Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2012

Age is a factor that has a bearing on the adoption and use of mobile telephony. Most of the available evidence in the field focuses on teenagers and young adults. To make up for the lack of research on older people, we explore the distinctive characteristics of mobile phone use among senior citizens. Our research is set in Barcelona and its metropolitan area (Catalonia, Spain). We analyse the role played by mobile telephony in the personal system of communication channels for a sample of seniors in this area. The sample includes non-users of mobile phones to give a better understanding of the motivations behind adoption and rejection. We analyse the logic regarding the adoption, or not, of mobile phones together with some of the particular features and how older people appropriate them. A more comprehensive analysis takes account of the available communication channels and individuals’ combined use of different communication channels. We also suggest classifying older users of mobile phone.

This article focuses on the interrelation between everyday mobility, media and communication technologies and interaction practices in family relationships. The analysis is based upon a mixed method qualitative study conducted with ten couples and families in Germany. The findings indicate that the usage of communication media is strongly related to the patterns of partners’ and family members’ mobility and is shaped as part of relational communicative repertoires. Communication media are instrumentalized to coordinate time- and space-relevant aspects and thereby induce a flexibilization of communication. Relational communicative repertoires are not only characterized by different forms of media usage in relationships. Rather,they can be understood as a collection of the communicative dealings of family members in the context of their everyday structures altogether. The findings clarify that practices of ‘doing mobility’ are a crucial and increasing part of those negotiations and foster a thesis on he mobilization of relational repertoires in couple and family relationships.

Photography and photo sharing nowadays form an important part of mobile phone communication, as evidenced by the rather ubiquitous camera phone. The purpose of the article is to examine how the practices of mobile phone communication influence the sharing of camera phone photographs. In pursuing this goal, the ritual view of communication, formulated by James W. Carey, is utilized as a theoretical framework. According to the ritual view, communication serves in sustaining contact between communicators, without placing importance on the information that is exchanged. The conclusion in the article is that ritual communication is evident in how camera phone photographs are captured and communicated in order to maintain social cohesion among a group or among individuals. In addition to a theoretically oriented analysis, the article utilizes results from a qualitative study focusing on the mobile photo sharing practices of a group of Finnish camera phone users.

Communication has many functions; from linguistics to social psychology, there is ample evidence that communication fundamentally defines our ways of being, which is the reason changes in communicational practices and technologies are particularly interesting. This article focuses on the recent developments in playful mobile communication, firstly discussing play and playful practices in general, then moving on to contextualize the discussion in terms of contemporary mobile technology. Not just restricted to formal game play (ludus) but also including more improvisational forms of being playful (paidia), mobile play allows us some creative distance from the routine ways of communicating and is consequently more free-form than the more immediately utilitarian communicative acts. Playfulness also has certain distinctive features and it is possible to identify and discuss playfulness as it is expressed in the  design of new tools for communication, as well as in the communicative practices and attitudes dopted by the participants. This article provides an introduction to the study of playful communication, and proposes three key evaluation criteria for playfulness. It then proceeds to test these criteria in contemporary playful mobile communication services.

This article outlines the benefits of qualitative media diaries as a methodological tool for empirical research on mediatization and mobility. If applied within the wider field of mobile media ethnography, diaries can contribute to the analysis of mediated interaction even in transit. The idea of this methodological approach is to receive detailed information about an individual’s communicative relationships and practices articulated via various (mobile) media technologies on an everyday basis. Providing a theoretical frame for mediatization and mobility, the authors summarize the development of mobile media ethnography and present an overview of the application of diaries in media and communication research. Drawing on empirical studies in two fields of inquiry – diasporic communities and job-related mobility – the central aspect of this article is to reflect on the workings of and experiences with the application of qualitative media diaries.

This article builds upon examinations of vampires’ metaphoric threat to individuality as part of its larger argument concerning vampires’ mainstream popularity. Tensions between narcissism and simulacra illuminate how vampires express intersecting cultural concerns over mechanical, cultural and biological reproduction. First, vampires reflect cultural anxieties over monoculture and loss of individuality by reducing individuals to a means to transmit information: like media images, or Jean Baudrillard’s clones. Rather than marking yet another victim as Other, vampires actually subjugate yet another individual to monoculture, converting yet another body into a medium for cultural reproduction and the reproduction of desire. Second, reproduced images’ false permanence undermines narcissistic fantasies of eternal vampire life. Third, people and love become commodities enhancing self-image but not self-development. Finally, whereas vampirism arrests physical ageing, the Peter Pan syndrome arrests emotional maturation. Children never grow up, and their continued dependence never reminds parents of ageing, death and replacement by new generations.