Arab Mobile Communication Studies

Program

Communication and Technology Division Pre-Conference, co-hosted by

T-Systems & the University of Erfurt

Title: After the Mobile Phone? Social Changes and the Development of Mobile Communication

Time: Saturday, June 17 – Sunday, June 18, 2006, University of Erfurt, Erfurt Germany

Cost: 25€ ($30USD) for non-presenters

Limit: 50 Participants

In a very short period of time the mobile phone has become a permanent feature in everyday communication. It changed existing communication practices and led to new social arrangements in terms of mobility and connectivity. It has become a ‘personal medium’ and a medium for the presentation of the self. It is also a medium that is used not only for individual, but collective communication and even for political mobilization. Furthermore, traditional boundaries to mass communication are blurred, as many contents are developed for cross-media applications – one-to-many content provision (Internet, news messages, games etc.) gets more and more popular as the technical devices become more and more powerful.

Research worldwide has turned to the mobile phone and begun to look at uses and effects. Such international and interdisciplinary research has by now led to considerable achievements, based on both qualitative and quantitative studies. But it would be improper to claim that all questions have been answered, especially since many new research areas and questions emerge all the time, based on media developments. For the title of the pre-conference we have thus intentionally chosen a provocative question: Have we indeed reached the end of the era of the mobile phone? Or is this true only for some contexts within some communities? Which is the current status of mobile communication in different countries?

The mobile phone will continue to exist as a medium for mobile communication. But it will also continue to develop as a hybrid medium – and will also continuously be ‘reinvented’ by its users. At the same time it is part of an overall development in mobile communication in which the use of the mobile phone is only a small part of overall media use.

The aim of the pre-conference is not some future prediction (which has already not worked properly for the mobile phone in the past). Instead, we aim at a view on what is happening at the moment, but also a view on what will drive us in the future: What do we know and where are the most urgent research questions? What has been the focus of research thus far and what has to become a focus? How far do existing realizations suffice to explain and explore further developments in the mobile communication field? Especially the multiple uses of a mobile hybrid medium need to be looked at more closely, including the embeddedness within other forms of media use. Processes of convergence such as the relationship of the mobile phone to other (mass) media will be considered. Our special interest is devoted to the development beyond the mobile phone, e.g. in terms of Blackberries, the mobile computer or the mobile Internet, where the diffusion of wireless LANs plays a crucial role. We particularly invite submissions from a media economy or technological perspective.

Erfurt, as one of the few German media and communication departments that specifically addresses mobile communication, constitutes the perfect place for a pre-conference of this kind. The Erfurt pre-conference will offer:

• Two keynote addresses;
• three sets of parallel sessions;
• roundtable discussions;
• a pre-conference dinner;
• the experience of the beautiful old town of Erfurt;
• onward travel to Dresden on Monday.

Programme:

Saturday, 17^th June 2006:

All day Arrival

18:30-19:00 Get together

19:00-19:15 Welcome: The local organisers’ team

19:15-20:00 Keynote:

Wulf Bauerfeld (T-Systems): Community Services over Communication Networks.

20:00 Dinner

Sunday, 18^th June 2006:

9:30-9:45 Introduction: Local organisers

9:45-10:30 Keynote:

Prof. Richard Harper (Microsoft): After Talk & Sight: Communication after the Mobile.

10:30-11:00 Coffee break

11:00-12:45 Parallel sessions I

Session I: LOCATIONS

1. Heinrich Schwarz (Colorado): Knowing Spaces: Mobile and Location-Aware Technologies, Smart Spaces, and New Forms of Knowledge.

2. Florian Resatsch; Laura Forlano; Daniel Michelis; Thomas Nicolai; Thomas Schildhauer (Berlin, New York, St. Gallen): Talking Walls: The Interactive Architecture of the City.

3. Christian Licoppe (Paris): Living in a Location-Aware Community, in an Augmented Public Space. The Uses of a Geo-Localized Mobile Multiplayer Game in Japan.

4. Timo Saari, Niklas Ravaja, Antti Oulasvirta, Giulio Jacucci (Helsinki): Adaptation of Mobile Media Exyperiences for Mobile Use Content.

Session II: REGIONS

1. Lu Jia & Ian Weber (Texas): China’s Mobile Telephony Development: The Good, the Bad and the Profitable.

2. Mohammed Ibahrine (Erfurt): Arab Mobile Media Environments: Social and political impacts.

3. Mike Traugott; Sung-Hee Joo; Rich Ling; Ying Qian (Michigan & Telenor): The Mobile Phone: an Essential Item for the US Public.

4. Radhika Gajjala (Bowling Green): Urban and Rural Mobile Phone Use in Andhra Pradesh: An Ethnographer’s Observations.

12:45-14:00 Lunch break

14:00-14:45 Parallel sessions II

Session III: MOBILE MEDIA – MEDIA MOBILITY

1. Concetta Stewart & Susan Jacobson (Temple): From Blacksburg, VA, to Wireless Philadelphia: Changing Paradigms of Community Networks in the United States.

2. Sonja Kretzschmar (Münster): Journalistic Content & the Football World Championship 2006: Multimedia services on mobile devices.

3. Juan Miguel Aguado & Immaculada J. Martinez (Murcia): The Construction of the Mobile Experience: The Role of Advertising Campaigns in the Domestication of Mobile Phone Technologies.

4. Kathleen M. Cuminskey (New York): Mobile fantasies on film: Fostering ‘co-presence’ through the integrated use of real and imagined mobile technology.

Session IV: CONVERGENCE

1. Leopoldina Fortunati & Fabio Pozzobon (Udine): Media Mobiles: When Interpersonal Media Become Mass Media.

2. Kwang-Suk Lee (Texas): The Mobile Phone as Personalized Broadcasting Media: the DMB Service in South Korea.

3. Christina Spurgeon; Gerard Goggin & Michael Keane (Queensland): Mobiles into Media: Premium Rate SMS and the Adaptation of Television to Cultures of Interactivity.

4. Anxo Cereijo Roibas (Brighton): Mobile iTV: The Extinction of Couch-Potatoes?

14:45-15:00 Coffee break

15:00-17:00 Round Tables: Concepts & Research

17:15-19:00 Parallel sessions III

Session V: APPROPRIATION

1. Andreas Hepp (Bremen): Communicative Mobility after the Mobile Phone: The Appropriation of Mobile Digital Devices in Diasporic Communities.

2. Werner Wirth; Veronika Karnowski & Thilo v. Pape (Zürich & München): How to Measure Appropriation? An Integrative Model of Mobile Phone Appropriation.

3. Virpi Oksman (Tampere): Mobile Visuality and Family Life.

4. Lin Proitz (Oslo): Queering the Eye/I. Gender and Sexuality Performances in OYung People’s Camphone Self-Portraits.

Session VI: SOCIAL NETWORKS

1. Hyo Kim; Gwang Jae Kim & Han Woo Park (Ajou, Sogang, Young Nam): The Configurations of Social relationships in Communication Channels: F2F, Email, Messenger, Mobile Phone, and SMS.

2. Lee Humphreys (Pennsylvania): Mobile Devices and Social Networking.

3. Theresa M. Senft (New York): Web/Mobile Hybrids and the ‘Ex-Girlfriend Problem’.

4. Kakuko Miyata & Jeffery Boase (Tokyo & Toronto): Longitudinal Effects of Mobile Internet Use on Social Networks in Japan.

19:30 Dinner

Monday, 19^th June 2006:

Bus travel to Dresden to the ICA Conference (arranged by the conference organisers)