers a view of the cultural, interpersonal and family consequences of mobile communication across the globe. The contributors analyse the effects of moble communications on all aspects of life, from the relationship between literacy and the textual features of phones, to the use of ringtones as a form of social exchange.

How cell phones and mobile communication may in many cases strengthen social cohesion. The message of this book is simple: the mobile phone strengthens social bonds among family and friends. With a traditional land-line telephone, we place calls to a location and ask hopefully if someone is “there”; with a mobile phone, we have instant and perpetual access to friends and family regardless of where they are. But when we are engaged in these intimate conversations with absent friends, what happens to our relationship with the people who are actually in the same room with us? In New Tech, New Ties, Rich Ling examines how the mobile telephone affects both kinds of interactions—those mediated by mobile communication and those that are face to face. Ling finds that through the use of various social rituals the mobile telephone strengthens social ties within the circle of friends and family—sometimes at the expense of interaction with those who are physically present—and creates what he calls “bounded solidarity.” Ling argues that mobile communication helps to engender and develop social cohesion within the family and the peer group. Drawing on the work of Emile Durkheim, Erving Goffman, and Randall Collins, Ling shows that ritual interaction is a catalyst for the development of social bonding. From this perspective, he examines how mobile communication affects face-to-face ritual situations and how ritual is used in interaction mediated by mobile communication. He looks at the evidence, including interviews and observations from around the world, that documents the effect of mobile communication on social bonding and also examines some of the other possibly problematic issues raised by tighter social cohesion in small groups.

"The home is at the forefront of rapid transformation brought upon the expansion of globalising economies, transnational migration, and the widespread uptake of ubiquitous digital communication technologies. This book unravels how geographically dispersed family members use smartphones, social media, and mobile applications in forging and sustaining long-distance relationships. It foregrounds the diverse, personalised, intimate, and creative mobile practices of fragmented family members in the conduct of everyday household interactions, festivities, homeland connections, and crisis management. On the one hand, mobile device use facilitates transnational connectivity, paving the way for enabling intimate ties, care expressions and homeland linkages. Yet, communicative tensions also arise when digital routines are shaped by familial norms and expectations, uneven financial conditions, asymmetrical technological access and capacities, and migration policies and processes. It is by deploying various strategies that transnational family members cope with an often unstable, unsettling, and ambivalent networked environment. Ultimately, this book provides a nuanced perspective on examining the mobilisation of a home from afar in the age of smartphones and mobile applications"--