Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking COMMUNICATIONS IN THE 21ST CENTURY The Mobile Information Society

Conference organized by T-Mobile and The Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Conference co-ordinator: Kristóf Nyíri Papers – draft version

Budapest 2008

Contents Elaine Arnull – Susannah Eagle Mobile Phones as Autobiography: Young Women, Delinquency and Self-hood

5

Viktor Bedı Imaging the Moving Community: How Locative Media Pertains to Social Software

7

András Benedek Mobile Learning: New Horizons and Unstable Summits

9

János Boros Mobile Communication Ethics – Ethics, Promise and Spacetime –

17

Jaz Hee-jeong Choi Searching the Self in Seoul Trans-youth and Urban Social Networking in Korea

23

Wolfgang Coy Volunteered Slavery - Communicate Whenever & Wherever

33

György Csepeli Masquerade in the Blogroom (Effects of Anonimity on Communication in the New Medium)

35

Gabriela David Clarifying the Mysteries of an Exposed Intimacy: Another Intimate Representation Mise en scène.

39

Charles Ess Always On? Ethical and Political Dimensions of Mobile Commnication Technologies

51

András Falus Systems Biology and Genomics A Rational Approach towards a Holistic View

57

Manuela Farinosi New Technologies, New Challenges to Privacy Is It Time for Privacy 2.0?

59

Leopoldina Fortunati Reflections on Mediated Gossip

71

Daniel L. Golden Utopia Calling

79

Anna Gyırfi – Ian Smythe Re-engaging the SEN Child into Learning through Social Networking A Case Study

85

Richard Harper The Communication Paradox

93

Stefan Hedelius Digital Natives - Driving the Converged Information and Communication Market

95

Larissa Hjorth Framing Imaging Communities: Gendered ICTs and SNS (Social Networking Systems) in the Asia-Pacific

97

Soo-yeon Hwang Should I Use or Not Use Mobile Phone in Public Places? An Analysis of Museum Policies on Mobile Phone Use

113

Indrek Ibrus Content Providers Facing the Device-agnostic Web Emancipatory Struggles of the Mobile Web

115

James E. Katz Social Structure, New Communication Technology and Citizen Journalism

123

Zsuzsanna Kondor Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice Sellarsian Ethics Revisited

129

Chih-Hui Lai – James E. Katz A Multi-stakeholder Investigation of Ethical and Usage Issues of Mobile Social Networking

139

Monika Langenberger Determinants of Chosen Unavailability in SMS Communication An Experiment Concerning Gender, Personality and Aspects of Content

147

Sun Kyong Lee Mobile Phone Use in a Science Museum Toward a possibility of informal science learning

151

Rich Ling Trust, Cohesion and Social Networks: The Case of Quasi-illicit Photos in a Teen Peer Group 157

László Lovász Large Networks through the Eye of a Mathematician

181

Giuseppe Lugano Reconciling Social and Economic Development: the role of virtual currency in mobile social applications

183

István Maradi Social Networking on 3 Screens: Prelude to a Transition Story

191

László Molnár Knowledge-based Society as Surveillance Society? Some Remarks on the Development of Closed Circuit Television( CCTV) in Hungary

195

Norbert Pachler – John Cook Mobile, Informal and Lifelong Learning: A UK Policy Perspective

201

Gábor Palló Decision Dilemmas in Mobile Phone Health Issues

209

Giuseppina Pellegrino The Electronic Body between Fragmentation and Concentration Tracing Symptoms for an Ethics of Multiplicity

221

Sandra Pöschl – Nicola Döring Managing Mobile Availability Exploring the Role of Social Interdependence

231

Anna Reading The Playful Panopticon? Ethics and the Coded Self in Social Networking Sites

239

Waltraut Ritter Mad Cow Disease and Social Networking: Information Ethics in the Internet Society

249

Kurt Röttgers The Pornographic Turn Or: The Loss of Decency

251

Klára Sándor Trapped in the Net? The Crisis of Liberal Democracies

257

Ulrich Johannes Schneider Counter-Knowledge. An Update on Foucault in the Age of Mobile Communication

265

Attila Simon-Székely The Real and Virtual Human Identity

267

Satomi Sugiyama Mobile Technologies and Communication Ethics for College Students of Various Cultural Backgrounds

275

Gábor Szécsi Electronic Media and the Restyling of Political Communication

283

Balázs László Szekfő Direct Democracy Online First Steps Toward Democratic Global Governance

289

Zsuzsanna Szvetelszky The Ethical Gossip-Effect: Three Degrees of Inclusion Gossip in Social Networks

297

Katherine Wiltenburg Todrys – Patricia N. Mechael The Ethics of Telemedicine in Africa The Millennium Villages Project Experience

301

Emiliano Trerè Privacy and Facebook Reflections on past, present and future research

311

Sebastian Ureta – Wilson Muñoz Performing Cyborg Identities The co-ontology of personal identities and mobile phones among teenagers in Santiago, Chile

321

Lotte Vermeir Anytime, Anywhere: our ambiguous relation with our mobile phone

331

Jane Vincent Mobile Phones and Children in the UK The changing social practices of a group of children aged 11-16 from 2004 to 2007

339

Wilhelm Vossenkuhl Responsiveness and Responsibility. New Moral Dimensions in the Net?

343

Cara Wallis “Technologies of Freedom?” Mobile Phones, Resistance, and Surveillance in the Workplace

345

BIOGRAPHIES

353

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

Elaine Arnull – Susannah Eagle

Mobile Phones as Autobiography: Young Women, Delinquency and Self-hood This paper explores how girls and young women (aged 15-20 years) develop a sense of self through their use of mobile phone technology and how this relates to their other forms of communication: social, verbal, internet-based. It will consider how their use of their phones intersects with the world and other realities – for example that of family, friends, school, study, work, other places / people. In particular how they use their phone as part of their creation of ‘public’ and ‘private’ memory and reality; for example in the posting of images to web-based platforms such as Facebook, the collection of ‘private’ images and the posting of ‘public’ ones, the use of text and other forms of verbal communication and the use of passwords and other features on their phones to protect privacy. The research explores this creation of self with two samples of young women; those who attend London South Bank University (one of the most diverse university communities in the UK) and a sample of girls who have experience of the Youth Justice System. The research and paper will consider how the young women portray themselves and others and if the effect of delinquent behaviour can be observed as part of this process; so for example do girls and young women record acts of delinquency and how is that mediated by their presentation of self/understanding of self? The paper will present the findings in the context of the current research in this area, which is small but growing and which indicates the relevance of a gendered approach. Further, it is innovative in its consideration of delinquency as a factor in young women’s concept of self with regard to their use of mobile phones and other web-based platforms.

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

Viktor Bedı

Imaging the Moving Community: How Locative Media Pertains to Social Software Distance on street maps is usually measured in house blocks, bus stops or subway stations. Distance between people in social networks is mainly measured by the number of intermediate persons that gives the number of intermediate links (that can be weighted based on the number of common friends of two people for example). The city incorporates social and physical space, thus both approaches to distance and proximity apply. Yet visualizations of social networks and street maps live parallel lives. On the one hand adding street maps, localization features and mobile interfaces to social software and on the other hand the support of social features in collaborative mapping projects delineate the trend towards a medium that accounts for the city a both social and physical space and at the same time these efforts signalize the need for such a medium. The presentation suggests that in order to create appropriate urban maps we have to rethink what these maps are good for, what the virtue of these maps is regarding to city life. The examination of this question will draw on experiences of the emerging field of locative media that aims to explore the intersection of the internet and physical space by taking an experimental approach towards mobile urban technology, social networks and as well as collaborative mapping.

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

András Benedek

Mobile Learning: New Horizons and Unstable Summits Introduction The presentation summarizes the author's theses of his several years' research presented in his publications and interviews.1 The title plastically refers to the fact that m-learning can significantly contribute to the development of the number and quality of horizontal connections. At the same time, it can be witnessed that learning, accepted as one of the determinants of social hierarchies and acquired in traditional settings as a specific 21st-century phenomenon, is relativising. The presentation draws attention to the new elements emerging in the social dimension (falling behind, marginalised layers with communication problems) as an especially important praxis of social learning and the today only partially conscious spread of the communication's impact. As a consequence, the system of learning outputs, which can be integrated in time, in so far as the vertical performance in hierarchical social-institutional dimensions is only taken into consideration, can relativise quite fast at present and especially in the future. Changing environment and new paradigms Today the tendency that those who participate in learning are increasingly willing to use ICT breaking open the frames of mainstream education is already evident. The literature on the relationships of mobile technologies and learning is abundant, whose reviews are also available today.2 The topic is in the focus of workshops and projects, which clearly shows the growing interest. 1

Benedek, András (2006). New Vistas of Learning in the Mobile Age. In: Communications in the 21st Century. Kristóf Nyíri (ed.) Mobile Understanding. The Epistemology of Ubiquitous Communication. Passagen Verlag, Vienna. 121-132. p. Benedek, András (2007) Mobile Learning and Lifelong Knowledge Acquisition. In: Mobile Studies: Paradigms and Perspectives. Communications in the 21st century. The Mobile Information Society ed. by Kristóf Nyíri, Vienna: Passagen Verlag, 2007. 35-44.p. Benedek, András ─ Knowledge and Learning in a More Mobile Age (O. Kovács' interview), National Geografic Magyarország, May 2008, 37-45.p. 2

The following two reviews are perfect examples: Big Issues in Mobile Learning (2007),Report of a workshop by the Kaleidoscope Network of Excellence Mobile Learning Initiative. Ed. Mike Sharples, University of Nottingham.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking András Benedek: Mobile Learning…

The future technology, whether talking about computers, or mobile phones, or new hybrid tools embodying the convergence of them, will provide more and more possibilities of using the increased user surfaces by promoting personal communication functions, telecontrolling a sort of digital board which we navigate for ourselves and others as well in accordance with the new way of thinking and looking.3 This is not only justified by the popularity of interactive computer games and the success of programmes adapting the games to the world of education. According to the daily changing statistics of the IT Facts, the number of mobile phone subscribers was globally 2 billion sets and within it the rate of web access was 50% at the turn of 2006 ─ 2007, they forecast 3 billion sets by the end of this year, and it is reasonable to suppose that most of them will be capable for Internet access as well. 4 The daily operation of the society is also influenced by the changes perceptible at the level of figures. The narrower-broader processes of learning-teaching undergo significant changes, and new paradigms are formulated. Leaving mainstream education behind us and taking into consideration a broader context and age group population, it can be stated that the new technologies extend learning opportunities and transform learning methods. It is well exemplified by the increasing interest in mlearning. It is noteworthy that progressive cultural institutions find their place relatively well in the new ICT pedagogical paradigm which make knowledge available for many at relatively low per unit costs by means of the new tools even if they have proper resources. Thus from the viewpoint of m-learning interpreted in a broader sense, the institutions which have web sites for educational purposes as well are potential providers. They offer virtual lists of resources for the users, operate information points, and form interest communities in space. From a social point of view an institutialization might be witnessed when from the viewpoint of access to information there is no difference between people of different social positions, educational levels as compared with the measurement system of traditional institutions (as a matter of fact of public service as well). Besides the systems of social segregation “protected” by means of examination systems and educational levels the new dimension of social networking are linked to mobile communication and within it to free m-learning solutions as a learning form. Mobile technologies and learning (2005) A technology update and m-learning project summary. Jill Attewell, Technology Enhanced Learning Research Centre, Learning, and Skills Dervelopment Agency, London 3

Laura Naismith, Petre Lonsdale, Giasemi Vavoula, Mike Sharples (2005), Literature Review in Mobile Technologies and Learning, report 11, NESTA Futurelab, Bristol. 4

http://www.itfacts.biz/; http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/; http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/ http://www.itfacts.biz/; http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/; http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

In addition to the democratic character of access to education, from the viewpoint of didactics the novelty is to be found in the operation of structures in a demonstrative way in which understanding an “object” needs further information, knowledge. A knowledge network is being formulated by this in which your “movement” and finding your way depends on your “movement needs” in a significant degree, at the same time the encouraging effect, the help of horizontal structures is significantly bigger than the usual ones, due to the fundamentally open system character.5 This medium can indeed be considered to be an organic learning environment whose characteristic property, according to Kristóf Nyírí, is virtuality which is capable of systematizing and transferring “the learning objects” in an increasing degree, furthermore of organizing communication between teachers and learners/students.6 Mobile communication and non-formal learning From the viewpoint of m-learning the new efforts forming at the level of institutional service draw our attention to that the “space”, in which the elements of teaching-learning, arousal of interest, transmissionacquisition of knowledge, demonstration-experience-experiment-researchpractice, conclusion, systematization, can be placed in some sort of didactic system and can be organized by means of fixed algorithms, is extending both for the teachers and the learners. Of course the teachers are affected by the change as well, since they need to find the harmony of the use of different tools (traditionally the curriculum ─ subject matter ─ textbook, but realistically the possibility of acquiring knowledge in the new “environment”) in space, especially if mainstream education is concerned. 5

An increasing number of libraries and museum are digitalizing their collections, these institutions can become resource centres of digital sources, thus “learning objects” of significant cultural content, message will become learning aims. 6

Nyíri, Kristóf, Virtuális pedagógia (Virtual Pedagogy), in Új Pedagógiai Szemle, 2001/07-08. http://www.oki.hu/oldal.php?tipus=cikk&kod=2001-07-it-Nyiri-Virtualis

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking András Benedek: Mobile Learning…

The tendency is perceptible in the developed countries that nonformal learning forms are gaining an increasingly more important role as compared to institutionalized education. It is so if this form of learning does not involve degrees and qualifications, although the goal and content of learning is also of importance in this case. Mobile learning is gaining ground among students in the course of basic education and later as well. Supposedly one of the fundamental issues of the near future for those concerned with the theory of teaching and learning and instructional development is the development of learning and that of the already directly related teachers' competencies. It can be stated that the relevant field, organizational frames of educational programmes answering the teachers' competencies challenged by ICT technologies could be further education, elearning programmes and Internet portals developed for such purposes and functions. Based on the previous years' analysis it can be concluded that the weakening of traditional teacher dominance, fundamentally characteristic of classroom learning, is parallel with social communication of high intensity, whose tools and technological base are potentially created by the mobile communication technique. The pedagogical paradigm shift necessitates the renewal of pedagogical methodology ingrained at the level of conventions. According to empiric examinations new generations, generally the modern individual can easily make friends with the new ─ partially virtual, operating in a time division system in a significant part ─ environment, and turns the organic learning environment offered by mobile communication techniques to tool knowledge. The potential educational models, and within them the m-learning solutions can be situated between two poles depending on whether what significance is attached to individualization or respectively to the dominance of socialization. One of them tries to open up the possibilities of applying the new technique within traditional classroom and curricular frames, this way only partially forcing open the frames of pedagogical innovation. However, although the participating students experience these experiments in a positive manner (the application of GPRS at field trips for location determination, collection of photos of documentation character etc.), the activity cannot be characterized by significant quality transformation, the expansion of the horizon of social connections. The other solution, which can at present be considered as progressive, renders learning and the “space” in which this activity occurs increasingly personalized for the users (learners) owing to mobile communication tools. The social space can also expand in new dimensions, which are influenced by the topic and the environment in a significant degree, at the same time personal involvement is also significant. The constraints causing numerous inhibitions and characteristic of formal learning are not prevalent in this virtual learning space.

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

Examples: Social “m-learning” forms The response to the critique that individualized tool use and the lack of community existence cause social closedness is being formulated now as well. Before we try to provide a response, some more general remarks should be made concerning social aspects, or respectively Author's mobile phone related social observations. Before typifying the life situations to be presented, the analysis of the answers of the related interviews, a short conclusion concerning the observations after the social-professional discussion will follow. The horizontal character of mobile communication's social dimensions, or respectively its presence in the full spectrum of the society is well illustrated by the following three examples: • It can be observed among homeless persons, especially in the case of those living in cities, that although the material possessions of their lives can be packed in one or two carefully watched plastic bags, quite a lot of them use mobile phones while raking dustbins. Their communication is generally the provision of information about relevant “loot”, about a supporting social action or an endangering event, about the identification of the known “when” and “where”. Although the content of the information is significant, the conclusion concerns the fact that the poorest and the most marginalized layers of the society, even though partially, are part of mobile communication. • An official event of city rituals, slowly becoming a social phenomenon, is the free clearance of bulky household junk in a street, or an area announced in advance from time to time. During this, more consolidated families get rid of their “odds and ends”. In accordance with the original concept, the household junk as waste is transported to waste collection sites by means of the usual waste collection technology. During the period when people put out the junk on the pavement in the early evening and it is officially transported away in the early morning, a special, intensive activity bustles around the junk littered in the streets. Groups of people from social layers of lower prestige, for whom the disposed junk is either directly valuable or for whom the junk implies the possibility of selling or reusing-recycling (e.g. collecting metal objects) are engaged in a special “competition” at night. The “lonely warriors” are hopeless in this struggle, family or professional teams, well equipped with technology (car, communication tools) appear on the spots programmed in advance. The mobile phone has the function of calling attention to the “valuables”, mobilizing either for guarding, or organizing it, providing information about the possible seizure of the loot by the enemy, in this case in order to quickly organize the

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking András Benedek: Mobile Learning…

protection of the loot. Taking into account social layers, even though these groups are not in the worst position, they can by all means be considered as disadvantaged. At the same time from the viewpoint of mobile communication praxis their expedient and efficient use of mobile phones is exemplary. • Finally, comes an example which might encourage us to seek further relationships, however, Author only undertakes to outline the phenomenon. It is known that when discussing the spread of mobile phones, the statistical data of subscriptions, mobile card purchases as well as the number of sets are examined and conclusions are drawn on the basis of the tendencies of changes. A factor of uncertainty involved in this practice is that sets are continuously exchanged because of wearing out or upgrading, whose measure can only be guessed by means of sampling. Sets are exchanged in case of losing, thefts, about which relatively more data are available because of the official reporting. Author's related social observation is that the rate of losing the mobile phone is nearly twice the average in the case of people struggling with addiction (drug, alcohol) and being more unstable due to their life situations. Although this phenomenon implies 2-3 “set exchanges” in the case of those struggling with serious problems, the exchange takes place in each case in spite of the significant financial consequences. Furthermore, the use of sets, services of more modest price is not observable despite its frequent occurrence. The answer for the phenomenon that these people belong to layers of higher social prestige and income than the average is too simplistic. Supposedly, the answer is related to the fact that members of the given group need social communication by means of this tool as well, which is of high importance from the viewpoint of further studies. Indeed the questions are the following: how active and supporting social networks are linked to these sets, who and how frequently initiate a call, that is, who appears on the callers' list or on the telephone register of the owner's set. Community and performance Returnig to the more consolidated world of m-learning, we might conclude that one of the main directions of the development of mobile communication systems is just that the participants form informal groups of significant social cohesion by means of netmeeting software systems on the basis of interests and identity of interests. This implies a new competition, new challenges for mainstream education. The question arises with reason up to what age it is of primary importance to keep the youths together, to look after them and discipline them. It can be supposed that the new technological tools will even more need more liberal educational forms,

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

open cultures, the formation of teaching-learning frames appropriate for the sociological conditions. When approaching from social dimensions, then it might be supposed with reason that a new generation is forming (growing up) consisting of users committed to online learning. This generation moves in the info-communication space more freely than the previous generations and becomes better informed and more organized. By means of this knowledge people can obtain more information and get more support from each other than from different institutions. This is why the role of learners' communities will grow, which is easy to reflect to the future. The communities are primarily characterized by an identical sphere of interest, where the learners get into interaction with one another, learn together and produce a shared supply of knowledge resources. Moreover, this emerging practice is not in contradiction with the learning opportunities of the renewing organization forms of higher education. M-learning, as the ever most democratic tool of the formation of the new learning space, has managed to introduce a new dimension of space and time from the viewpoint of social access to the conservative world of education because of the significantly bigger penetration as compared to the so far known technologies.7 Though mainstream education's aversion is still of significance, new approaches are encouraged by the technology and attitude shifts, and the increasingly stronger impact of virtual reality on the surroundings leads to the formation of a new organic learning environment on different scenes of education. The m-learning situation is a model of the new pedagogical paradigm to be examined in practice, which can be characterized by the conscious turning from traditional classroom learning and the intensity of the technical and social elements of mobility. Since the continuous regeneration ability of the integrative knowledge emerging in the social networks is appropriately stable and continuously increasing in principle according to experience: On the contrary, outstanding individual performances in the case of individuals and smaller groups can probably only be considered as unstable knowledge performances in the long run as a consequence of social isolation. Although knowledge is still measured in educational levels due to time-honoured traditions, these statements draw our attention to the fact that horizontally developing learning activity can significantly contribute to individual stability and continuous development in the social dimension. As a matter of fact, from a social point of view m-learning is a happy ending story within the frames of 7

On the basis of Nielsen Finds' survey among UK and USA mobile subscribers it can be stated that a significant population (USA - 4 million, UK - 812,000 persons) is linked to community networks by means of their mobile phones, though the rate (1.6 - 1.7%) is modest. It is noteworthy that the figures, or respectively the rates are more modest in the case of more conservative educational structures (e.g. 140,000 persons in Germany, which is only 0.2% of the subscribers). http://www.nielsaen.com/media/2008/pr _080508.html

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking András Benedek: Mobile Learning…

pedagogical construction. Of course, the participants' motivation for cooperation is conscious and higher than the average. Naturally the given technology might involve limitations, especially if there is a problem of such character with the tool in the given group. However, this risk is increasingly minimalized by means of the development of the services and the tools Networks properly built up will have a decisive role in the further increase of the knowledge that can be acquired by means of m-learning. In the following decade the networks being formed will supposedly not dissolve after reaching the first target but might as well accompany us during our lifetimes. This can solve the problem of further education, adult training much better than the present solution. Formal knowledge can be completed, substituted in cases by informal learning, that is, by knowledge acquired in a non-official way. The levels of the individuals, the network and society can be imagined as the levels of the cells, organs and living beings. Each cell, that is, human beings produce something that is at the same time the subject of their activity and the source of their gain. As if we were comprising an Internet-based encyclopaedia, in which we have written a few entries, but since numerous other persons write entries as well, we gain many more entries, that is, much more knowledge than we have put in. The new institutions of learning can be considered to be the nodes of the network, in which such “encyclopaedias” are combined at higher levels as well. Such a paradigm shift can be expected that when the role of lonely inventors was taken over by research groups. Modern scientific thinking can be characterized by the high value of social capital and the intensity of informal relationships. It is not accidental either that most scientific results of the past decades were backed by a community. One of the members was good at this, another person was good at that, and the community achieved excellent scientific result by means of their added knowledge. Isolated, outstanding performance if not linked to horizontal social networks, that is, cannot be placed into social context, in the process, then their utility, “output” is questionable. Figuratively, the engineer with excellent degrees but lacking references, work experience is only a cardboard figure. On the contrary, the carpenter who has orders, recognized and time-tested pieces of work is supposedly a recognized and sought after participant of different social groups. This example does not wish to illustrate the difference between academic and everyday knowledge, but the attractiveness of network-embedded knowledge, which can be acquired just by means of mobile communication tools, the intelligent tool of future craftsmen.

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

János Boros

Mobile Communication Ethics – Ethics, Promise and Spacetime –

It is not a mistake, that I did not choose for the title of my paper „Ethics and Mobile Communication” or „Ethics of Mobile Communication”. I did not want to suggest, that there is an independent discipline of ethics which can be juxtaposed to or which supervizes a discipline or a kind of activity. There is a powerful modern and very dynamic tradition in Ethics, lanced by Immanuel Kant, the main thesis of which is, that Ethics is not independent of our activities, that there is no Ethics without careful reasoning about and deliberation of the structure and consequences of our actions and practices. With other words, there is no Ethics without action, and only reasoning can bear good actions, good consequences, and good state of affairs. In my lecture I will try to investigate the structure and the possible consequences of the Mobile Communication Action. First, I will hint to the Ethics of Kant, then, analyze the changes of our concept of space and time in the new communication era, thirdly I will give a short sketch of that, what a „promise” can mean, and finally, I bring together, Kant, mobile space-time and promise, to make a proposition, what it could be, the Mobile Communication Ethics. The point of Kant Kant proposed that we should not define the concept of good before any action, but the reasonment about actions should bear the goodness of an action. An action is a human action, if it has a rational structure. This rational structure can be known in advance and there should be a decision before the action, that it will follow the decided structure, or more precisely, it will be its structure. However, there can be several structures available in advance – how to decide between them? Kant proposes, that we should follow those structures, about which we can want without contradiction that they become general and necessary laws of the world. Kant is a moral proceduralist and constructivist, as John Rawls calls him1, because he developed a procedure, with which we construe the moral goodness, as the general principle of our rationally and procedurally chosen action. 1

J. Rawls, „The Critique of Practical Reason. Themes in Kant’s Moral Philosophy”, E. Förster (ed.), Kant’s Transcendental Deductions, Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 1989, 81-113.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking János Boros: Mobile Communication Ethics

There is the widely accepted view, that Kant was a deontologist in ethics, that means, he did not consider the consequences of his action, it was only important for him, to decide formally over the structure of action in itself. But this cannot be the correct interpretation, since for the reasoning, whether we want a structure of action, we have also to see the goal, the end and the consequences of it. Also, the genaralization principle involves that Kant cared not only about the single consequence of one action, but about the general consequences, in an ideally changed world. Kant was as much a consequentialist as a deontologist. The reasoning about an action is not possible without analyzing its location in space, in time, in social, in historical or cultural context. Kant gave a basic analysis of space and time in the Critique of Pure Reason, and in his later writing he gave also a historical-antropological interpretation of it. It is today a broadly accepted truism in our mobilized culture, that our relationship to social and physical space and time changes. Space and time can be thought as pure forms of intuitions, or as the condition of possibility or the frame of reference of our activities, as Kant proposed it, but it can be seen also as the result of our creation, as the form and structure of our activities in the world, and even as something which is very individual and subjective in a pychologial or aesthetical sense. But perhaps we have not to decide here for one or other time- or space-interpretation to come closer to our topic. Time and space are the frame of reference of our activities, but they are not physical entities, and the processes in time and space give structure to time and space itself. Time and space are the fabric of society, of communication and of ethics. If time and space changes, then society, communication and the conditions of ethics changes also, and vice versa. It is possible to say, that in certain sense the structure of our actions in the world is identical with the structure of our time and space. If we accept all these interconnectednesses, than, our actions give structure to our spacetime, as the space-time around us give structure to our actions. Besides all of his genius, Kand could not forsee mobile communication – and of course a lot of thins, what happend with the technical revolution. How does the categoric imperative function in the space-time of mobile communication? This will be our final question, but first we should turn to our other points.

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

Space and Time of Mobile Communication Kristóf Nyíri writes, that with mobile communication the „the nature of time itself changed” and this is an alteration of the philosophy of time.2 He asks, „what is the impact of the different ways of communication on the developing concept of time?”3 In these two quotations we have once the nature of time, and once the concept of time. We try to express the nature of time with the concept of time, knowing, that it is only our concept: the nature in itself is something other than our expression. If I understand him correctly, for him the concept of time is dependent on the ways of communications, and since communication is a kind of action, on the ways of actions. That means also, that communications/actions give the structure of time, and since there did not show up until today a convincing physical theory of time that proves that time is a physical entity, we can follow, that the structure of communication and action is time, there is no other time as the structure of our actions and of course, as the structure of physical events as they show us in our perceptions and theories. If our time concept is dependent on our modi of communication or identical with it, then I think, for Kristóf Nyíri there is no time as such, as a physical entity, but there is only our concept of it, shaped by or communications. He supports my interpretation when he quotes Sellars. Although he gives only a short look on Kant’s time concept, and tells about it, that it is subjectivistic, he accepts the time concept of Sellars, for whom time is a „theoretical entity”. Sellars is influenced by Kant and probably it could be shown that most of his concepts can be reduced on or deduced from the concepts of Kant, with the appropriate transformations. With the help of theoretical entities we think about the world, but we do not think that those entities are out there, as givens, as we think them. They are concepetual or expressive helps for us to orient in the world, to get what we want from it. Space, if not a derivative of time, the experience of it is very much influenced by our time perception or intuition. Speaking of space-time continuum means that there is no possibility to speak about space without time. Just to look around or to see a picture, it takes time: there is no timeless space perception, whereas it is possible to have time intuition without space intuition. If we are in Budapest, we not only say that New York is in a certain distance from Budapest, but we say, it is eight hours flight. Space is described in time, space has for us timely structure. The both are interconnected, and the mobile communication changes both, our timeand our space-concept. 2

Nyíri Kristóf, Idı és mobilrend, 91. „az idı természete maga” http://www.hunfi.hu/nyiri/IMR.pdf 3 Nyíri Kristóf, Idı és kommunikáció, Világosság, 2004/7. 33-39. 33. „Milyen hatásuk van ezeknek a különbözı kommunikációs módoknak az idı kibontakozó fogalmára?”

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking János Boros: Mobile Communication Ethics

When Kristóf Nyíri says, we have instead of time-coordination mobile-coordination, then he emphasizes the foundamental changes in our time-experience, which becomes more and more a communicationexperience.4 Communication is a human activity in the society and as such it is something real, in a certain sense „more real” then „time”. Whereas time and space can be seen as intuitions, mobile communication is much more: it is action, an action in distance, that means in larger space. When a mobile telephone call happens, both participants can be moving and they can change the speed or the direction of their movement, as consequence of the communication. This means, there is with the help of mobile communication a continuous change of the space-time structure of the society. Whereas in ancient times (before mobile communication) movements in public or privat sphere and space were directed with the intention which one had at the beginning of the movement, now, movements can be changed every time. One cannot be sure, that he goes there, where he planned to go at the beginning of the movement. The movement in the city has not any more a linear time-structure with a definitive beginning and end, but a communicative structure, overwriting time. Kristóf Nyíri quotes Simmel, „The relationships and affairs of a typical inhabitant of a metropolis are in a way multiple and complicated, that … without the possible greatest exactness of the promises and their fulfilment, the whole would become an inextricable chaos.” 5 Simmel is just right: the structure of common mobilcommunicative life depends on promises – and the promise is the foundamental act of ethics, promise is ethics. The promise What does it mean to give a promise? First of all, I give a promise to someone else (or to myself as someone else), „I now (Time) here (Space) promise you that I will do such and such a thing (x) in the future, in a given time (T’), in a given space (S’).” There is someone (I), who does not do x at T and S, but replaces that doing in present in a doing in T’ and S’. I give a deposit at T to you, my future action in T’ and S’, and you have it, you count with my action. It is supposed, that the given action affects you or your life. 4

Kristóf Nyíri, „Idı és mobilrend”, 91. http://www.hunfi.hu/nyiri/IMR.pdf Georg Simmel, „A nagyváros és a szellemi élet“, a Georg Simmel, Válogatott tanulmányok c. kötetben, fordította Berényi Gábor, Budapest: Gondolat, 1973, 547. o. Idézi Nyíri Kristóf, Idı és mobilrend, 92. „A tipikus nagyvárosi lakos viszonyai és ügyei általában annyira sokfélék és bonyolultak ..., hogy az ígéretek és teljesítések lehetô legnagyobb pontossága híján az egész kibogozhatatlan káosszá válna.” http://www.hunfi.hu/nyiri/IMR.pdf 5

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

It would be easy to show that the use of language, the communication and the institutions of the society have the structure of the promise or at least they cannot function without its structure. In traditional societies it was relatively easy to fulfill our own rational promises and to control the fulfilment of promises of others. Hence all participants were responsible for the fulfilment. If ethics is supposed to be also a personal attitude, traditional societies did not have the need that persons have this attitude, it was enough that the society as such enforced the fulfilment of promises. In the case of mobile communication promises there are different levels of conditions of fulfilment and the network of people needs the attitude of seriousness or of ethics of the participants. The complex conditions of a fulfilment of a promise in mobile communications are 1. The personal engagement. 2. The responsiveness toward our democratic ideas, processes and establishments. 3. The correct interpretation and understanding. 1. It is necessary that persons want to hold their promises. If there is no such engagement by lots of members of a society, then there is no well functioning society. A society cannot be grounded on promise-breakers. Social institutions, personal relationships would collaps if society would be full of this type of actions or characters. Legislation in democratic societies is a kind of formulation of mutual promises of all members of the society. Law enforcement is a kind of promise-execution. 2. Jürgen Habermas emphasized, that modern societies became complex, and the relationship of society, state and individuum should be reconsidered. He tries to elaborate an active concept of democracy, where the procedural reason „makes the process against himself”.6 Bruno Latour says, do not call human communities any more societies, because there is no such thing. People are living in assemblages (ensembles), they form different networks, families, friends, collegues, clubs, etc. Society is just an overgeneralization and do not help us to understand our everyday life. Latour writes, „the social cannot be taken as … a domain particular; it is against the project to give a ’social explication’ to given things. … I would like to redefine the concept of the ’social’, in its sens original.”7 A network of people counts even more on the responsibility and promise-holding of its members, as a traditional society with its mainly hierarchical structures. Mobile communication accelerates the developments of networks instead of rigid structures and infrastructures, called societies, it can help to realize more just democracies (as I spoke about this in the 2007 conference). 6

J. Habermas, Faktizität und Geltung, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1998, 11, 13, 15. B. Latour, op. cit. Introduction, „le social ne peut être pris comme un matériel ou comme un domaine particuliers ; il conteste le projet de fournir une« explication sociale » à un état de choses donné. … je voudrais redéfinir la notion de « social » en revenant à son sens originel”.

7

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking János Boros: Mobile Communication Ethics

3. The communication becomes extremely noisy, not only in the sense of technical understandability but also in a psychological and hermeneutical sense. If someone gives a promise face to face, I understand his words and their contexts, its place in the relationship of the giver and the receiver. In the case of mobile communication, I do not see the promise giver, perhaps, I understand his expressions not in his sense, I do not know, in what kind of situation he or she is, what is the exact context or circumstance of her/his promise. S/he can be forced on the other end of the line to be friendly with me and give a promise against her/his intention. Furthermore, an expression as promise can be in different genres, how can I know, whether the promise giver takes his words seriously, or only jokes, tells me a poeme, or make an explication? As Derrida emphasizes, „the same phrase, in different pragmatic conditions, counted to other conventions, can be a simple phrase of this journal, and then there a fragment of poetry, or an exemple of philosophy on an other place”.8 The pragmatic conditions of a phrase, and hence of a promise are not always evident in a noisy and mobile environment. Mobile Communication Ethics: Double Binding Ethics My thesis is, that Mobile Communication Ethics is a double binding Ethics. The foundamental principles of ethics does not necessarily change with mobile communication, as long as our concept of good and bad does not change. But as Kristóf Nyíri has it, instead time coordination we have communication coordination. Time is an intuition, or a „theoretical entity”, whereas communication is action. If communication replaces time as overall frame of our experiences, then the communication as action will be our medium of our interaction with the world. That means, an action will involve all our other actions. If reasoned action is ethics itself, then we will have a double binding ethics: the frame of reference and the referred. Not only the content of our actions should be carefully reasoned, but also the modus of our communication. Mobile communication becomes a double promise: I promise you that I communicate to you seriously, that means, I communicate you the genre and the circumstances of my talk to you. The second promise is the subject-matter of my call. I hope, I could show, that communications gives a new chance to Ethics. 8

J. Derrida „Passages – de traumatisme à la promesse”, Points de suspension, Paris, Galilée, 1992, 385-410, 386. „La même phrase, dans des conditions pragmatiques différentes, compte tenu d’autres conventions, peut être une simple phrase de journal ici, et puis fragment poétique là, ou exemple philosophique encore ailleurs.”

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

Jaz Hee-jeong Choi

Searching the Self in Seoul Trans-youth and Urban Social Networking in Korea

This paper presents a brief analysis of Seoul trans-youth’s search for identity through urban social networking, arguing that technological, socio-cultural and environmental (urban) contexts frame how mobility and ubiquity are (re)created in Seoul. The paper is empirically based on fieldwork conducted in Seoul, South Korea, from 2007 to 2008 as part of a research project on the mobile play culture of Seoul trans-youth (a term that will be explained in detail in the following section). Shared Visual Ethnography (SVE) was used as the research method which involved sharing of visual ethnographic data that were created by the participants. More specifically, the participants were asked to take photos, which were then shared and discussed with other participants and the researcher on a photo-sharing service Flickr. The research also involved a questionnaire and daily activity diaries, as well as interviews. A total of 44 Korean transyouths – including 23 females and 21 males – participated in interviews and photo-sharing. The paper draws specifically on the qualitative data from individual and/or group interviews, the total duration of which was 2 – 2.5 hours for each participant. Seoul in Flux Shortly after the end of Japanese occupation (1945), South Korea (hereafter Korea) underwent the turmoil of the Korean War (1950-3) on many levels. Physical infrastructures were destroyed and thus in need of rebuilding, while non-physical ones such as the cultural infrastructure required fundamental restructuring in reference to the status prior to the Japanese occupation. Economically, Korea was only comparable to some of the poorest South African countries (The World Bank, 2006, p. 1). However, within only half a century, this country in commotion became the 11th largest economy in the world (Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, 2007). One manifestation of its commotive development was the physical configuration of the city itself, described as a ‘paradoxical combination … of too much planning …. and too little planning’ (S. H. Kim, 2005). In this regard, I have previously argued (Choi, 2007a) that contemporary Seoul exists as a city in flux; a city of screens, and a city of bangs (rooms).

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Jaz Hee-jeong Choi: Searching the Self in Seoul…

City of Screens Screens are conspicuous (Vanderbilt, 2005) and wide-ranging (Choi, 2007a) in Seoul. Screens as the exterior of buildings – for example, the Galleria Department Store in Apgujeongdong, of which the entire façade is made of light-reactive, programmable screens capable of generating 16 million colours (see image 1) – obscure conceptual and sensorial boundaries of the physical environment, in turn allowing individualised and subjective spatial experience. While also having the same effect but on a smaller scale, interior screens including those on televisions, computers, and mobile phones, coordinate multiple and concurrent mediated and non-mediated layers of reality. Screens in this regard become the means of individual (which can also be collaborative via network technologies) reterritorialisation (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) in urban space.

image 1

Rapid adaptation of technology in Korean society can be explained from two main perspectives: first, technology symbolises superiority and modernisation (previously equated to Westernisation while concurrently fighting against ‘the evil’ that is assumed to destroy traditional Korean values and limit Korea’s assumed opportunities for the future (Yoon, 2003)); second, the ppalippali (hurry-hurry) mentality which signals both ‘hastiness’ and ‘dynamism’ (Kang, 2006 p. 47) in adopting and adapting to technological and social change . Combining this aspect with the notion of reterritorialisation afforded by network media, the commercial sector was quick to introduce new outlets for entertainment, based on the unique bang (room) culture of Korea.

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

City of bangs PC bang culture has gained attention from both international media (especially around deaths of game players who failed to meet their physiological needs because of game addiction) and academia (cf. Chee, 2006). In reference to Oldenburg’s notion (Oldenburg, 2001) Chee argues that PC bangs function as the third place for young Koreans, between work (school) and home. Although applying Oldenburg’s original concept may require reconsideration to be correctly translated into the contemporary Korean context, Chee’s claim that PC bangs are not mere gameplaying/internet access rooms but a place for socialisation is convincing. ‘Bang’ is conventionally translated to ‘rooms’ in English. Such translation, while correctly conjuring up the notion of spatial containment, overlooks the fundamental difference in what may be contained, or the social construction of that space. Whereas a room in the West is perceived as a pre-provisioned space with a specific purpose, bang is multi-functional and is provisioned according to the chosen purpose/s (Choi & Greenfield, 2009, in press). Bang, for instance, can metamorphose into the living room, bedroom, dining room, and study at the occupant’s will. Considering that approximately 80% of Korean households own at least one computer with broadband Internet (MIC, 2008, vii), it comes as no surprise that high-speed connection is an essential attribute of bangs. Similarly, most commercial bangs are now heavily multimedia-embedded and broadband connected, providing increased opportunities for two contrasting yet inter-related types of connection: first, as bangs form decentralised connection points they provide instant and spontaneous connection through geo-social mobility; and second, because bangs are physically and socially constrained spaces, they provide constant and pervasive connection through immobility (Choi & Greenfield, 2008, in press). Koreans’ profound expectation and desire for constant connection is evident in the palpability of screens including those on televisions and mobile phones in many of the sub-bangs in jjimjilbang (sauna-like themed hot rooms), some of which have a temperature of over 70°C. Therefore, socialisation and connection are two main qualities of commercial bangs, including PC-, DVD-, jjimjil-, and norae (karaoke)-bangs, where the space becomes a typologically obscure field to be re- and de-territorialised. Trans-youth As the prefix (trans-) suggests, trans-youth are those who are in transition from youth to adulthood. However, the concept does not indicate a clear separation between youth and adult; rather, it postulates that the inbetween liminal zone is unstable and constantly being redefined. This convergence is particularly evident with the rise of the network sociality

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Jaz Hee-jeong Choi: Searching the Self in Seoul…

(Wittel, 2001), which refers to the propensity of individuals to connect and disconnect from various social collectives according to their preferences. In Korea, it is difficult to discuss trans-youth without also discussing the university entrance exam. Like Japan and the People’s Republic of China, Korea continues to place great importance in education, a fundamental Confucian value. In addition, its traditionally collective (Hofstede, 1997) and interdependent (Markus & Kitayama, 1991) culture fosters identity formation denotative of the individual’s sociocultural categories – such as ‘student’ and ‘worker’ – than individual self identification. This differs from Western cultural traditions in which the self is primarily recognised as an autonomous entity. The university entrance exam is a rite of passage for young Koreans; the period of trans-youth for them begins then. It is between the ages of 18 and 24, a time in which young Koreans are temporarily emancipated from the traditional collective social belonging – as neither students nor adults. Furthermore, this demographic is situated on the border between what Prensky (2001) terms digital ‘natives’ and ‘immigrants.’ Bypassing the debate on whether generational division of digital competency is effective (as evident in my definition of trans-youth, I do not agree with the view), what is interesting about trans-youth is that they are the pioneering users of the network communication in the country that has taken the fastest path to become one of the most connected nations in the world (OECD, 2006). While those who were born into the broadband era of mind-90’s were too young to participate, trans-youth have had the means and willingness to contribute to shaping Korean technosocial landscape. To understand mobile and ubiquitous media as the bridging communication channels for the 21st century and the future, we must reconsider the notions of mobility and ubiquity. This aspect is examined from the perspective of trans-youth in Seoul, the capital city of the ‘broadband miracle’ (Hazlett, 2004). Trans-youth at the Intersection Previous sections have described the three core intersectional elements for urban network sociality (Foth, 2006): people (trans-youth), place (Seoul), and technology (constant and instant connection – bang and mobile networks): In between youth and adulthood, how are trans-youth situated at this junction? More specifically, how do trans-youth perceive and connect with themselves and others in Seoul? People: The Self The participants in my research indicated that “openness (to novel and foreign ideas), self-centredness, and familiarity with internet technologies” were the central distinguishing features of their age group.

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

This conveys breaking away from traditional values and practices. However, their approach to their own lives contradicts this view. Initially I assumed the trans-youth phase to be the ‘in-between play time’ bridging two periods of socially and rigidly defined collectivity and thus experimentations with non-traditional or even ‘radical’ ideas were expected. However, the interviews revealed that trans-youth saw the time as a ‘go-between’ period than ‘in-between’ – as “the time to prepare (for the future).” Many did not see themselves as adults, and believed that the adulthood that is yet to come must involve a sense of responsibility and security manifested as a full-time job and in some cases (mostly males), starting one’s own family. In this respect, participants appear to have propensity to retain traditional values. Therefore it became apparent that traditional collectivist and interdependent qualities still remain culturally embedded yet concurrently in transformation (Choi, 2007b), requiring trans-youth to be in constant value negotiation and therefore uncertainty. Many participants expressed “inadequacy” in themselves: they felt obliged to “do something” and they were not “doing enough of it” but were uncertain about “what it is that they have to do.” Having uncertainty in their imagining of the present and future is unsurprising. However, what needs to be taken into account in understanding the significance of their uncertainty – further, their ontological insecurity – is the sociocultural context that intensifies this sense. More specifically, rapid development of South Korea after its long history of cultural insulation necessitated Koreans to quickly ‘gloss over’ ideologies from the outside (mostly Americo-European) leaving inadequate time for the people to interpret and reappropriate the new. What was promoted top-down, as mentioned before, was that ‘the new’ takes form of superiority yet destructive evil. Furthermore, the after-effect of the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 brought a sudden diminution in the nation’s rapid economic development. This added to the sense of ontological insecurity for Koreans. In turn, today’s Korean trans-youth feel the pressure to prepare for the future in which no basic security is assured, particularly within the current social system. On the personal level, most of the participants currently in university admitted that, as with most young Koreans, their current paths are not of their choice and interests but rather had been predetermined by their academic performance at high school and the university entrance exam. They assured that this situation would continue after graduation, as the future career would also likely be unrelated to the current path. Such discrepancies or discontinuities in their life-paths cause increased concerns and insecurities. Place: Seoul Nearly half of the national GDP is generated in the capital region of Seoul and Gyeonggi Province (Fujita & Thisse, 2002). As such, Seoul has

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Jaz Hee-jeong Choi: Searching the Self in Seoul…

greater significance than merely as the capital city, which is reflected in some locals referring to the country as the ‘Republic of Seoul.’ From the participants’ responses, Seoul is depicted as a “huge, polluted city where … everything begins and exists in a wider variety than anywhere else in Korea … Anything is possible and is scattered around the city … making it feel very random, but energetic… It’s crowded with young people.” The participants acknowledged that Seoul is “the cool city,” the economic and cultural hub especially for young Koreans. However, many stated that they did not wish to remain in the city as residents in the future; those who did said it was for economic and cultural reasons. At least 10% of the total participants explicitly stated they hoped to immigrate to a different country with major reasons being a better lifestyle – working and living environment – afforded in developed countries. This not only reflects the current brain drain problem that the Korean government is facing owing to the changing notion of ‘lifetime career (or lack thereof)’ since the Asian Financial Crisis, but also the ‘longer planning horizon’ of Korean trans-youth in evaluating the ‘amount of the total net present value of lifetime earning’ (S. Kim, 2006, p. 22). Most of those who planned to remain in Korea wished to live in fringe cities around Seoul hinting at further urban sprawl in the region. This was to ensure that they have access to better career and opportunities and cultural happenings while having more yuhyoo (space) away from the congested and hectic life in Seoul. The notion of yuhyoo is important, as it was the most frequently used word by the participants to describe their desired lifestyle. This ‘(extra)space’ can take form of geographical, mental, emotional, and temporal spatiality – a ‘space to play’ or in their definition of play, a space to do what they want free from “boundaries of the everyday norms.” What else can such a space be when created other than the place to play: the playground? Technology: Connecting For Seoul trans-youth, the network connection is a given parameter in their existence. Wired connection is ubiquitously available in big and small everyday places – e.g. at home, school, work, cafés, and PC-bangs. Wired connection is used more frequently and via wider types of media compared to more costly wireless connection. For example, the participants indicated that their use of mobile phones remains mainly at the voice-andtext level, although nearly 60% of the participants had their parents paying for their mobile phone bills. For the parents, the appeal of paying for the connection is twofold: first, it provides a sense of heightened security both in the emergency and day-to-day context as a ‘sort of leash’ (Lobet-Maris, 2003, p. 90); second, mobile phone ownership has become a norm and thus non-ownership will place their child in the ‘deviant/minority category’ which is a highly undesirable situation in the collective Korean culture.

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

Moreover, maintaining constant connection with significant others is crucial from the traditional cultural perspective, as the self is not perceived to be a discrete autonomous entity but contextually defined in relation to such connection. Therefore, being connected is more a social necessity than a choice, and consequently, so is the use of social networking sites (SNSs) for trans-youth. SNS is a quotidian and substantial part of trans-youth’s communicative ecology (for communcative ecology, cf. Foth & Hearn, 2007). Their routine usage of Cyworld (http://www.cyworld.com), built upon a solid ground made up of 90% of Korean internet users in their twenties (Choi, 2006, p. 174) confirms this view. As some participants noted, Cyworld is a “performative space” where the users express themselves in order to communicate in high- and low-contextual manner (multimedia and text respectively) with the audience, the majority of which are one’s existing offline connections. Such performance is presented to evoke a further discussion on the phone, but mainly and ultimately in a “face-to-face meeting with friends.” Here, the level of friendship is reflected on the mode of communication as they “only feel comfortable to call close friends directly or at all.” In other words, connectivity through SNS is socially expected, and available to wide social ties; the scope narrows as it reaches texting, which is viewed as more direct and personal than a message on SNS, and often a predecessor of voicecalls. Voicecalls are limited to formal, urgent, or in-depth communication. With this in mind, enquiries into their social activity patterns revealed an intricate interconnection of three domains of connectivity germane to Seoul – ubiquitous (media), mobile (personal), and geographic (city): firstly, personal expressions (high-contextual and performative) are shared through multiple distributed interactions; secondly, this then foregrounds mobile texting to coordinate further synchronous interactions; thirdly, face-to-face (FtF) interactions occur in places such as cafes, pubs, and restaurants in their ‘hangouts’ – usually buzzing commercial districts where young people eat, shop, entertain, and socialise (e.g. Shinchon and Hongdae area) – where they create a private space within the public; finally, the interaction comes to a cycle as the FtF interaction is stored and shared via multimedia on SNS. Multiplicities of such cycles invoke a sense of what is lacking in the transtyouth period, social continuity in which the self is assured through updating and sharing. Being accessed, therefore, denotes the validity of the accessed as a node in a cyclic interactive network of the accessing. Lobet-Maris’s notion of mobile tribe (2003) resonates closely here: I am accessed, therefore I exist. Folding into this notion is bang, as bangs facilitate and encompass various scales and types of such multiplicities. Bang signifies inclusion, sharing, and metamorphosis.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Jaz Hee-jeong Choi: Searching the Self in Seoul…

Now from Here This paper explored the intersection of people, place, and technology from the perspective of Seoul trans-youth today. At this juncture mobility and ubiquity exist interdependently in the urban networks of Seoul, which are constantly reconfigured according to intense geographical, technological, and social changes. Ontological insecurities stemming from such shifting of urban infrastructures encourage trans-youth to seek ways to create a sense of continuity, a difficult task in view of the transitional selfidentification phase in which they find (or lost) themselves. One participant with non-Korean origin metaphorically described Seoul as a subway station – an ephemeral place that is not a permanent destination. Is Seoul then a ‘non-place’ in Augé’s (1995) terms? At times Seoul conveys an unmistakable sense of isolation and negation both for individuals and for the city itself like other global metropolises. Yet it is a city like no other technically (for better or worse), socially, or technosocially. Despite the ostensible precariousness of its urbanscape, every fabric of Seoul holds an element of bang that fills the in-betweens of now and then, here and there, and you and me, creating a unique sense of place that is Seoul. It is transyouth who are actively using, creating, and recreating bangs at intersections of myriads of their cyclic interactions as they feel the need to experience a sense of continuity for their ontological security. For trans-youth of Seoul, the city is definitely not a non-place but a oui-place as through urban networking, they make it a we-place.

REFERENCES Augé, M. (1995). Non-places : introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity. London ; New York: Verso. Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. (2007). Background Note: South Korea. Retrieved May 16, 2007, from http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2800.htm Chee, F. (2006). The Games We Play Online and Offline: Making Wang-tta in Korea. Popular Communication, 4(3), 225 - 239. Choi, J. H.-j. (2006). Living in Cyworld: Contextualising Cy-Ties in South Korea. In A. Bruns & J. Jacobs (Eds.), Uses of blogs (Vol. 38, pp. vi, 267 p.). New York: Peter Lang.

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Choi, J. H.-j. (2007a, July 5-6). All Things Big and Small: Rising Importance of Mobile Media in South Korea. Paper presented at the China East Asia Media New Media Conference, QUT, Brisbane. Choi, J. H.-j. (2007b). Approaching the Mobile Culture of East Asia. M/C Journal, 10(1). Choi, J. H.-j., & Greenfield, A. (2009, in press). To connect and flow in Seoul: Ubiquitous technologies, urban infrastructure and everyday life in the contemporary Korean city In M. Foth (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus : capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Foth, M. (2006). Towards a Design Methodology to Support Social Networks of Residents in Inner-City Apartment Buildings. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. Foth, M., & Hearn, G. (2007). Networked Individualism of Urban Residents: Discovering the Communicative Ecology in Inner-City Apartment Complexes. Information, Communication & Society, 10(5). Fujita, M., & Thisse, J.-F. (2002). Economics of agglomeration : cities, industrial location, and regional growth. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press. Hazlett, T. W. (2004). Broadband Miracle. Retrieved May 16, 2007, from http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_wsj-broadband_miracle.htm Hofstede, G. H. (1997). Cultures and organizations : software of the mind ([Rev. ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Kang, J.-m. (2006). Korean Code ( ( )

). Seoul: Inmulgwasasang

Kim, S. (2006). Brain Drain, Brain Gain, and Korean Global Brain Network: A Critical Literature Survey and Research Agenda. Retrieved Jul 11th, 2008, from http://www.uwm.edu/~kim/research.htm

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Jaz Hee-jeong Choi: Searching the Self in Seoul…

Kim, S. H. (2005). The Paradox of Public Space in the Asian Metropolis. Paper presented at the Germany-Korea Public Space Forum. Retrieved. from http://archurban.maru.net/bbs/view.php?id=article&page=1&sn1=&divpage =1&sn=off&ss=on&sc=on&select_arrange=headnum&desc=asc&no=45. Lobet-Maris, C. (2003). Mobile Phone Tribes: Youth and Social Identity. In L. Fortunati, J. E. Katz & R. Riccini (Eds.), Mediating the human body : technology, communication, and fashion (pp. 87-92). Mahwah, N.J. ; London: L. Erlbaum. Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the Self: Implications for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224-253. MIC. (2008). Survey on the Computer and Internet Usage. Retrieved Jun 11, 2008, from http://isis.nida.or.kr/board/service/bbsView.jsp?bbs_id=10&item_id=303&c urPage=1&dummy=20080813111718&multiBoard=10 OECD. (2006). OECD Broadband Statistics to December 2006. Retrieved May 16, 2007, from http://www.oecd.org/document/7/0,3343,en_2649_37441_38446855_1_1_1 _37441,00.html#Data2005 Oldenburg, R. (2001). Celebrating the third place : inspiring stories about the "great good places" at the heart of our communities. New York: Marlowe & Co. Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. Retrieved August 6, 2006, from http://www.twitchspeed.com/site/Prensky%20%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.htm The World Bank. (2006). Korea as a Knowledge Economy: Evolutionary Process and Lessons Learned - Overiew. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Vanderbilt, T. (2005). Circuit City. Artforum, 44(3), 65-66. Wittel, A. (2001). Toward a Network Sociality. Theory Culture Society, 18(6), 51-76. Yoon, K. (2003). Retraditionalizing the Mobile: Young People's Sociality and Mobile Phone Use in Seoul, South Korea. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 6(3), 327-343.

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

Wolfgang Coy

Volunteered Slavery - Communicate Whenever & Wherever Modern societies may be characterized by a spread and refinement of surveillance and control, staring from clocks and watches over mass media to internet and mobiles. The tension between society as a control structure and individuals that claim a “right to be left alone” grows despite punctual liberation from dictatorial governments. Governments are nowadays only one player in the fight for date privacy. Large international corporates like financial institutes, insurance companies, Google or Microsoft are as active in this field as small mail-order houses, mailing lists , or web fora. Data Mining, or Customer Relationship Management has become a major industry that is complemented by mafia-like structures stealing and misusing private data. Strange enough the loss of privacy is complemented by a disarming ignorance when private date are given to dealers or spread over social networks like facebook or myspace. Correspondingly phone talks of private nature are disclosed in public places. To be reached whenever and wherever is just another aspect of that open mobile society, where mobile phones and UMTSCards may be, and is, located up to a circle of 50m radius inside the city. The “right to be left alone” that has also a political dimension, changed to some voluntary cooperation to be identified and noted everywhere at any time.

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

György Csepeli

Masquerade in the Blogroom (Effects of Anonimity on Communication in the New Medium)

There can be any doubt of the nature of change that over the past decades has dramatically transformed the way people communicate and interact in the world. In 1990 no people outside the research community in US had accessed to the Internet. According to Nie and Erbring (2000) the number of people communicating online at the end of the last century has risen above 450 million and due to the surge of 3G mobile technology this number is expected to double in each year. In Hungary the number of people using the internet in 2008 has risen above 40 % of the population of 10 million. This means that taking into account the Rogers model for the adoption and diffusion of innovations in Hungarian society the innovators and elarly adopters have been followed by an early majority whose members have decided to use Internet more quickly than the average. Member of the late majority and laggards are still hindered in adopting Internet by scepticism, technological conservativism and traditionalism which make them yet unlikely to adopt this revolutionary way of communication. The critical mass needed for the revolution, however, has emerged. There are several reasons for the diffusion of Internet in the society including the Hungarian society as well. It allows people to transmit data directly, easily and relatively inexpensively. It creates a network of people which frees communication completely from the constraint of physical corcumstances. It makes possible simultaneous production and consumption of diverse contents that are delivered promptly and economically causing profound changes in business, culture, politics and most importantly in interactive human communications. The popular appeal of Internet in interactive human communication is characterized by its capacity to enlarge the sphere of communication. This sphere is naturally more spacious for those who read and write in languages spoken by hundreds of millions. The chat rooms, newsgroups, electronic mail exchanges, message boards, interactive web 2.0 applications, however, provide members of smaller language communities with ample opportunity to engage in heated political discussions, give and take psychological advices, entertain each other or perform simple acts of self-presentation. Moreover, all these communicative transactions take place in a space of anonymity where there is no need to disclose identity. Actors of online social interaction can be completely anonymous, known to one another by pseudonymes or names which are not really identifiable. As opposed to encounters in the usual everyday social environments encounters in the

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking György Csepeli: Masquerade in the Blogroom…

virtual space are characterized by low risks of disclosing identity since no physical cues of identification are accessible. Persons encountering with each other in the virtual sphere are deprived of cues of person perception which give information concerning gender, race, age, occupation, social statuts last but not least and physical attractiveness. Communication processes in the virtual rooms inhabited by invisible inhabitants can be interpreted in terms of deindividuation or reduced sense of responsibility. Under conditions of invisibility, anonymity and lack of physical contact individuals are deprived of their continous „me”. This is the opposite which they experience regularly under the conditions of real everyday life where they have to interorize the „me” as the organized set of attitudes of others which controlls the forces of their spontaneous „I” (Mead, 1934). Zimbardo (1970) notes that deindividuation weakens people’s ability to restrain their behavior and enhances the tendency to produce antisocial impulsive and disinhibited behavor. Milgram found that in the „remote feedback” condition in which the victim to be punished by electric shock had not been seen and heard, 66 % of the experimental subjects delivered the maximum shock of 440 volts (Milgram, 1974). The loss of the individual self-awareness, and the negative effects of anonimity stemming from Internet based communication are aptly coined by Mc Kenna and Green (2002) as „flaming” wich is the practice of engaging in an angry, hostile, and often offensive exchange resulting in greater hostility and aggressive responses. According to Grice the success of communication is depending on how messages are delivered in sincere, straightforward fashion leaving no room for redundance, ambiguity and irrelavance (Grice, 1975). Curiously enough, in internet-medated communication anonymous participants violate all rules of communication set by Grice. Paradoxically, actors cannot disclose their identity, even if they would have wanted to unmask themselves since there are no credible cues of identification. Unreliable inferences concerning the identity of the partners can be made based on conversational style but one can never be sure of the reliability of judgment since there is no guarantee of the willingness to be really understood. It is impossible for actors to be certain of their identity. This study is about texts elicited by a political blog started in the heated days of election campaign of 2006 in Hungary. Only the author of the blog had real name (if anything can be real in cyberspace). The posts have been published daily in a Hungarian blogging platform called „blogter”. The identity of the author was clear from the outset. He was political state secreatary taking part in the parliamentary election campaign on behalf of the liberal party in a district where liberals had no chance to win. Moreover there was a scandal which dominated the local campaign. The original candidate was forced to withdraw his candidacy because of being severely inflicted by a slanderous accusation. The blog originally was set for comments on the events of the campaign. Later, when the campaign had passed the blog was transformed

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

into a place where direct political issues were replaced by public policy problems and intellectual complexities serving as an chamber of comments and opinions echoing the blogger’s liberal political credo, intellectual leanings and personal knowledge of social psychology. The content generated by anonymous users often dcminated by voices of criticism. Verbal gangsterism, foolishness, ignorance, superficiality, and egoism are among the accusations. According to Andrew Keen (2007) web 2.0 is merely a „vanity press” where the untalented „noble amateurs” go to harvess celebration and fame.Lee Siegel speaks about the „age of the electronic mob” which is in striking contrast with the expectations of digital utopias celebrating wiki knowledge and wikinomics (Tapscott, Williams, 2006, Csepeli, 2008). The world of political blogs is far from the ideal of deliberative democracy framed by democratic constitutions stressing the importance of freedom of speech. New ethics will be required to regulate the new practices of political communication. Anonimity, inaccountability and irresponsibility breed a special kind of digital natives identified by Sustein as „polarisation entrepreneurs” (Sustein, 2007). As far as my blog concerns contents produced by the „daily me”of the anonymous individuals were ordered along a two by two set of categories. Trying to cope with the contents dimensions of relevanceirrelevance and criticism-affirmation were distiunghised. Posts with explicit political messages generally tended to elicit critical-irrelevant responses. Affirmative-relevant responses were infrequent. The high frequency of critical and irrelevant contents cannot be a surprise since political communication is a means of political struggle. „Polarisation enrepreneurs” creeping into the blogsphere unleashed the passions and hatreds of their „daily me”. Irrelevance was caused most probably by misunderstanding of the intents of the author of the blog. Bloggers expressed critical and irrelevant oppositional views which resisted cognitive complexity. Partisanship and sectarian commitment obscured their cognitive horizons showing a characteristic compulsive character. Right wing political extremist interpretations of political events become selfperpetuating truths demonstrating classic examples of dogmatism and authoritarianism.Verbal vandalism occurred frequently. The borders have vanished between extremist proselytizing and craziness. In order to know more about the details of the patterns of responses more quantitative research will be needed. As a result of such analysis more will be known about the limits of reaching audience through the web. Moreover, a thorough analysis will shed light on the nature of reception in communication. Masquarade on the internet makes visible between souls the divide which remains unnoticed in real time real situation encounters. As times have passed „flaming” tended to occur least frequently in my blog. Vandals, terminators, gangsters disappeared. The question remains

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking György Csepeli: Masquerade in the Blogroom…

to be answered whether the evolution of the new information medium will increase or decrerase the quality of the functioning of democracy. Anxiety is, however, not unfounded. The future of anonymous free speech on the net holds out far more risk than promise. REFERENCES Csepeli, Gy. 2008. Wiki Knowledge. Resurgence of the Collective Mind: In Nyiri, K. (Ed.) Towards a Philosophy of Telecommunications Convergence. Vienne:Passagen. (in press) Grice, H.P. 1975. Logic and conversation. New York: Academic Press. Keen, A. 2008.The Cult of the Amateur:How blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today’s user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, aour values. McKenna, K.Y.A., Green, A.S. 2002. Virtual Group Dynamics. Group Dynamics:Theory, Resarch and Peactrice. 6, 116-127. Mead, G.H. 1934. Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago:The University of Chicago Press. pp. 173-178. Milgram, 1974. Obedience to authority. An experimental view. New York:Harper and Rpw. Nie, N.H., Erbring, L. 2000. Internet and society: A preliminary report. Stanford,CA: Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society. Retrived from: http://www.stanford.edu/group/siqss Siegel, L. 2007. Against the Machine:Being Human int he Age of the Electronic Mob. Sunstein, C.R. 1007. Republic com.2.0 Princeton:Princeton University Press Tapscott, D., Williams, A. 2006. Wikinomics:How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. London:Portfolio. Zimbardo, P. 1970. The human choce:Individuation, reason, and order versus deindividuation, impulse and chaos. In W.J. Arnold and Levine, D. (Eds) Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. 1969. Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press.

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

Gabriela David

Clarifying the Mysteries of an Exposed Intimacy: Another Intimate Representation Mise en scène.

Nowadays, image production and diffusion cannot be separated. According to Chalfen, what people do with images and in turn, what this imagery does for people is intertwined to such an extent that we can not differ one from the other. In order to understand how those images are mentally organized, the accent of analysis should probably be on what we do with them, since that is what will turn out to be our real imageappropriation. For example, posting on the Web is not the same as screening at a festival. Evidently, different medias of diffusion have a strong impact on how creation and reception will occur. Through a case study analysis: Verrier’s 2007 Pocket Film, firstprize winning: “Porte de Choisy” (shot with a camphone) I will try to exemplify the aesthetic of what I would call “the exposable” versus the “non exposable”, relating this exposed intimacy concept to our mobile culture. How does the camphone help and encourage the appropriation of our intimacy? Does a special or particular iconography get developed or supported by the use of the camphone in the intimate sphere? How does the medium change the way we can shoot and then share our films? How do we perceive these images? But first: what are these images? In order to plunge directly into our analysis, I’ll start by describing the Pocket Film: “Porte de Choisy” in its most characteristic and basic features: frame, image quality, editing, sound, etc, because they are the intrinsic specificities that condition both its sense and thus our gaze. “Porte de Choisy” is a personal, intimate shortcut that depicts a couple’s moment at home, probably after they have had intercourse. Shot with a V600 Sony Ericsson camphone, the film lasts 8 minutes but seems rather slow. It is presupposed that camphone-films should last 1-2 minutes or just some seconds, so as to be sent as MMS or to be shown on-line. “Porte de Choisy” has a particular electric noise that reminds us of the analogical film grain, and which gives a strong sense of “recording reality”. The low image quality, the out of frames, the out of focus, the sound quality, the pixilated image, in fact all these aesthetic characteristics are the essence of the film. The image noise is at the same time extremely disturbing and interesting. The film is clearly divided into three parts: 1. The bathroom: intimate personal space (little light, grainy, little movement) 2. The bed: the couple’s place. (Movement, out of frame, out of focus)

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Gabriela David: Clarifying the Mysteries of an Exposed Intimacy…

3. The mirror-desk: relational place, virtual ball (freeze frame, long take, suspended time) 1. The intimate personal space. The camera moves and breathes, shaking and trying to find the best shooting angle. As if it were our eyes, after a short time we focus and then recognize, framed between blue, black and white lines, the head of a young woman sitting somewhere we guess is the toilet. The camera is off-screen, in another room, the same as this young woman’s interlocutor. “The telephone is an irresistible intruder in time or place…” said Mc. Luhan in 1964. Through the camphone-conversation, another space-time pervades into the couple’s intimate space-time. She speaks through her mobile phone and he films her with his own one. She sets an appointment, which will take place at Porte de Choisy. In the toilets, a place of personal privacy par excellence, we witness her silences. Then, she feels stared at and glances at her lover. She smiles, probably happy and in complicity. From that moment onwards, the seduction game starts. When she finishes her telephone conversation, irritated, she throws her mobile to the floor. We hear everyday expressions such as: “Fuck it! - It is just pissing me off ! - I’ve got to take my shower.” After this little action, we do not expect that much camera movement. But when the young lady comes out of the bathroom the camera moves so much that there is a confusion of what is currently happening.

She knows she is being filmed and acts like she no longer want to be. She says: “Stop it”, and asks him to stop filming, but she’s not really embarrassed to be filmed in this intimate moment. First, because the person filming is her boyfriend and secondly, because the camphone does not threaten in any way the privacy of their exchange. The operation of recording with so familiar a tool creates new intimate games and encourages experimentation. Shooting images with a camphone is technically easy. The difficult part is: how do we find interesting content for our shots? And then: why do we decide to show them? Do we decide to expose ourselves or not?

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

2. The couple’s space. Sometimes routine things, everyday life moments, such as eating, going to bed, being with friends, are neglected. We feel then a need to show them more; because if we do not, we might miss these beloved moments. In this intimate and everyday scene, the moment we perceive the young woman completely naked is when she walks from the toilettes to the bedroom. She had already given us clues when she said: “I have to get dressed”, but this is actually the moment we see it. Furtive limits between the hidden and the shown settle. How can an image make us see this thin trace? How and why can the camphone help rebuild this dear private space? During the Middle Ages, privacy and modesty were concepts that did not exist as such; promiscuity and gender confusion defined the rule. Intimacy was understood and seen as a social and collective concept. The bedroom was the place for sociability, for relaxing, for talks and of course for making love; the place where throughout the day intimates were received. The grand toilet took place outside the room. Waking up or taking a bath were genuine ceremonies almost ritualized for a privileged public. From the 16th century to the beginning of the 18th, the Church, as opposed to Protestantism, condemned promiscuity and nudity and violently closed public baths. The idea that what enters and leaves the body is bad and unhealthy was instilled. During the 18th century, an individualistic feeling developed, and the moments of pleasure and seduction were much more negotiated, particularly among women. In the 19th century and with the bourgeois project, rules were transformed: there was a close distribution of space and each place had its own function, giving the possibility to various exchanges and contacts, allowing or prohibiting certain types of relationships and behaviours. For example, women joined their husbands in the same bedroom with only one bed. This made it almost impossible for women to write in their private diaries. The methodical relations between identity and dependence settled in the heart of the private home. Concepts in general change with different eras. So what is the intimate today? Maybe we could say that it is what we share only with a very close few. It is also our secret garden, the unknown of oneself towards oneself. It is not my intention to develop closed definitions. Santiago Kovadloff’s reflection is very suggestive: “With the word intimate I reference to this spiritual region and its mode of contact where we give to know, not exactly what we believe, but more profound and deeply what we are.” Privacy is a flux, a flow, it's the inevitable, what we could not avoid doing, so as not to betray our spontaneity, our thirst for transparency. Probably it is the expression of our most substantive needs. We can not really make strong generalizations or talk about intimacy in general terms. I could say that sometimes intimacy might be:

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Gabriela David: Clarifying the Mysteries of an Exposed Intimacy…

nudity, the toilets, sex, lovers, personal diaries, personal correspondence, secrets. Also our dark areas, mourning, pain, feelings, creation, and of course our dreams. However, getting back to our analysis, we should discern if we are talking about the couple’s intimate relationship in reference to the content of the images (in this case, the very private and committed images shot in the bedroom), or if images are intimate beyond the recorded topic, just because we have an internal feeling that qualifies “the intimate” rather than where or in what context they are exposed. I will leave this as an open question for us to discuss later. Revealing what is expected to remain hidden is crossing a border. One could say that what these open windows reveal are personal pictures. By exposing and sharing our intimacy we claim to find this lost content in ourselves. It seems paradoxical because the exposed intimacy seeks to reverse, to talk to everyone, and this, tautologically in intimacy, by definition, has no place. Here the film reveals to us the couple’s secrets. But once the secret is shared, our task is to understand its mystery. Today the camphone lies among the latest tools and techniques that enable and facilitate the exchange of images, sharing of thoughts. It enhances more and more visual contact. Naturally, these camphone-images that we take and observe multiply both our need to watch and (therefore) to be seen. All the images that we make and then (re) watch, no matter where, invite us through this sharing, to watch our own look. The camphone becomes, probably, in a mirror object or our gaze. How did this sharing of intimacy become public? What is this paradoxical space, this “in-between”? Let’s return back in time a bit. For example, do you remember Jennifer Kaye Ringley? Between April 1996 and the end of 2003, J.K.Ringley showed through her Web Cam, her intimate daily virtual world. She was the first to voluntarily make public (on the World Wide Web) images of her private life. We could see her in her living room, in her sleep, and so on. It is estimated that at the peak of her popularity there were between 3 to 4 million visits each day on JenniCam.org. After her, there has been a real flow of cyber-exhibitionist and cyber-voyeurs. Opening the window of her intimate world, Jennifer Ringley smashed the conventional cultural patterns and started both disturbing and addicting us with the power of sharing and watching intimacy. Now in 2008, when reality TV shows such as Big Brother are already anchored in our cultures, Ringley's unapologetic self-opened window gave the world its first taste of what was to eventually dominate our tubes: interactive Web sites, paid-for Net subscriptions, video on-demand and user-generated video.

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

With the boom of sharing platforms such as Flickr, established in February 2004, YouTube and Dailymotion, both created in February 2005, plus the blogging roar, also in 2004, we are all learning to show our pictures without any shame to the whole Web. Blog examples are endless; of course there is a lot of narcissism, but also a strong and evident need of the other. To share SMS, images or MMS, one must send it to someone specific, usually someone who already belongs to our contact list. Through Bluetooth this action happens almost automatically. However sometimes it can also happen with unknown people, who are physically close, sharing the same space. Before the digital revolution boom we were more accustomed to build our images through the eye: frame in the viewfinder, compose, make the choice of light, and so on. With the single-lens reflex (SLR) this is still possible, but it seems as if framing through the viewfinder became less and less important daily. Because and thanks to its small size and ease of handling, our whole body is more at stake with the camphone. Perhaps it is to counterbalance the low image quality. The image is more corporal, probably more sensorial. I presume this is the reason why poor camphone image quality does not really matter that much. The stress is on what taking the photo or video enables us to live. I would call it “the corporality of the image” or “living our images”. For example, in the second part of “Porte de Choisy”, so as to get back to our example, when they are in bed, the image is saturated. There is a hand game, a small fight. The physical enters into the heart of the filmed action. It is the corporality of the image that interests us the most. We see them lie down; we listen to guttural sounds and small cries. We recall films such as those filmed with the principles of the Dogma 95’, or Blair Witch Project, just to name a few bestseller references of a moving camera. Here it is almost as if there was a third person filming. The relationship between the “on-camera” actions and the “behind-camera” reactions are easily legible. And then silence… the young woman lets herself be captured. Through the close-ups and the low

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Gabriela David: Clarifying the Mysteries of an Exposed Intimacy…

angle shots, especially of her face and breasts, we see a change in their rapports. She seems docile, but on the other hand, through their physical configuration we perceive she isn’t. In the wake of intimacy, there is nudity. She doesn’t get undressed; she is shamelessly naked and behaves in a natural manner. Like a game of hide and seek, where he tries to catch her (to film her); she tries to hide, but finally lets him capture her (film her).

Antonin Verrier shows us a typical morning in the life of a young French couple: biography as portrait. A reflection on the use of the otherness to represent ourselves, to build one’s own “intimate-image-space.” A subjective and polyphonic construction of the ethos, giving out emotions with no shame to show joy. However, both characters are conscious of being in the broad confines of a prohibited montrable. She asks him several times to stop. He replies mischievously singing: “Watch out, I'm filming.” As if to say: attention, we are in a prohibited land, as if filming would be equal to showing to a public. The visual desire to show ourselves lies in each one of us, where both the Web (“an open window to the world”) and the camphone, transform this desire, doubly, into a “mirror and window open to ourselves”. The natural light and details of her body shots give the film its raw and direct sense. The dermis joins the idea of classic binômiques relations such as: inside-outside, private-public, hidden-shown, exposed-not exposed, shame-shamelessness. Our skin is so fragile, so easy to be hit. But what does the paradox of not being intimidated by the idea of exposing our privacy mean? If we show our body, does it obviously mean we show our privacy? Is a naked body a willingness to cross the boundaries of the “exposable”? And if the body is naked, does that necessarily mean that the heart is exposed bare?

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

3. The desk-mirror: the relational space: the personal virtual ball.

The moment she gets up out of bed and heads toward the desk is the moment when we see she is playing for the camera. The camphone continues shooting. Strangely the young lady does not grab, as it would be usual, a T-shirt, underwear or something to wear. She continues playing her muse role and stays naked. The staging of intimacy takes full extent. Through the window, natural daylight dazzles us. The insideoutside contrast is quite steep. Unlike when you film with a film where the response to light is determined by the sensitivity of the film, most camphones have no possibility of adjusting light. This means that the person who films must be familiar with the model used to better predict the image outcome. In most camphones, light sensors’ quality is still rather precarious. But this is evolving further daily. Aesthetic choices are built in symbiosis with the used tools. “I'll watch it on the Internet” she says winking at the GPSs. Sitting at her desk with a sort of halo of beauty; she plays the model’s figure. In our imaginary museum we think of women at their dressing table. Other well known paintings that we might remember: Vermeer in The Art of Painting, Velasquez in Venus in the mirror Eckersberg in Standing Woman in Front of a Mirror, Seurat’s Poseuse back, and Lautrec’s The Toilet. The Danish painter Hammershøi in Rest. And the list is continuous...In this film the role of the mirror is hijacked by the computer screen; it is a mirror that takes us to another dimension, to virtuality, if that exists. While the Windows logo appears on the screen, he asks her: “Could you turn the little white light on please?” “What?” she replies, but immediately turns it on and the verbal dialogue turns into a visual interaction. The action and the editing of the image are both in the picture. The camera never stops. As in “a work in progress”, we participate in the image construction. It is the “taking” or “making” of an image as construction of an iconic thought. He seeks his girlfriend’s best side; he seeks The image, her image.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Gabriela David: Clarifying the Mysteries of an Exposed Intimacy…

Just as in Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, in “Porte de Choisy,” the couple is on stage, offering the public the image they have or want to have of themselves. Both of them have several roles; none of them being truer than the other. For example, she is more girlish when in the toilets, more womanly in bed and more of an inspiring muse when at her desk. With him, the case is quite similar. He is both cameraman and actor. Are they Antonin Verrier and his girlfriend, or are they actors? Is it spontaneous or played? This deliberate confusion exists, leaving an open debate between fiction and documentary. Fiction or spontaneous reality filmed? For example towards the end of the film, he says: “Yeah it’s ok… It is ok! Fuck, you wrote on the EDF flyer! It was very…” and the quality of his voice gives us the impression he is playing; making us feel that everything has been written and performed. The false note is, as Goffman states in his definition, a gaffe or an oddity committed by one or several players, producing a contradiction, questioning the common reality, and causing a general malaise. It's his inner self versus his social me.

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

When at the desk, she does not look at the camera; she knows she is part of the decor. Natural light changes and gives a stronger painterly quality to the scene. The computer screen shines fluo white, enhancing a mirror effect. She turns to the camera and shatters romanticism, restores eye contact with him and so with us. She walks toward the camera as in many home videos. Throughout all the film it is the first time we see her pubis. But she gets closer very quickly and her illegible body close-up fills the whole screen. At last we see her body in a very strange perspective: deformed and stretched her breasts resemble those of the wolf of Romulus and Remus. The result is a final white frame. We came to watch the film and remain without knowing where the famous Porte de Choisy is, but that really does not matter. In conclusion The experimental creative potentiality camphones enable us to experience jumps to the curious eyes. Unfortunately there is, as usual, a little scorn towards the new tool and its usages. However camphone-images’ force lies in that they are generally shot with an integrated sense of sharing. The fact that these “capture and send” images circulate much more than the mere “capture and show” ones, makes new forms of interaction possible. (Kindberg, et al. 2004: 12) So, obviously, and fortunately, it is clear that new technologies raise new practices, new aesthetic experiences where representations of ourselves are (re)called into question. Reflecting these attempts of expression, our own images take on new roles. “Porte de Choisy” shows us more intimacy as if it were quite natural to do so. Previous iconically sacred intimacy is nowadays sometimes overexposed, but intertwines with the concept of sharing; we show and give ourselves to be seen by others. The concept of sharing has a direct link with P2P. It is with the Web 2.0 and its sharing platforms that real boundaries of sharing moved. Pictures, music, diaries, articles, videos, newspapers, television, blogs, in short, on the Web probably everything can be shared. So why choose intimacy to reaffirm the intensity of this sharing? With the increment of social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. we easily perceive that there is a need for sharing more intimate things. Why and how do we seek this perpetual eye contact? The Pocket Film Festival has a Web site where some films are posted. It reflects the Festival’s back-up towards the chosen artists. Those films are hardly posted on You.tube or Dailymotion. On their site, there is no possibility to comment on films. A defensive component? Safety, maybe? Yet not all films are posted on the Pocket Film Festival’s webpage. Why? Mr. Gaillard, from the Festival’s crew explained to me: “It's mainly

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Gabriela David: Clarifying the Mysteries of an Exposed Intimacy…

for law problems: some filmmakers prefer not to see their films circulate on the net and lose control.” Posting on the Web means losing control. But sharing might also be a desire of self-stimulation, self-shock, and yet to break the conventional figures. These images, as others in its kind provoke encountered reactions. Perhaps they teach us to push the limits of what we are socially used to seeing. But, as I perceive it, is a willingness to understand the daily life of each one of us. It is, at the same time, a will to see how our intimate life is organized, and a way to find our own personal images. Iconically it is very powerful to see how each world is peculiar and different. In my opinion, universal imaging is based in these strong, particular and singular types of images. With this voyeuristic exercise and/or game, Antonin Verrier probably wants us to comment on and understand the daily life of this, his couple. It is likely that his artistic goal is to discuss social norms, to see if there are still differences between what can be done and shown in a technical sense, and what can be done and shown, in a more social sense. As I before stated, due to their ease of handling, camphones are very important to us for their iconic side, and they facilitate our image making. They are very user friendly, and help unblock people’s iconic creativity. However, people try to be pragmatic and strategic in how they manage their images and/or their intimacy due to imposed social values. In “Porte de Choisy” it clearly shows through the backs and forths, the appearing and disappearing body games. Currently, we have passed the stage of voyeurism related to the novelty of the early Web Cam. Nevertheless, we still do not manage what we show of our private and intimate lives. Visual learning about how to deal with our privacy still seems to be long. Sometimes the intimate dimension legitimizes the image production, while the image itself provides a confirmation of that intimacy. This image production then generates a new moment of intimacy. Does this create a kind of vicious circle? Probably yes. As exposed before, images sent through the camphone become or accentuate new ways of camaraderie and sharing. H. Berking states: “the gift embodies the feelings”, an exchange that may represent interest, love, friendship, trust. With sent and received images, people have something to talk about. Today pixels transform intimacy into paintings. Still claiming the copyright of our own lives, we seek to play an active role in image production, looking for its registers, from diaries to home videos, personal blogs or pocket films. When and how did this couple decide to show their movie? What about this French couple’s shame? Why do so many people want/need narcissistically to be seen? It is not the aim of this research to answer this question, but it will be possible for future research to consider this. If we share our memories or our privacy, does our intimacy become public? Is privacy now public and intimacy that what privacy used to be? Mc Luhan’s

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neologism publicy indicates an exteriorized intimacy. It is likely that entertainment limits reserve many other surprises for us. We should monitor our overexposure. Not really taken seriously, camphones facilitate daily visual uses. But behind Verrier’s personal images we read social actions. With this analysis we can draw a kind of idiosyncrasy and distinguish some typical behaviors a young French middle class couple might commonly have: search information on the Internet and film themselves with a camphone. Two activities that belong to everyday life. Apart from their games of seduction, we observe that the image functions as a transfer of a newly created intimacy, and that the game of seduction through the camera becomes daily and lighthearted. So, does the camphone introduce a fundamental change in how we can shoot our own privacy? Disorientation may assail us when trying to answer; but after watching Porte de Choisy, or any other camphone video, something indefinable happens when we watch them. Something that belongs to familiarity: we are familiar with the situation. We are familiar with this type of imaging. We all know them. This is also the intriguing part of the camphone: because contradictorily it shows us how familiarity does not cease to amaze us.

REFERENCES * To watch Porte de Choisy: http://www.festivalpocketfilms.fr/article.php3?id_article=648 BANU, Georges, L'homme de dos : peinture, théâtre, Paris, Editeur A. Biro, 2000. BERKING, H., Sociology of Giving, London, Sage, 1999, p. 9, quoted by TAYLOR et HARPER, in “The Gift of the Gab”, Computer Supported Cooperative Work 12, 267-296, 2003, Netherlands. CARDON, Dominique, Le design de la visibilité : un essai de typologie du Web 2.0, http://www.internetactu.net/2008/02/01/le-design-de-la-visibiliteun-essai-de-typologie-du-web-20/ CHALFEN, Richard, 1987, Snapshot Versions of Life, Bowling Green Ohio, Bowling Green State University Popular Press. GOFFMAN, Erwin, La mise en scène de la vie quotidienne, La présentation de soi, traduit de l’anglais par Alain Accardo, les éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1973.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Gabriela David: Clarifying the Mysteries of an Exposed Intimacy…

KINDBERG, Tim, Mirjana Spasojevic, Rowanne Fleck, Abigail Sellen, How and Why People Use Camera Phones, November 26, 2004 KOSKELA, Hille, Webcams, TV shows and Mobile phones: Empowering Exhibitionism, Surveillance and society, CCTV Special (eds. Norris. McCahil and Wood) 2(2/3):199-215, http://www.surveillance-andsociety.org/cctv.htm KOSKELA, Hille, ‘Cam Era’ – the contemporary urban Panopticon, Surveillance & Society 1(3): 292-313, http://www.surveillance-andsociety.org KOSKINEN, Ilpo, Seeing with mobile Images: Towards Perpetual Visual Contact. http://www.google.fr/search?q=Seeing+with+mobile+Images%3A+Toward s+Perpetual+Visual+Contact.+KOSKINEN%2C+Ilpo%2C+University+&ie =utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=FlockInc.:en-US:official&client=firefox KOVADLOFF, Santiago, Ensayos de intimidad, Emecé, Buenos Aires, 2006. LEBOVICI, Elisabeth, L’intime, sous la direction, Ecole nationale Supérieur des Beaux Arts, Paris, 1998, 2004. LUHAN, Mc, Understanding Media, The extensions of man, London and New York, 1st published Routledge 1964, Routledge Clasics, New York, 2001.

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

Charles Ess

Always On? Ethical and Political Dimensions of Mobile Commnication Technologies

Introduction On the one hand, as this conference itself manifests, the dramatic expansion of mobile phones commands great attention. We appear to be experiencing something of a “second wave” of ICT diffusion, following a first wave fueled especially by the development of first the Internet and then the World Wide Web in the early 1990s. No doubt, many of the contributions to this conference will significantly expand our awareness of the impacts and consequences of this diffusion. I will add, if necessary, what may be distinctive examples of how in both the developed and developing worlds, the diffusion of mobile phones into the fabric of the vast majority of persons’ lives means, in the phrase of Naomi Baron, that we are “always on” (2008). On the other hand, despite such revolutionary transformation proceeding apace, remarkably little has been done so far in the Englishspeaking world on mobile phones and ethics. (There are interesting and relevant reasons for this relative silence, which I will also address in a more complete version of this talk and paper.) To be sure, we can find familiar complaints about etiquette (e.g., users talking loudly in the presence of strangers, as if s/he were in a private room or phone booth) and possible dangers of mobile phone use (e.g., while driving). But I will begin with some initial considerations regarding these devices as both mobile and as convergent – characteristics that raise significant and to some degree novel ethical concerns. I then turn to the now extensive body of Information and Computer Ethics (ICE) in order to apply important ICE frameworks to mobile phones as analogues to “traditional” computers and computer networks. Mobility, Convergence, and New Ethical Concerns To mention just a few obvious examples: cell phone users appear to pose a risk to themselves and others if they talk while driving – and so laws have been established that make mobile phone use while driving illegal. As a second example: mobile devices make the user more transparent – not only in the sense that s/he may inadvertently speak private matters in (once) public spaces, but as these conversations along with the participants’ locations may be easily traced and detected. In these ways, mobile devices open up an extensive array of concerns regarding privacy and surveillance.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Charles Ess: Always On?...

As a last example: as digital and so-called convergence technologies – i.e., as mobile devices bring together such facilities as photography and distribution of data via email and Internet websites – they thereby conflate once distinct media and their correlative codes of etiquette, ethics, and law (Briggs and Burke 2005, Jenkins 2006, Storsul and Stuedahl 2007). So, for example, a user may record – or even “produce” – a video of an event and then post it on a popular Internet site such as YouTube. In the days of analogue media, such an action would have entailed separate media (recording vs. publishing, e.g., in a newspaper) with separate ethical and legal requirements (e.g., asking for permission for such recording, asking for permission for such publication, protection of such publication via copyright, etc.) Moreover, while something analogous would have been possible in the days of analogue media as distinct from one another – such an analogue would have been considerably more difficult to achieve: transferring an analogue photograph or movie into a publication medium – e.g., a newspaper or multiple copies of a film that had to be physically distributed to specific and (usually) identified users – is technically cumbersome and typically expensive. Both sorts of hurdles, of course, are absent for Internet-connected mobile phones (as digital, convergent – or at least complex – media devices): they thereby facilitate the sort of secret recording and more or less instantaneous posting in a public space that would have been far more difficult with analogue media. Just as easy anonymity online appears to facilitate behaviors we would not engage in an offline context (e.g., flaming, consumption of pornography, etc.) – such facilitation (or affordances) made possible by new digital media apparently encourages acts and behaviors we otherwise might not undertake. To be sure, if it’s the relatively innocuous example of videorecording a few seconds of a birthday party and then posting the results online, there is little to worry about. But when the event in question is still more intimate – to use a stark example, having sex with a partner unaware that s/he is being recorded – we recognize that something ethically is amiss in the posting (and subsequent viewing) of the video on YouTube, minimally because it violates important intuitions about consent, privacy, and so forth (Olsen 2007, Ess 2009). All of this is more than enough to get us started on careful and systemic ethical reflection regarding these devices and the actions they make possible. To do so, we can begin by noticing that as mobile phones become increasingly “smarter” – i.e., ever more powerful in terms of their capacities to record, store, and distribute information in various forms (e.g., conversation, sound, pictures, etc.), and as their use more and more involves the Internet – mobile phones increasingly function as mini-computers. Insofar as this analogy holds – and it will, of course, only hold so far – we can then take up Information and Computing Ethics (ICE) as it has emerged over the last sixty years or so. ICE provides two sets of approaches to ethical reflection

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

on mobile devices, beginning with familiar ethical frameworks such as utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. The second set involves more extensive philosophical attention to the nature of the self and our assumptions about reality. Initial Ethical Reflections A straightforward example here would be to apply European data privacy protection codes to information conveyed via mobile devices. Such codes, as rooted in foundational conceptions of human rights, mark out a deontological ethics that insists, in this case, that certain rights are (more or less) absolute and must not be violated, no matter the consequences. Such an approach would serve well in at least an initial way in defining “privacy” in terms of personal information; defending privacy rights –e.g., against the interests of the state in surveillance for the sake of anti-terrorism, against the interests of companies seeking useful data for marketing purposes, etc. – would begin here with the argument that such rights are fundamental to democratic societies and must be protected, no matter the consequences, i.e., whether or not companies (and, perhaps, no small number of consumers) might be made happier through greater profits and more satisfying shopping experiences. Utilitarianism, by contrast would argue just the contrary. Maximizing happiness for both consumers and corporations, that is, serves as the primary goal and justification of ethical choice. If greater collective happiness – “the greatest good for the greatest number” – is achieved through the reduction of traditional privacy constraints, in contrast with whatever happiness might result from their preservation, then such reduction is justified. A virtue ethics approach moves beyond both of these frameworks to ask the question: how do possible actions and choices facilitated by these devices contribute to or detract from our core task of becoming more excellent human beings (both as individuals and as members of larger communities)? Specifically: what sorts of habits or human excellences are fostered and/or hindered through specific uses of a mobile device? On the one hand, a virtue ethicist might applaud, for example, the use of such devices to sustain and enhance our abilities to treat others – friends and family with whom we communicate, but certainly also those around us as we communicate – with care and respect. On the other hand, as the use of such devices might foster more destructive habits and virtues – e.g., disrespect of those around us, a focus on sheer consumption, etc. – a virtue ethicists would raise concerns (e.g., Loy 2007).

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Charles Ess: Always On?...

Second Reflections A second set of frameworks for ethical reflection on mobile devices includes further attention to additional philosophical assumptions at work alongside our ethics – including assumptions regarding the nature of the self and its relationship to the larger community and order of things, and assumptions about reality itself. In doing so, these frameworks raise still further sorts of ethical issues for us to consider. We can illustrate this second set with four distinctive frameworks for approaching mobile devices and their ethical and political dimensions. We begin with two that largely shaped discussion of ICTs in the 1990s and remain important today: Modern Western: this view presumes a particular conception of the self as a rational autonomy (capable of giving itself its own ethical law). This conception of the self is foundational to modern Western conceptions of the liberal democratic state. It is within this framework that most of our concerns regarding the importance of individual privacy and the dangers of that privacy being lost via new digital media emerge and evoke reflection and debate. (Postmodern-strong) social constructivism: this view emphasizes that both human beings and their technologies are more or less fluid constructions – e.g., of social scripts that individuals perform (e.g., as male or female, etc.). Technologies thereby encode the particular values and norms of their designers; in turn, the scripts defining human beings are modified and reshaped through their interactions with new technologies. Within this framework, the fact that mobile devices mean that we are “always on” (Baron 2008) – and thereby, that traditional distinctions between private and public are overturned and inverted – is not so worrisome as it is for those within the modern Western framework. Rather, these transformations are simply part of a larger and longer history of human development as shaped by the interplay between technologies and the cultural norms and practices of their designers and users. (Cf. Ess 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009) Two further frameworks move us in the direction of an “intercultural information ethics” (Capurro 2005) – i.e., views that consciously seek to move beyond the Western frameworks that have predominated discussion in these domains. In doing so, each of these views develops a conception of the self that justifies important privacy rights (thereby retaining core elements of the modern Western view and its

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justification of the liberal democratic state). At the same time, however, each view further incorporates an understanding of the self as a relational self, i.e., one defined by his/her relationships with others. Such a relational self would appear to be the self highlighted by increasingly ubiquitous ICTs, including mobile devices. Information ontology: based on the work of Luciano Floridi (e.g., 1999, 2006, forthcoming), this view takes information as the fundamental reality – we are our information. On this view, the rapid diffusion of mobile devices is seen as one more way of extending the “infosphere” within which human beings as “inforgs” – information organisms – interact with other information objects, ranging from the world around one as information through other human inforgs to computational devices and programs, including robots, programs, and artificial agents. Within this framework, a conception of information privacy emerges that closely resembles the notions of privacy in modern Western frameworks – i.e., one that would sustain familiar notions of individual privacy rights and democratic polity. At the same time, however, this framework extends our understanding of the individual and the larger order of things within which we find ourselves in at least two important directions. One, Floridi’s information ontology incorporates ecological ways of thinking that stress the inextricable interrelatedness of all things and thereby their value and importance: this results in a philosophical naturalism with important resonances with both Western thinkers such as Spinoza, Plato, and Aristotle, and Eastern traditions such as Buddhism and Confucian thought. Two, all of this moves us towards a conception of the individual as a relational being – i.e., not simply the “psychic atom” emphasized in the modern Western conception of the autonomous individual, but rather a being who is defined in significant measure by his/her relationships with other beings throughout the infosphere. Western-Buddhist hybrid: as proposed by Thai philosopher Soraj Hongladarom (2007, forthcoming), this framework likewise offers a conception of the individual similar to the autonomous individual now familiar from the modern Western framework – but one that likewise emphasizes such a self as also relational. Distinctive to this hybrid framework is the incorporation of a Buddhist ethics – a virtue ethics that encourages a different approach to matters of privacy. That is, in addition to Westernstyle efforts to define and defend privacy through law and punishment, a Buddhist approach begins with the self as an

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Charles Ess: Always On?...

empirical but ultimately illusory self. This self is the source of the greed and desire that in turn serve as the primary motivations for wanting to violate another person’s privacy. In order to recognize and protect individual privacy, then, we are enjoined to cultivate a reduction of our own (illusory) ego and selfinterest: thereby we will reduce or eliminate the motivation for violating privacy in the first place. Very broadly, these last two frameworks provide important middle grounds between the initial contrasts marked out by modern Western assumptions regarding the nature of the self and (postmodern) strong social constructivist views that, at the extreme, would appear to render the self – and with it, its potential privacy – into an entirely dependent product of a given social context and system. In still other terms, the latter runs the risk of an ethical relativism. Such a relativism is unable to sustain any objection not only to the loss of individual privacy in a social order increasingly shaped by ubiquitous computing, for example: such a relativism cannot sustain any objection to any sort of social order, including authoritarian regimes practicing slavery and genocide, for example. By contrast, these two middle grounds argue for conceptions of the self that are both stable and fluid (i.e., made up of relationships and scripts that change). In doing so, these frameworks can argue for a conception of the self that includes some range of privacy rights, and, more broadly, that can justify a democratic polity, while at the same time recognizing that those privacy rights and forms of democratic polity are likely to change over time – in part, just as new technologies make possible new forms of communication and relationships. Finally, these two middle grounds share the virtue of making possible a pluralistic approach to ethics – one that thereby makes possible a genuinely global ethics that conjoins both shared norms with diverse cultural norms and practices, thereby protecting distinctive cultural traditions and identities (Ess 2006, 2007). While all of this is well underway with regard to the ethical matters and reflections focusing on “traditional” computers and computer networks – to my knowledge, the application of these frameworks to analogous ethical matters evoked by mobile phones, at best, has only just begun. To be sure, we can anticipate that as these applications proceed, we will encounter some distinctive and perhaps unique behaviors and actions facilitated by mobile devices. How far extant ethical frameworks such as those outlined here will be able to resolve the ethical challenges evoked by those distinctive actions and possibilities will be of great interest to see!

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

András Falus

Systems Biology and Genomics A Rational Approach towards a Holistic View

Recently, a new era seems to be dominating in biomedical science. This period has been started with rapid development of molecular biological and genetic technologies. High through-put methods became available, such as chip technology and new DNA sequencing solutions. Nowadays, one may place the representation of all human genes to one cm2, millions of point mutations (SNP= single nucleotide polymorphism) can be read within hours, and a complete overview of a genome can be easily performed. These informations can be managed by various information technologies. The local results and conclusions are completed with the practically open access to international genetic databases updated at daily level. Systems biology is a new biological study field that focuses on the systematic study of complex interactions in biological systems, thus using a new perspective (integration instead of reduction) to study them. This approach applies information technology for genetic, pathway, functional analysis and intends to elucidate its effect on, place in, and response to the entire genome's networks. Genomics is the study of an organism's entire genome. The field includes intensive efforts to determine the entire DNA sequence of organisms resulting in fine-scale genetic mapping. The field also includes global expression studies (mRNA and microRNA) as well as epigenetic phenomena, such as genomic imprinting and histone modifications. As known, only 1.3% of the human genome encodes for proteins. The vast majority of the genome includes regulatory elements including micro RNAs, regulating mRNA moieties. Genomics is completed by proteomics (studies on proteins) and metabolomics (low molecular weight substances). This „omics” approach may provide both predictive (e.g. presymptomatic in disease) and more personalized view on living systems. Earlier, in contrast to genomic solutions, the investigation of single genes was preferred by „traditional” molecular biology, functions and roles of single genes, gene products and local circuits were investigated. This is still rather common in today's medical and biological research. The philosophy of the earlier („molecular biology”) and new (systems biology) research strategy is different, too. Earlier, lacking the complex informations, the scope of the research tools were much more restricted and the research aims were formulated based on previous theories, hypothesises and preconcepts.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking András Falus: Systems Biology and Genomics…

Systems biology- genomics approach (searching the entire genetic complexity) may escape to use preconcepts. Therefore, the conclusions drawn from the genomic experimental data are much more research- and much less hypothesis based. The optimal combination of two views seems to be the most fruitful outcome. The systems biology searches networks, complex interactions and pathways in living organisms. The promising perspective of systems biology and genomics completed with proteomics is to establish a holistic view of complex biological processes in health and disease. Moreover, entirely new ideas are raised for drug and vaccine design. In the lecture two areas of biomedical research will be introduced: 1. Systems biology approach in cancer genomics (mRNA, microRNA, disease pathway analysis) 2. Asthma research by genomics and bioinformatic technology.

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

Manuela Farinosi

New Technologies, New Challenges to Privacy Is It Time for Privacy 2.0?

Introduction This paper seeks to reflect upon the impact of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the private sphere. Focused on the reflections about the continuous growth of electronic portraits of individuals - a serious problem generated by the adoption of a vast range of new hi-tech devices (Rodotà, 2004; Lyon, 2002b, 2005; Van Dijk, 1999) - it explores the meaning and significance of the term privacy in the light of the intensive development of network society (Van Dijk, 1999). During the last few years the widespread diffusion of modern communication networks on a global scale, the proliferation of human practices involving these networks, the development of new digital media that support a wide range of social relationships, the increasing use of new tools of self-publication available on the Internet (like YouTube1, MySpace2, Facebook3, Wordpress4, etc.) and the trend toward computerising and networking everyday objects are blurring the boundary between private life and public life (Lyon, 1997, 2002b; Rodotà, 2004; Ball, 2003; Simon, 2005). A large range of personal information is today exposed to an electronic gaze. The technical features of contemporary communication devices, in fact, make it possible to track users’ information flows and to collect and retrieve even more kinds of data about people (e.g.: a list of all articles read, a detailed profile of personal music taste, the location of a person at all times, etc.), even when they are not directly aware that they are interacting with or being sensed by it (Castells, 2002; Lyon, 1997; Rodotà 2004; Van Dijk, 1999). As James Rule pointed out, the capacity of modern surveillance systems depends primarily on four factors: the size of files held in the system; the degree to which these systems can be centralized; the speed of data and information flow between points within such a system; and the number of contact points between the system and the subject (Kovačič, 2003). Technological development has made possible massive and cheaper data gathering (Lyon, 1997; Van Dijk, 1999). In the interactive media environment, these processes of data classification, and recording are in rapid expansion. All modern infrastructures, in fact, try to make visible the identities or behaviour of people of interest to the 1

http://www.youtube.com/ http://www.myspace.com/ 3 http://www.facebook.com/ 4 http://www.wordpress.com/

2

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Manuela Farinosi: New Technologies, New Challenges to Privacy…

agency in question (Lyon 1991, 1997; Kovačič, 2003). Every time one picks up the phone, or uses a credit card, or surfs the web, or uses a mobile devices, or does anything similar, a system or institution perceives that event and makes a record of it. In a sense we can say that nowadays the panoptic5 principle of observation has been extended through new ICTs which are able to identify and classify whole populations. Consequently, if information is not adequately protected, the data gathered can become accessible to persons or institutions that are not authorized to use them, or these can being to exploit the collected data differently or for different purposes than were originally intended (Rodotà, 2002, 2004; Lyon, 1997, 2002b). Independent agencies reports highlight more and more frequently the risks associated with an un-monitored use of new ICTs and the lack of rules of conduct concerning their limits6. Nevertheless, their calls for balance and restraint in the adoption of new technologies is highly unheard and unattended in the organizational practices of private and public companies. Control, in fact, affects individuals both as consumers and as citizens (Kovačič, 2003; Lyon, 1997; Agre and Rotenberg, 1997). While the state uses control manly to ensure security and to execute administrative tasks, commercial companies try to identify consumer’s tastes and wishes as accurately as possible and to adapt their product, their services and their offer accordingly. Now the creation, collection and processing of personal information is almost an ubiquitous phenomenon. Data collection is more and more often integrated into routine activity and it is relatively inexpensive per unit of information collected. Data is available in real time and data banks can be continuous and offer information on the past, present and future (Lyon, 1997, 2002b). Our physical body is being shadowed by a powerful and increasingly comprehensive data body (Rodotà, 2004), a body that does not only follow us, but - more and more often - it also precedes us. 5

Panopticon is an architectural plan meant to impose order on the lives of criminals and madmen. This plan, designed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham at the end of the eighteenth century, was annular and included a semi-circular building with several individual prison cells visible from a surveillance tower located at the centre of the semicircle. The observation tower allowed all inmates to be visible, while prisoners never knowing whether or not they were being watched or even if there was anyone in the tower. The main effects of the Panopticon were the internalisation of discipline and the voluntary subordination of individuals. In this way the automate functioning of power was assured. 6 See: http://epic.org/ Electronic Privacy Information Center.

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Consumer surveillance and targeted advertising Nowadays it is commonplace for commercial organizations to collect information about their customers and to compile extensive databases containing personal details and information such as personal preferences, shopping habits, lifestyles, occupation, hobbies, medical conditions, etc. (Rodotà, 2002, 2004; Lyon, 2002a). Consumers are being watched by corporations especially through their credit card transactions and through their activities on the net. Every movement a customer makes – both in real life and in virtual world - is maintained in a company database that can be used to analyze personal habits to almost unbelievably precise degree (Poster, 1996; Rodotà, 2004; Lyon, 1997). The more a sellers knows about its prospective customers, the better their needs can be satisfied. Who hold such data have a crucial tool that allows them to predict, influence and modify the behaviour of those whose data is being held (Rodotà, 2002, 2004; Lyon, 1997, 2002b). Particularly owing to the world economic system’s transformation from a mass-production model to a mass-customization model, for business enterprises, the availability of detailed information about customers is considered as desirable and necessary to ensure competitiveness, profitability and accountability. If goods and services are to be customized, it appears necessary for producers and distributors to have access to detailed customer information. Going beyond crude segmentation based on areas of residence, requires sophisticated surveillance of consumer behaviour. In a sense we can say that customized production goes with customized marketing, which goes with customer surveillance. Current trends move in the direction of increasingly individual treatment, for example with personalized emails, discounts and advertisements. These techniques of direct marketing, basically based on profiling, are ostensibly consumerfriendly. They guide the consumer in the direction he/she prefers and provide services and goods adapted to his/her individual taste, but particularly in combination with data analysis and data mining – they can have negative consequences, such as discrimination against certain consumers (Rodotà, 2004; Lyon, 2002b; Kovačič, 2003). Big Brother 2.0 The ease with which personal information can be monitored, collected and used, during the last few years, have been really increased by the widespread diffusion of user generated content (Byond, 2006; Hinduja and Patchin, 2008; Lenhart and Madden, 2005b). Thanks to the interactivity of Web 2.0 and to the development of a new generation of Internet applications – just think about blogs, wikis and social networks – a large amount of people in the world is now able to use digital media to express

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Manuela Farinosi: New Technologies, New Challenges to Privacy…

themselves and to produce, in this way, persistent digital information. Participation in social networking sites (SNS) has increased the possibilities to create online profiles and share personal details with vast network of friends and, often, unknown numbers of stranger (Livingstone, 2008; Rundle and Conley, 2007). From Youtube to Facebook and beyond, nowadays a vast range of personal data is exposed to a mass audience on the Internet. The great majority of tools of Web 2.0 is extraordinarily well suited to data mining, to customized creation of personality profiles (Lenhart and Madden, 2005b; Teltzrow and Kobsa, 2004). Very often the desire to show oneself is stronger than the fear of being monitored. So in networked world, the Internet is becoming par excellence the place to catch up with old friends (Facebook), let everyone know what you're doing (Twitter7), show your photos (Flickr8) or your videos (Youtube), promote your own ideas, songs or products (Myspace), share your favourite music with a potential audience of billions (Lastfm9). These sites often contain a lot of information that is difficult to get by traditional ways. This information include not only the basic demographics, but also the posts that members wrote, their emotions, their feelings. Some SNS allow people to track what friends and colleagues are doing online even (just think about NewsFeed10 feature of Facebook). The potentiality of these tools of Web 2.0 is endless, but endless are also the possibilities of exposure of personal details and sensitive information (Schneier, 2006; Stutzman, 2006; Lenhart and Madden, 2005a). Based on user participation, Web 2.0 is changing not only the way we interact with other people, but also our view of what is “private” (Haythornthwaite, 2005; Dwyer, 2007). It represents the move toward a more interactive, social and collaborative web, but also more under surveillance (Cascio, 2006). The new tools of self-publication are changing our relationship to the public sphere, but more than that, they are changing the philosophy of entire armies of marketing analysts and brand-name consultants that incessantly operate behind the scenes. Companies have understood the enormous opportunities offered by online communications and are very interested in user generated contents (Gafford, 2007; EPIC, 2007). These data can provide useful indications of everything from personal inclinations to social trends. Some applications, like LinkedIn11, Facebook or Myspace, allow to visualize our social relationships and friendship networks too. Gross and Acquisti in “Information revelation and privacy in online social 7

http://twitter.com/home http://www.flickr.com/ 9 http://www.lastfm.com/ 10 For futher information see: http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=1 11 http://www.linkedin.com/ 8

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networks. The Facebook case”12 has recently demonstrated that generally the option for limiting privacy preferences are sparingly used. In their research on over 4000 students of Carnegie Melon University registered on Facebook, they found that only a small number of users change the default privacy settings, which usually are set to maximize the visibility of members profiles (Gross and Acquisti, 2005). Since personal information and user generated contents are commercially highly interesting for advertisers, very often the owners of platforms for self-publication sell them to third parties such as market research departments or companies specializing in the so-called behavioural advertising, which use them to send targeted advertising based on the user’s interests and tastes (Gafford, 2007; Kovačič, 2003). Online data, not only textual data, but – thanks to the tags used for categorize these contents - also videos and photos, are very easy to search by now. Therefore one should not be surprised to hear that many search engines such as Google or YahooSearch and many social networks are funded by marketing organizations or that the providers of free email services, who are also massively sponsored, may give electronic addresses to marketing companies. What goes on in so called “architectures for participation” is an object of business and power. The magic word of Web 2.0 is personalization (Awad and Krishnan, 2006). This tendency is clear if we look at some sites of shopping online, like Amazon.com that studies consumer preferences and then suggests new books to buy on the basis of his/her detailed profile of former purchases. As Marc Rotenberg, director of EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Centre) said: "What makes the Internet so problematic is that it's so difficult to tell when personal data is being collected or how it is being used".13 Conclusion - Is it time for privacy 2.0? The digital era has made new legal issues and added new dimensions to old ones. There is easy access to various forms of electronic data but there is limited public debate. The right to privacy was known long before the development of modern computer. The concept of privacy in fact developed in the USA in the late 19th century thanks to two Harvard law professors named Samuel Brandeis and Louis Warren, who defined what came to be known as “the right to be left alone”. However, informational privacy and data protection are children of our times. Data protection is based on the concept that we should have control over our personal information (Agre and Rotenberg, 1997; Rodotà, 2002, 2004). 12

Available online at: http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/papers/privacy-facebook-grossacquisti.pdf 13 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/moneymag_archive/1997/08/01/229757/ index.htm

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The notion of a right of informational self-determination is inherent in technological development. The need for data protection was not pressing in ancient societies where no information technology existed and where communication was manly oral. In a sense we can say that the development of digital technology is a prerequisite for data protection becoming an issue. Modern ICTs have generally intensified attention on the demand for privacy protection (Agre and Rotenberg, 1997; Rodotà, 2002, 2004). Ideas about privacy have often been challenged by new technologies. As Agre pointed out: “Cultural ideas about privacy will always tacitly presuppose a certain social and technological environment”14. During the last few years, as we have seen, the concept of privacy, especially in the Western society, have been challenged by new tools of self publication available on the Internet (Schneier, 2006; Gross and Acquisti 2005; Rundle and Conley, 2007; Livingstone, 2008). User generated contents are in many ways features of our contemporary society. For the first time in history most of the personal data published online is being published at the initiative of the users and based on their consent (Awad and Krishnan, 2006; Boyd, 2006; Boyd and Heer, 2006). The main concerns related to data protection are that user generated content available online make individuals and their identity more and more transparent. The need to understand and protect personal privacy in sophisticated information systems is becoming even more critical (International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications, 2008). While classical right to privacy was related with defining rules to ensure people protection against excessive and unfair processing of personal information by private companies and public administration, now the problem is how ensure legal regulation against self-publication (Rodotà, 2004). The pervasive spread of social network is providing the technical foundation for a new public sphere and probably is changing our concept of “private sphere”, but actually there are only few rules governing the publication of personal information at the initiative of private individuals (International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications, 2008). Data Protection Authorities and Legislators are faced by a situation that has no visible example in the past. International working group on data protection in telecommunications warns that: “The surge of social network services has only just begun. While it is possible to identify some risks associated to the provision and use of such services already now, it is very likely that we are at present only looking at the tip of the iceberg, and that new uses – and accordingly new risks – will continue to emerge in the future”.15 But it seems clear that, without effective data protection measures, the technology of Web 14

P.Agre, “Introduction” in Agre P.E. and M. Rotenberg (1997)Technology and privacy: the new landscape, p.7. 15 International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications (2008). "Report and guidance on privacy in social network services. Rome memorandum." Available online at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/3244534/opinie-social-network-services

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2.0 could be used to create a surveillance infrastructure that would render ineffective many existing laws and privacy protection mechanisms. REFERENCES Acquisti, A. and R. Gross (2006). "Imagined communities: Awareness, information sharing and privacy on The Facebook." In P. Golle and G. Danezis (eds) Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Privacy Enhancing Technologies. Robinson College,Cambridge: 36-58. Agre P.E. and M. Rotenberg (1997). Technology and privacy: the new landscape. The MIT press, Massachusetts. Andrejevic, M. (2005). "The work of watching one another: Lateral surveillance, risk, and Governance." Surveillance & Society 2(4): 479–497. Available online at: http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles2(4)/lateral.pdf Awad, N.F. and M.S. Krishnan (2006). "The personalization privacy paradox: An empirical evaluation of information transparency and the willingness to be profiled online for personalization." MIS Quarterly (30)1: 13-28. Ball, K. (2003). "Editorial. The labours of surveillance." Surveillance & Society 1(2): 125-137. Available online at: http://www.surveillance-andsociety.org/articles1(2)/editorial.pdf Ball, K. and D.C. Wilson (2000). "Power, control and computer–based performance monitoring: Repertoires, resistance, and subjectivities." Organization Studies 21(3): 539–565. Barnes, S.B. (2006). "A privacy paradox: Social networking in the United States." First Monday 11(9). Available online at: http://www.firstmonday.org/ISSUES/issue11_9/barnes/ Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. Yale University Press, New Haven and London. Bentham, J. (1995). The Panopticon writings. Verso, London. Boyd, D. (2006). "Identity production in a networked culture: Why youth heart MySpace." Available online at: http://www.danah.org/papers/AAAS2006.html

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Boyd, D. and J. Heer (2006). "Profiles as conversation: Networked identity performance on Friendster." Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-39), IEEE Press. Available online at: http://www.danah.org/papers/HICSS2006.pdf Cascio, J. (2006). "The rise of the participatory Panopticon." WorldChanging. Available online at: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//002651.html Castells, M. (2002). Galassia Internet. Feltrinelli, Milano. Dwyer, C. (2007). "Digital relationships in the "MySpace" Generation: Results from a qualitative study." Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS). IEEE Press. Available online at: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1255480.1255573&coll=GUIDE&dl= GUIDE&CFID=39327242&CFTOKEN=30162606 ENISA (2007). "Security issues and recommendations for online social networks." Available online at: http://www.enisa.europa.eu/doc/pdf/deliverables/enisa_pp_social_networks.pdf EPIC (2007). "Social networking, social networking privacy." Available online at: http://www.epic.org/privacy/socialnet/default.html Foucault, M. (2003). Sorvegliare e punire. Nascita della prigione. Einaudi, Torino. Gafford, J. (2007). "Guerilla marketing on MySpace-Smart Do-It-Yourself online marketing." Available online at: http://ezinearticles.com/?GuerillaMarketing-on-MySpace-Smart-Do-It-Yourself-OnlineMarketing&id=433759 Gibbs, M.R., G. Shanks and R. Lederman (2005). "Data quality, database fragmentation and information privacy." Surveillance & Society 3(1): 45-58. Available online at: http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/Articles3(1)/data.pdf Gross, R. and A. Acquisti (2005). "Information revelation and privacy in online social networks." Proceedings of the 2005 ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society. Available online at: http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/papers/privacy-facebook-grossacquisti.pdf

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Hargittai, E. (2007). "Whose space? Differences among users and non-users of social network sites." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1). Haythornthwaite, C. (2005). "Social networks and Internet connectivity effects." Information, Communication & Society, 8(2): 125 - 147. Hinduja S. and J.W. Patchin (2008). "Personal information of adolescents on the Internet: A quantitative content analysis of MySpace." Journal of Adolescence 31(1): 125–46. Hodge, M.J. (2007). "The fourth amendment and privacy issues on the "new" Internet: facebook.com and myspace.com." Available online at: http://www.law.siu.edu/research/31fallpdf/fourthamendment.pdf Howard, P.N., J.N. Carr and T.J. Milstein (2005). "Digital technology and the market for political surveillance." Surveillance & Society 3(1): 59-73. Available online at: http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/Articles3(1)/political.pdf International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications (2008). "Report and guidance on privacy in social network services. Rome memorandum." 43rd meeting, 3-4 March 2008, Rome (Italy). Available online at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/3244534/opinie-social-network-services Jenkins, R. (1996). Social identity. Routledge, London. Jones H. and J.H. Soltren (2005). "Facebook: Threats to privacy." Available online at: http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/6095/student-papers/fall05-papers/facebook.pdf Kovačič, M. (2003). Privacy on the Internet. Available online at: http://matej.owca.info/knjiga1/index_en.html Lenhart, A. and M. Madden (2007). "Social networking websites and teens: an overview." Pew Internet & American Life Project. Available online at: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/198/report_display.asp Lenhart, A. and M. Madden (2005). "Teens, privacy and online social networks: How teens manage their online identities and personal information in the age of MySpace." Pew Internet & American Life Project. Available online at: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/211/report_display.asp

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Lenhart, A. and M. Madden (2005). "Teen content creators and consumers." Pew Internet & American Life Project. Available online at: http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Teens_Content_Creation.pdf Lianos, M. (2003). "Social control after Foucault." Surveillance & Society 1(3): 412-430. Available online at: http://www.surveillance-andsociety.org/articles1(3)/AfterFoucault.pdf Livingstone, S. (2008). "Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers' use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression." New Media and Society 10; 393. Available online at: http://nms.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/10/3/393 Lyon, D. (1991). La società dell'informazione. Feltrinelli, Milano. Lyon, D. (1997). L'occhio elettronico. Privacy e filosofia della sorveglianza. Feltrinelli, Milano. Lyon, D. (2002a). "Editorial. Surveillance studies: Understanding visibility, mobility and the phenetic fix." Surveillance & Society 1(1): 1-7. Available online at: http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles1/editorial.pdf Lyon, D. (2002b). La società sorvegliata. Tecnologie di controllo della vita quotidiana. Feltrinelli, Milano. Lyon, D. (2005). Massima sicurezza. Sorveglianza e "guerra al terrorismo". Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano. Lyon, D. (2007). Surveillance studies. An Overview. Polity Press, Cambridge. Marx, G.T. (2002). “What’s new about the “new surveillance”? Classifying for Change and Continuity”. Surveillance & Society 1(1): 9-29. Available online at: http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles1/whatsnew.pdf Metzger, M.J. (2004). "Privacy, trust, and disclosure: Exploring barriers to electronic commerce." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (9) 4. Nielsen/Netratings (2006). "Social networking sites grow 47 percent, year over year, reaching 45 percent of web users." Available online at: http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_060511.pdf Poster, M. (1996). "Databases as discourse; or, electronic interpellations." in D. Lyon and E. Zureik (ed). Computers, surveillance, and privacy. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis: 175–192.

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Rodotà, S. (2002). "Prefazione" in D. Lyon, La società sorvegliata. Tecnologie di controllo della vita quotidiana. Feltrinelli, Milano: VII–XIX. Rodotà, S. (2004). Tecnopolitica. La democrazia e le nuove tecnologie della comunicazione. Laterza. Rule, J.B. (2002). "From mass society to perpetual contact." In J. Katz and M. Aakhus, Perpetual contact. Mobile communication, private talk, public performance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 242-254. Rundle, M. and C. Conley (2007). "Ethical implications of emerging technologies: A survey." Available online at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001499/149992e.pdf Schneier, B. (2006). "Facebook and data control." Available online at: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/09/facebook_and_da.html Simon, B. (2005). "The return of Panopticism: Supervision, subjection and the new surveillance." Surveillance & Society 3(1): 1-20. Available online at: http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/Articles3(1)/return.pdf Stutzman, F. (2006). "Student life on The Facebook." Available online at: http://ibiblio.org/fred/facebook/stutzman_fbook.pdf Teltzrow, M. and A. Kobsa (2004). "Impacts of user privacy preferences on personalized systems: a comparative study." Available online at: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~kobsa/papers/2004-PersUXinECom-kobsa.pdf Van Dijk, J. (1999). The network society. An introduction to the social aspect of new media. Sage. Woo, J. (2006). "The right not to be identified: privacy and anonymity in the interactive media environment.", New Media and Society 8, 949-966. Available online at: http://nms.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/8/6/949 Wood, D. (2003). "Editorial. Foucault and Panopticism Revisited." Surveillance & Society 1(3): 234-239. Available online at: http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles1(3)/editorial.pdf

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Leopoldina Fortunati

Reflections on Mediated Gossip In this paper I would like to advance some reflections about the construct of gossip and its social practice at communicative level from my observatory on the old and new media. So the analysis that I propose concerns the role of one of the communicative registers which are conveyed in the devices themselves. If we share Mumford’s claim that “the evolution of language was far more important to early human development than the evolution of physical tools”,1 we should put more attention on the transformation of the language itself after the advent of the new media. The first aim of this paper is to understand if and how the use of ICTs (information and communication technologies) has modified one particular register of communication: gossip. The second aim is to understand if mediated gossip has still a strong function of social cohesion. Some qualitative researches were carried out in order to capture important features and tendencies of this phenomenon to be further explored via quantitative methods in the future. But the main research resource has been my observation of the old and new media in the last 10 years. Rationale In 1960 Carpenter and McLuhan2 argued that a certain communicative register belongs first of all to a certain typology of communication or device and that it is through this typology of communication or device that the communicative register can better express itself. The dialogue celebrates its triumph in interpersonal, co-present communication, the argumentation is hold for the best in the book, dreams and imaged stories in the film, while the everyday life is shown for the best by the television. This analysis is right in principle but presents some exceptions. I want to focus on one of these exceptions, that is: gossip. Gossip in fact from interpersonal, private talk has spread in the old and the new media, adapting and assimilating to their languages. Although the notion of gossip remains controversial, it is traditionally a specific typology of conversation made up of two or more people who are each connected with a third person who is not present in the conversation. It consists in an “informal, evaluative talk about a member of 1

Long, S. (2002) Lewis Mumford and Institutional Economics, Journal of Economic Issues, XXXVI (1), pp.167-182. 2 Carpenter, E.S., McLuhan, M. (1960) Acoustic Space. In E.S. Carpenter, M. McLuhan (eds.) Explorations in Communication: An Anthology. Boston: Beacon Press.

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the discussants’ social environment who is not present”. 3The absence of the gossiped refers to a typical strategy of displacement: we talk about someone not directly with him/her but with another person. But in this case the displacement strategy is supported by the fact that the occasion to talk of absent persons is incredibly frequent in usual adult conversation, characterized in at least 60% of cases by a talk about people who are not present.4 The absence of the person object of gossip is a fundamental premise, because it allows a freer expression of thinking on his/her behaviour since gossipers are not mislead by the concern to not say unpleasant things directly to him/her; the elaboration of social norms, as the analysis of specific cases gives the opportunity to discuss the shift from the abstraction of norms to the concreteness of their application; the reinforcement of social cohesion since gossipers arrive to share ideas and visions and become accomplices in this operation; the social construction of more objective attitudes and opinions, since they are referred to others. Gossip is a genre of conversational ritual exchange, to which most of the human capacity for complex language is reserved. It has been calculated that two thirds for our conversation time is devoted to discuss who is doing what with whom.5 Another important characteristic of gossip is its emotional feature. Through gossip we express a series of emotions such as pride, contempt, resentment, envy, jealousy, relief, fear, anxiety, uncertainty. These emotions might be implied or even directly expressed, or they are conveyed in the tone of voice. In particular, negative or malicious gossip is connected, according to Wert and Salovey,6 with need for moral information, suspicion of injustice, competition or rivalry, in-group and outgroup identification, powerlessness, coffee-klatch, anxiety and ambiguity. It is evident that gossipers make a comparison between the behaviour of the person they are talking about and social norms or their personal point of view and sensitivity. This social comparison is motivated not only by social needs but also by psychological needs such as the need for self-evaluation, self-improvement, self-enhancement, and claiming a social identity as well.7 However, the more general functions of gossip at social level are numerous: 3

Wert, S.R., Salovey, P. (2004) A Social Comparison Account of Gossip, Review of General Psychology, 8(2), p. 123. 4 Emler, N. (1994) Gossip, reputation, and social adaptation. In R.F. Goodman & A. BenZe’ev (eds.) Good gossip. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas; Levin, J. & Arluke, A. (1985) An exploratory analysis of sex differences in gossip, Sex roles, 12, pp.281-286. 5 Fox, K. (2001) Evolution, Alienation and Gossip, Social Issues Research Centre, http://www.sirc.org/publik/gossip.shtml (consulted 02/14/2008), p.6. 6 Wert, S.R., Salovey, P. (2004) A Social Comparison Account of Gossip, Review of General Psychology, 8(2), 122-137. 7 Wood, J. V. (1989) Theory and research concerning social comparison of personal attributes, Psychological Bulletin, 106, pp.231-248.

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the strengthening of the individual’s or group’s identity in respect to the others; the confirmation and strengthening of the system of shared values; the clarification of our status and social position; the resolution of conflicts; the assessment and management of reputations; the development and maintenance of social bonds with other members of own social sphere; the influence over people and so on. Bergmann8 reports that the most common topics of gossip that have emerged in her research are: “personal qualities and idiosyncrasies, behavioural surprises and inconsistencies, character flaws, discrepancies between actual behaviour and moral claims”, and so on. But as de Sousa9 pointed out, gossip seems to deal more frequently with private lives (as opposed to professional lives). Gossiping means informing and discussing about the private sphere and the everyday life. Until the advent of feminism, these issues had not right of citizenship in the public arena, since the domestic sphere was invisible and inexpressible. While the domestic sphere and everyday life were hidden to public awareness and discussion, important topics of official and formal conversations were politics, money, work, sport, and so on. Love, sex, children, family, death, marriages, lovers, housework, etc, became object of informal, unofficial and marginal conversation, which was handled with contempt: gossip. The advent of feminism, with its claim “personal is politic”, completely upset the social meaning of this communicative practice. From being considered until then a communicative practice of bush league, typical of low classes, ‘of servants’, gossip has been reinterpreted as a socially important dimension in which people discuss about events and behaviour happening in the domestic sphere and in everyday life. Gossip has been increasingly seen not more as futile conversation or talk on personal issues, but as a communicative activity regarding the collective dimension of the everyday life and the sphere of reproduction. And so, having not only a social but also a political meaning. Aim and methods In this paper my specific aim is to understand if and how the use of ICTs (information and communication technologies) has modified gossip as one of the registers in which social discourse is articulated. And if mediated gossip has still a strong function of social cohesion. Some qualitative researches were carried out in order to capture important features and tendencies of this phenomenon to be further explored via quantitative 8

Bergmann, J.R (1987): Klatsch - Zur Sozialform der diskreten Indiskretion. Berlin (English translation: Bergmann, J. (1993): Discreet Indiscretions: The Social Organization of Gossip. New York: De Gruyter), p.15. 9 De Sousa, R. (1994) In praise of gossip: Indiscretion as a saintly virtue. In R. F. Goodman & A. Ben-Ze’ev (eds.) Good gossip. Lawrence: University of Kansas.

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methods in the future. I analysed three social networks, namely Myspace, Facebook, Linkedln, applying the virtual ethnography strategy for several months and I interviewed on gossip and social networks 60 youths living in the North East of Italy, to whom I asked to answer in writing to few questions. In addition, I draw on the experience I acquired by doing crosscultural research in the last 10 years on European newspapers and television. Towards mediated gossip According to Kapferer,10 gossip is one of the first mass medium of the humankind. In the traditional everyday life, this practice, such as it was experienced in rural villages, served as exercise of social comparison and control, re-affirmation of social rules and moral norms, elaboration and structuration of reality.11 Modernization with its social consequences such as urbanization, development of individualization and spread of depersonalized and psychologically neutral social relationships, reshaped the social and communicative structure in which people were living. The anonymity of urban crowds and the new spatial organization of civil coexistence partially changed the practice of gossip. This practice has been enlarged and modified after the advent of both traditional and new media.12 People have found out new ways to satisfy the need of gossip, by producing a shifting in the spatial dimension of the gossip from the local to the national and even the international, from the actual to the virtual, from production to consumption. It is the sophisticated structure of gossip, which plays on the dimension of presence-absence, that has allowed its transmigration to mass media, magazines and television, and internet. However, mediated gossip has a completely different structure, in comparison to body-to-body gossip, in the sense that: 1) the gossip is no more fostered by gossipers, but is exposed automatically to the large public; 2) gossipers from simple citizens are become an official source, a social, professional, structure which produces information and which has much more powerful tools and techniques to perform gossip (reporters and so on); 3) the gossip shifts from voice to text and pictures and this means that gossip assumes in this case a much higher degree of possible offence of a person’s reputation, is permanent and more easily spread; 4) the gossiped person, instead of being wrapped in a kind of aura by gossip and rumor, finds him/herself directly and publicly exposed to 10

Kapferer, J.-N. (1987/1990) Rumors: Uses, Interpretations and Images. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. 11 Dohrmann-Thiele, K. (1995) Eine kleine Geschichte des Klatsches. Der Charme des Indeskreten. Komet Verlag: Düsseldorf. 12 Harrington, L.C., Bielby, D.D. (1995) Where Did You Hear That? Technology and the Social Organization of Gossip, The Sociological Quarterly, 36(3), pp. 607-628.

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them, since s-he is part of the large audience which use media; 5) the shift from the analogue to the digital gossip registers its commercialization, in the sense that this communicational practice becomes a commodity: celebrities gossip is a source of income both for celebrities and media. The gossip and the old media In a world in which neighbours and acquaintances are, as we said before, part of the anonymous crowd, people turn to their neighboursubstitutes: the celebrities. People’s appetite for celebrity gossip is insatiable, because mediated gossip is only a substitute of the direct gossip and so only partially satisfactory. There has been a kind of colonization of mass media by gossip (pink news, columns of gossip, etc.). On the other hand, the informative content of gossip has been the premise that have pushed mass media to include this communicative register inside their content. The press was the first that captured this need and conveyed it even through more or less dedicate magazines.13 Then, other information and communication technologies have tried to embody the gossip.14 Mediated gossip has ended up with cohabiting with gossip in co-presence.15 Gossip about celebrities and stars enters in the agenda setting of the gossip in copresence and people gossip about the mediated gossip, in a sort of constructed social comparison.16 But what is new in the mediated gossip if compared to gossip in co-presence? Does its social meaning and functions have changed when it is carried out through new media? The advent of mediated gossip opens a new story in its practice but also in its structure. The mass media make the backstage of information and communication visible and public.17 In the first instance, we could say that the mass media have represented publicly the intimate setting of gossip activity. But, if we look more deeply, what the mass media have introduced is a more consistent change. Actually the mass media have easily embodied the model of gossip in their technological structure, since they talk about people who are not really there. They discuss and talk about other absents. It 13

McAndrew, F.T., Milenkovic, M.A. (2002) Of Tabloids and Family Secrets: The Evolutionary Psychology of Gossip, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Volume 32, Issue 5, Page 1064-1082, May 2002, doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2002.tb00256.x 14 Thornborrow J., Morris, D. (2004) Gossip as strategy: The management of talk about others on reality TV show 'Big Brother', Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8(2), pp. 246-271, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9841.2004.00260.x 15 Fox, K. (2001) Evolution, Alienation and Gossip, Social Issues Research Centre, http://www.sirc.org/publik/gossip.shtml (consulted 02/14/2008), 16 Suls, J.M. (1986) Notes on the occasion of social comparison theory’s thirtieth birthday, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 12, pp.289-296. 17 Meyrowitz, J. (1985) No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behaviour. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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is exactly for this that they were an ideal setting to embody gossip. In turn mediated gossip plays an important role in respect to information. News are actually “bad news”, because negative information about the world might be considered more diagnostic of persons, events and facts than is positive information.18 Gossip allows a ‘pink’ break in the continuous following, one after the other, of “bad news” and let up on audiences. This use of gossip by the mass media reminds the mechanism that Goffman19 called footing. The strategy to loosen audience’s tension by lightening the weight of bad news, instead to introduce good news, has pushed gatekeepers towards gossip. Increasingly larger areas of information are assuming a pink colour and speaking gossip language. In conclusion, the mass media not only have enhanced and enlarged the exercise of gossiping but have also altered the matrix of free speech and privacy. However, since the amplitude of the right of indiscretion is difficult to determine20 and abuses might be frequent, throughout history most societies have founded ways for people to protect their reputation from gossip and rumor.21 In the early twentieth, the mainstream media have established some ethical guidelines, although insufficient and instable, to protect people’s privacy. These guidelines established that “gossip about private lives of public figures should not get front page attention, the reputation should not ‘be torn down lightly’, attacks on a person’s reputation should not be published before the person had the opportunity to be heard, and that a newspaper should not invade private rights or feelings without sure warrant of public right as distinguished from public curiosity”.22 Today these wise norms have changed, as the extensive reporting on Clinton’s affairs showed. The mobile and social network gossip In the communicative environment, the mobile phone has a peculiar role in the display of the intimacy required by gossip activity. Mobile communication, being structurally characterized by the dimension of the presence-absence,23 is the ideal device for conveying gossip, in its 18

Skowronski, J.J., Carlston, D.E. (1987) Social judgment and social memory. The role of cue diagnosticity in negativity, positivity, and extremity biases, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, pp.689-699. 19 Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press. 20 Simmel, G. (1906) Psychologie der Diskretion, Der Tag, 2 e 4.9, p.82. 21 Solove, D.J. (2007) The Future of Reputation. Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 22 Solove, D.J. (2007) The Future of Reputation. Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 23 Gergen, K.J. (2002) The challenge of absent presence. In J.E. Katz and M. Aakhus (eds.) Perpetual contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Fortunati, L. (2002) The

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

fundamental feature of talk about absent others. But the fact that the intimate and private dimension in which we talk of absent others is becoming public means that inevitably might include the absent others. According to Kate Fox,24 the mobile phone plays an important role in facilitating therapeutic gossip and in helping users to re-create this important register of communication. The mobile phone use has increased and enhanced this vital activity, which is an effective ‘new stress-buster.’ On the mobile phone “men gossip as much as women in their mobile phones. Men gossip for just as long and about the same subjects as women, but tend to talk more about themselves”.25 This study did find a gender difference also in ‘gossip partners’, “with men more likely to gossip with work colleagues, partners and female friends, while women gossip more with same-sex friends and family.” Masculine and feminine gossip also sounds different, “as women use more animated tones, more detail and more feedback”. A more complex discourse involves social networks, which might be considered a kind of answer on the part of online users, to the trust problem in the internet because of the very little information available on other users. The structure of social networks offers a more complex selfpresentation, which includes the use of real names, often also photographs, personal profiles, and display of social links. The architecture of these social networks is based on a model of interpersonal links that are “mutual, public, unnuanced, and decontextualized” 26 and often does not help users to protect their privacy. As Solove points out “social network websites could require people to promise confidentiality as one of the terms of membership. The websites could have users agree to a basic set of rules for respecting others’ information. In other words, people should be given choices over how to control the dissemination of their personal information, and those reading people’s profiles should be aware of (and bound to) those preferences”.27 In reality social networks are designed to encourage people to expose a lot of their life without thinking too much about the consequences. The design of several social networks such as Myspace and Facebook uses as option selected by default “public”. Furthermore, given that social networks websites lack a set of categories for social relationships, (all of mobile phone: Towards new categories and social relations, Information, Communication, and Society, 5(4), pp. 513 – 528. 24 Fox, K. (2001) Evolution, Alienation and Gossip, Social Issues Research Centre, http://www.sirc.org/publik/gossip.shtml (consulted 02/14/2008). 25 Fox, K. (2001) Evolution, Alienation and Gossip, Social Issues Research Centre, http://www.sirc.org/publik/gossip.shtml (consulted 02/14/2008), p.2. 26 Donath, J., boyd, d. (2004) Public Displays of Connection, BT Technology Journal, 22(4), p.72. 27 Solove, D.J. (2007) The Future of Reputation. Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Mobile Communication Communicationand andthe theEthics EthicsofofSocial SocialNetworking Networking Mobile Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics Leopoldina Fortunati: Reflections on Mediated Gossip of Practice…

them are reduced to ‘friends’), they tend to remove the informative boundaries that people keep between their different social spheres. 28 Social networks can considered “big repositories of gossip”, as one of our interviewees wrote. But maybe the most relevant tendency that mobile communication and social networks show is that people gossip about themselves and expose their lives online. This is a tendency that I already observed analyzing mobile communication. It is the privacy and the backstage self which by now are put in discussion by people. People do not want to keep their information secret. On the contrary, they are rather concerned about how many people will read their blogs or their profiles in Facebook. There has been a kind of simplistic notion that has governed media for long time, that if you are a public person, you have no claim to privacy (Solove, 2007). This notion has allowed the development of celebrities gossip. According to Kate Fox, mobile gossip is significantly made up also of gossip about celebrities. But while old media have found some limits to this notion, the online communication has still to find an ethics. The internet, however, has an advantage in comparison to the press: that online content can be easily emended and names taken off. A blogger who guests in his/her site defamatory or indiscreet statements should be obliged to remove it. But actually blogs content is much less restrained than traditional media. The cyberspace still has not established a code of ethics, since there is an increasing feeling that the internet makes difficult to be aware of the extensiveness of personal exposure. Conclusion The use of new and old technologies has modified the structure itself of gossip, making directly public what that was a private talk and making it shifting from orality to written text, supported by pictures, videos and so on. Second, old media have enhanced the consumption of a gossip reduced to a commodity, while the new media have enhanced the production of gossip. Third, electronic gossip is also changing social rules and the ways in which people manage social information: the appearance of self-gossip is a relevant proof of this tendency. But it seems that gossip continues to be beneficial in terms of rule-learning and social bonding, although a new ethics is needed both in the cyberspace and in the old media to balance free speech and privacy and to protect e-actors’ reputation. Further research is needed to properly measure this large spread of gossip and to understand more deeply the transformation of its structure. 28

Donath, J., boyd, d. (2004) Public Displays of Connection, BT Technology Journal, 22(4), 71-82.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

Daniel L. Golden

Utopia Calling One of the main insights in mobile studies is that portable communication devices are able to transport their user–in a sense and for a while–from the reality physically surrounding him to a secondary, virtual one. Socio-psychological considerations tell that this „trip” can often serve as an escape from a strange, seemingly hostile setting to a well-known, familiar one of our personal connections, where we feel home and safe. “Making a voyage from the unsatisfactory real world to an ideal place”: this sounds like a simplified description of the literary-philosophical genre of utopias. Since the groundbreaking work of Thomas More (Morus) about his imagined “nowhere land”, the genre became widespread and there were many, who tried to build up in their mind the perfect society for mankind. Naturally, different disciples found important different words of the master-inventor, so that they could establish different subtypes of economical, political, religious, ecological, scientific, technological, social or moral utopias. In this paper I focus on the utopian rules of being part of the community and getting in touch with other people – that is social networking. I shall look at More’s Utopia in order to see what is expected from an ideal world in this respect, and I will try to examine, to what extent mobile communication networks fulfill these requirements. On the way Dictionary definitions tell us, that the two main characteristics of utopias are that they are imaginary and ideal. The first adjective implies that utopias, as descriptions of places not existing in real, always contain a significant portion of fiction. But this fiction is not the innocent type of pure literary imagination, rather the kind common to inventors, scientists, revolutionaries and so on: the obsession of discovering something new, something never seen before. So the peculiarity of this kind of fiction is that it has the potential and the explicit aim of becoming non-fiction. That leads to the other component of the notion: an ideal as a noun is precisely something existing only in some kind of upper world, a perfect prototype for designing our objects in the real. Hence, utopian narratives always contain two potential lines of thinking and writing: one is a satiric, more amusing tone of teasing and mocking only; the other is a normative, more serious one, which declares the rules to be followed by true believers in a better future. In the course of

Mobile Communication Communicationand andthe theEthics EthicsofofSocial SocialNetworking Networking Mobile Zsuzsanna Kondor: Utopia Communication Daniel L. Golden: Calling and the Metaphysics of Practice…

interpretation of a given work, much discussion can be made concerning which part or which phrases should be counted to the first intention and which to the second. This ambiguity can make quite much confuse as different parts of the narrative can be on a different level of “seriousness”; that is the strength of aiming at becoming non-fiction. As C. S. Lewis notes talking about the Utopia of More: “There is a thread of serious thought running through it, an abundance of daring suggestions, several back-handed blows at European institutions, and, finally, the magnificent peroration. But he does not keep our noses to the grindstone. He says many things for the fun of them, surrendering himself to the sheer pleasure of imagined geography, imagined language, and imagined institutions. That is what readers whose interests are rigidly political do not understand: but everyone who has ever made an imaginary map responds at once.” That means, that the special delight comes mostly from the act of crossing the borders: taking the adventure of visiting an unknown world with undiscovered pathways and unexpected dangers, but soon coming back in safe to our good, old, solid reality. Living in Utopia Happiness in utopias is guaranteed by some simple general laws. These rules are so clever and clear, that they are wholeheartedly accepted by the totality of inhabitants. That means, that an utopian social system will work if the individuals consisting it share the ideals, personal preferences and value system of the inventor. As Robert M. Adams puts it: “Utopia is the product of a moral idea. Like any other ideological society, it tends to convert the safety of the basic idea into a supreme law, and tailor the people to serve it efficiently.” So we can say, that one of the most important characteristics of an utopian system should be the members’ benevolence to it, or–since we are speaking about essentially mental projects–their benevolence to it’s creator. The mobile as a social tool is ideal to collect around us all those people. What we have in our name lists in our communication devices, are the groups of persons benevolent to our different projects in life, and through those: to our personal ideals. In that way the mobile serves for constructing one’s utopian society: the network of people who are familiar, as opposed to the millions of strangers living out there in the world. In that sense, the mobile society is the very perfection of the old idea. For the best thing about living in an utopia, is that you can enjoy getting constantly in touch with all the other benevolent fellow-citizens while walking around on your island. This is perfect communication: I can

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

build up a connection with everyone I may want to and whenever I would like to. Familiar persons in a close and strong contact – the trivial model for such a relationship is the traditional family. Not surprising, that is to be the basic unit in More’s utopian society as well: “Each city, then, consists of households, the households consisting generally of blood-relations. When the women grow up and are married, they move into their husband’s households. On the other hand, male children and after them grandchildren remain in the family, and are subject to the oldest parent, unless his mind has started to fail, in which case, the next oldest takes his place.” This patriarchic and hierarchical structure seems very traditional, very old-fashioned. But in fact, it appears in the construction of the mobile society as well. Children get their first mobile from their parents, usually as a gift for a special occasion, e.g. a birthday. It became one of the distinguished cultural artifacts with a ritual role in the procedure of growing up, beginning with the first bicycle and ending with the first car, perhaps. All of these allow and require a certain amount of independent thinking and acting, so they mark given stages of growing up. Giving a mobile to a young person is a symbolic action which means the acknowledge of certain maturity. Getting a mobile, however, does not mean coming of age utterly. Instead of putting you free, it is just strengthening the relationship with the adults, since you as a child cannot pay for your mobile use, this will be done by your parents – if you deserve that, of course. So the mobile is giving the feeling of dependence, maybe one of the strongest ones today, as it is one of the most important channels of connecting to the social networks most important for the children: their own generation. The other aspect of dependence–pointed out in the literature from the very beginning–that the mobile phone should be answered, when close relatives are calling. They possess priority even in their state of telepresence over the actual reality of the other person, whatever circumstances may occur. So far, that not answering that type of call (or not calling back in a few minutes) may wake most extreme psychical reactions on the side of the caller: worrying about accidents, robberies and so on, or suspecting some bad moves, hidden actions etc. In sum, while the mobile seems to loose family relationships on the surface, because of mobilizing people in the geographic dimension, in practice it makes these connections so strong as they would be in the strict social order of More’s Utopia. Hence the mobile serves for extreme visibility in a quite undesired way, as the disappearance of privacy is one of the greatest fears of man. And indeed, some relating passages of More sounds like that if they were coming from a modern anti-utopia: “So you see there is no chance to loaf or kill time, no pretext for evading work; no taverns, or alehouses, or brothels; no

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chances for corruption; no hiding places; no spots for secret meetings. Because they live in the full view of all, they are bound to be either working at their usual trades, or enjoying their leisure in a respectable way.” At the moment mobile devices transmit only the voice of the person, and no additional information on his place, neither geographical data, nor a live picture about the environment of the person answering the call. If you want, these are the final escapes from ubiquitous visibility. We are all familiar with the public scene–used in television ads as well–when someone is stating to her wife or boss that he is working at his office, while sitting in a nice, silent pub with a beer in front of him… Total visibility takes away individual freedom: the possibility of personal truths, which do not have to be negotiated with any other person, who would call it simply a “lie”. Once such dark thoughts emerge, even the most peaceful pictures by More may turn to a nightmare: “They begin every dinner and supper with some reading on a moral topic, but keep it brief lest it become a bore. Taking that as an occasion, the elders introduce topics of conversation, which they try not to make gloomy or dull. They never monopolize the conversation with long monologues, but are ready to hear what the young men say. In fact, they deliberately draw them out in order to discover the natural temper and quality of each one’s mind, as revealed in the freedom of mealtime talk.” Controlling topics leads directly to controlling of minds, resembling very much something like the institution of Orwell’s “thought police”. In that way free invention turns to rigid norms. The liberating utopia can become a brave new world, a prison for its inhabitants. However, control cannot become total in the mobile society. For it is completely useless to wonder today about something like More’s common dining hall for a syphogranty (i.e. large family): “On both sides of [the eldest] sit younger people, next to them older people again, and so through the hall, those of about the same age sit together, yet are mingled with others of a different age. The reason for this, as they explained it, is that the dignity of the aged, and the respect due them, may restrain the younger people from improper freedom of words and gestures, since nothing said or done at table can pass unnoticed by the old, who are present on every side.” In contrast the mobile gives a great deal of privacy to one’s social connections. You can eventually spy text or voice messages as a mobile is left unattended, or overhear some conversations hiding at a door not closed properly – but you cannot be present in them. So teenage communication goes on its own way with all the “improper words and gestures” characterizing the age-group concerned.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

Utopia falling Utopian societies are traditionally and generally closed ones, since they–or more precisely, their inventors–do not want to endanger the fate of them by incalculable foreign interventions. If you dream about ultimate safety, the best thing to do is to provide protection to your imaginary world by both human and natural means. Utopia, of course, is situated on an island forming a crescent, so that even ships can approach it from one direction only, and even there are a lot of rocks lying under the water. “The channels are known only to the Utopians, so hardly any strangers enter the bay without one of their pilots; and even they themselves could not enter safely if they did not direct themselves by some landmarks on the coast.” In the case of mobile communication networks, the “gate” to our personal utopias serves at the same time for very general, public goals. Since mobile phone number and e-mail addresses are generally publicly accessible, seemingly anyone can get the information how to intrude to our utopia. Nevertheless, there is a kind of remedy for that, too. The name of the calling partner appearing on my device gives a sort of security: I do not have to answer, if the call is especially unpleasant, or the number is completely strange for me. The entire system is quite robust from that point of view; there is no way to reach someone through his or her mobile, if he or she does not want that. Closedness has some important disadvantages on the global scale. If we close up ourselves into one and only (mobile) communicating group, we can easily lose connections to the rest of the world. This may happen to computer game communities as well, as to extreme radical political ones. As long as you imagine only one Utopia, you do not have much problem: adepts at your ideals will come to live with you on your island, and others will stay beyond the horizon. However, in the world we are living in, there are numerous utopias with different groups of adherents, which are located in the same physical space, so there is a risk of their conflicting. The chance for that is much increased, if one takes all information from a closed network of his fellow-utopians. This may result in significantly distorted, or one-sided pictures about the state of the world. But once again: our real world is better designed, then any utopia. It is quite hard to isolate yourself completely, to meet only the stimuli of a closed, sectarian social group. In real life, during our endless wandering, we constantly collide with new faces of new travelers from new lands. And from time to time we become so much interested in them, that we suggest exchanging our phone numbers – in that way happily redesigning the boundaries of our telecommunication utopias.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

Anna Gyırfi – Ian Smythe

Re-engaging the SEN Child into Learning through Social Networking A Case Study

Introduction Education should be the foundation for independent living in the big wide world. Across Europe there are ongoing arguments over how to adjust the mismatch between the skills learned in school and those required to take a meaningful place in the real world, including the world of employment. This discrepancy is highlighted especially with SEN children, who find it difficult to engage within the framework of traditional teaching, whereas they clearly show talent in learning important life skills outside the school setting. If the content and delivery are engaging and motivating, these individuals can find ways to overcome their learning difficulties. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the more education resembles motivating real life situations, the more the SEN child can be successfully integrated into mainstream education, even if not necessarily working at the same level as their peers. Technology has enabled many special needs child to engage in the learning process at a level not previously experienced through individualised e-learning and assistive technology (see for example, Smythe 2004). However, the latest directions as exemplified by Web 2 activities, will leave many in this group disenfranchised due to the inconsistency between the skills necessary to engage in these activities and the skill set of this special group. When O’Reilly coined the phrase “Web 2.0” in 2004, his version of the future was through empowerment of the individual to engage in the process of the web development through collaboratively creating, sharing and referencing content, e.g blogs, wikis, social tagging, podcasts, etc. However, for the special needs individual, this apparent opening up to all really means opening up to all except the SEN individuals. The defining issues of the dyslexic individual are problems with the reading and writing elements particularly when carried out in real time (e.g. chat) within social networks. The brief attention span of those with ADHD will create its own problems, while those on the Autistic Spectrum will have problems of social skills i.e. social networking which may need careful management as netiquette and boundaries are much less understood. However, through careful development of a system that acknowledges their

Mobile Communication Communicationand andthe theEthics EthicsofofSocial SocialNetworking Networking Mobile Zsuzsanna Communication and theChild Metaphysics of Practice… A. Gyırfi –Kondor: I. Smythe: Re-engaging the SEN into Learning …

strengths and weaknesses, it is possible not only to compensate for these difficulties but also to use social networking as part of a learning (and socialising) strategy, and re-engage those who would otherwise be marginalised in the new web environment. About Special Educational Needs The Special Educational Needs (SEN) child may be defined as somebody who “has a learning difficulty which requires special educational provision to be made for him or her.” (Teachernet, 2008) This provision is not about giving them an advantage over other children, but to maximise their potential to engage in learning activities, and access the curriculum and demonstrate their potential through examinations or other evaluated activities. Only when they have proof that they can fulfil the intellectual requirement of a given job will they have the potential to survive in the working environment. It may be argued that the two most prevalent and well researched SENs are dyslexia and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The European Dyslexia Association define dyslexia as “a difference in acquiring reading, spelling and writing skills, that is neurological in origin.” (EDA, 2008) Furthermore, they suggest that “It may be caused by a combination of difficulties in phonological processing, working memory, rapid naming, sequencing and the automaticity of basic skills.” It is these underlying cognitive deficits and their impact on development of living as well as learning skills that cause dyslexia to have consequences well beyond literacy in the first language. More specifically those skills such as sound discrimination, sound analysis (pulling sounds apart), sound storage, sound synthesis (putting sounds together to make new words) and memory which cause first language literacy difficulties will also cause problems in learning additional languages. The feeling of frustration and failure in front of their peers will lead to low motivation to learn any subject, especially another language. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is widely recognised as being an underlying cause of children’s achievement problems in school. It affects 3-5% of the population (Polanczyk, 2007), and typically presents itself during childhood. Its symptoms are distractibility, difficulty with concentration and focus, short term memory loss, impulsivity, restlessness and problems with conforming to social behaviour norms, impairing many areas of life functioning including learning. (See ICD-10, Hyperkinetic conduct disorder). The syndrome often brings conjoining problems, such as anxiety towards achievement, oppositional defiant behaviour, social isolation and low self esteem, all of which further aggravates life in school.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

Therefore both dyslexic and ADHD pupils have special educational needs that have to be addressed when designing education for these individuals. Web 2 and e-learning and mobile phones Berners-Lee (Anderson, 2006) has argued that many of the functions that Web 2 apparently offers already exist elsewhere. Irrespective of when they were “invented” the increased focus on certain functionality in Web 2 encourages exploration of new combinations of pedagogy and technology. According to Nicholls (2003, p3) “The choice of eLearning tools should reflect rather than determine the pedagogy of a course; how technology is used is more important than which technology is used.” He went on to suggest that “Technology is pedagogically neutral” and that “The selection of education approach or philosophy is therefore more important than the selection of the technology itself.” He also suggested that "technology is not content, and technology is not process." Yet if the technology is the only way these individuals will access the specific content, it becomes integral to the process. Furthermore, if pedagogy refers to "the principles and methods of instruction" (http://wordnet.princeton.edu/, accessed through www.dictioary.com) and the method, i.e. the mobile phone, makes a difference, then clearly the technology is part of the pedagogy. Put it another way McLuhan appears to be shown correct again in his phrase "The medium is the message" and we need to study the medium more, as it will impact significantly upon the content. The question posed by the EU funded project Calldysc (www.calldysc.eu) was whether in the case of these SEN children it would be possible to use the mobile phone (as opposed to the web or CDs) as the medium for learning a second language, an area usually neglected in their teaching. Furthermore, was there potential in using the Web 2 principles to teach, or at least provide motivation toward re-engagement with a subject that is increasingly important in an international working and living environment. Collaborative learning for SEN students with mobile phones The Web 2 activities could be described as like speaking instead of just listening, of writing not just reading. And that is when the problem lies. Moving from a receptive to a productive culture creates difficulties for many SEN individuals, from the challenges of writing for dyslexics, to the interaction of social networks. The problem is about making public ones weaknesses. Having had to endure the ridicule and humiliation of ones

Mobile Communication Communicationand andthe theEthics EthicsofofSocial SocialNetworking Networking Mobile Zsuzsanna Communication and theChild Metaphysics of Practice… A. Gyırfi –Kondor: I. Smythe: Re-engaging the SEN into Learning …

peers, they will obviously be reluctant to expose themselves again to such attacks on their self-esteem. By building a special community for dyslexic learners, Calldysc project provides evidence that a shared environment can be made to overcome the basic fears and negative first experiences of this group who normally have difficulties in learning a new language. The Web 2 principles, including social networking, shared environments, personal blogs, and collaborative learning, even across national boundaries, were adapted to the needs of this group by user prompts, short text, high levels of interaction and other techniques to promote re-engagement into a field many SEN children leave at an early stage. A blended learning environment was developed where the dyslexic pupil was re-engaged to language learning on mobile phones and portable Playstation game consoles (PSP), and collaborative content creating and sharing activities through a social networking frame. These language teaching games were designed not to substitute traditional language teaching, but as part of a blended learning methodology. Informal and post-modern theories focus on the origins of the drive for learning and the diversity of the learners and the learning environment (Kilgore, 2001). They emphasize the self-taught nature of learning and how learning in various places can often be more effective than classrooms. Motivation is a key issue when re-engaging SEN pupils, so our learning frame gives them the choice of device (mobile phone, game console or computer) as well as the environment (classroom, remote stand alone or computer mediated peer-to-peer). Special attention is paid to the learning preferences of the dyslexic and ADHD student. The teaching material reflects these special educational needs by: • Multisensory teaching, where the simultaneous, multimodal information processing of the ADHD pupil is better suited. Also, the dyslexic learner responds better to teaching, where the orthographic, phonetic and semantic element of language is presented together. Multimedia programming makes this task easy to solve. • Non-competitive, collaborative environment, where students’ self esteem is not challenged. Most feedback given to learners are positive and individualized, there is no comparison with the results of others, whilst personal improvement can be tracked. • Game- like learning activities to raise motivation and keep attention. As these games are short units of teaching content (micro learning), they better fit the smaller attention span of ADHD students and they do not resemble the already feared traditional learning format. • Activities are built up from the easier passive listening level towards the more demanding active (written and spoken) language

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

• •

production to overcome anxiety and oppositional attitude towards learning. Dyslexia friendly solutions are used wherever possible. For example there are mother tongue audio instructions to the games, writing is aided by drop down menus to chose words from. Careful attention was paid to the collaborative elements, to minimise the potential for ridicule and embarrassment that frequently occur to dyslexics in traditional learning environments. Thus while in some instances several children using one mobile device can be a good learning environment (Lan, Sun and Chang, 2007) due consideration was given to how this part was implemented.

Calldysc Web 2 games The activities are designed to include the most popular aspects of everyday web and mobile usage building on a carefully selected vocabulary using repeated exposure to maximise the learning potential (Cobb, 2007). Activities included social networking, editing and sharing personal data and playing synchronous mobile games. A simple illustration of how the Web 2 principles are adapted for this user group is the personal profile. Instead of the traditional open ended approach to social networking website profiles, the user is able to minimise their writing by selecting from a short list of alternatives highlighting common interests and hobbies, accessed through the mobile interface. Thus the activity is encouraged but not restricted by their difficulties. In “Wordchain” learners create word chains illustrated by photos taken by their own mobile phones. The player takes a picture of an object (e.g. a red dress) which is published on the website via their mobile phone and the players tag them by using appropriate vocabulary learnt in previous phases: e.g. red dress. Other players can continue the chain with another picture that retains one of the elements (e. g. a “yellow dress” or “red car”). Thus for each addition they only need to add one word. This helps develop the association between the concept (picture) and the written word in a collaborative environment. Some activities use mashup features, such as a purpose build “community” online dictionary to help students find out the meaning of new words more easily, and collaborate to enhance the dictionary. In another activity, the kids develop their own teaching/learning content to share with others, giving true/false responses to questions about photographs derived from the Flickr picture database. A more subtle and “combative” collaborative learning environment is “hangman” where players use there own mobile so challenge each other, irrespective of their location. The players take it in turn to guess words drawn from the project database.

Mobile Communication Communicationand andthe theEthics EthicsofofSocial SocialNetworking Networking Mobile Zsuzsanna Communication and theChild Metaphysics of Practice… A. Gyırfi –Kondor: I. Smythe: Re-engaging the SEN into Learning …

Pedagogical and technical aspects of Calldysc The full range of activities in Calldysc includes solo games, synchronous two-player activities as well as the Web 2 activities. Teachers are able to monitor the students participation in these activities through the Learning Management System which monitors results. Data collected include time of activity, final result, intermediate results. The students progress can therefore be monitored. Note that it is more important to see the kids using the system, i.e. they are motivated, than the actual results. However, it was interesting to see that they were keen to learn, and showed progress in language acquisition. Clearly only a longitudinal study would be able to show if the gains were long term. From a technology perspective, for easy of programming and widespread use and phone costs/availability, the Nokia range was chosen, with the N70 as the preferred device. These robust Symbian devices were a cheap option providing all the necessary features, from internet connect to accepting memory cards. The programming language was Adobe Flash, using FlashLite 2.0 which worked consistently across all devices. Other phones were also used provided they conformed to these specifications. Results, implications and conclusion Crombie (1999), referring to the dyslexic second language learner, said that “We must ensure we are not imposing an unbearable burden that could result in further failure, demotivation and subsequent behaviour problems.” This project does not claim that the mobile phone is the answer to teaching a second language to SEN children, nor that the difficulties that these SEN children find in the social network can be overcome with mobile phones and an appropriate environment. But children engaged in the activities, and wanted to extend their knowledge beyond what the project produced. Typical responses from the children were “The phone did not laugh at me when I made a mistake.” “It was cool using a phone!”, “Learning English has always been difficult for me and I hated it. This made it fun. Even if I was not good, I think I learned something.” and “The only thing that made me keeping going was that I hate not to win, but my friends did not see my scores.” Clearly they appreciated that their failings were no longer under the watchful eye of their peer group, and given that they were not being judged against others, they appeared to like to show that, given time, they too could succeed. Parents acknowledged the desire for their kids to learn subjects that before had been a no-go area and were pleased to see the level of engagement. Clearly pedagogy should lead, but in collaboration with social and technical trends, it would appear traditional boundaries

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

could be breached. The smaller the gap between the way life skills will be used in learning and in life, the greater the chance of engagement with the learning, irrespective of the subject matter. Traditionally one talks of a blended learning environment using computer assisted language learning (CALL) in conjunction with assistive technology and teachers to help dyslexic learners. Calldysc has demonstrated that using handheld mobile devices (currently regarded as phone but increasingly may be seen as mobile computers using blended technologies) can increase learning opportunities. But as Nicholls (2003, p9) comments “Only pedagogical and access advantages will provide a lasting rationale for implementing eLearning approaches.” Further quantitative data will be collected for this ongoing project, to confirm the qualitative results to date. Only if the evidence is clear that the effects of learning on the mobile are lasting will they be adopted more widely. And the future of language learning for dyslexics? There is already an EU project (www.emime.org) that is looking to provide instant translation of language on a mobile phone. You speak into it, and it speaks out the translation using your own voice. Will that eliminate the need for dyslexics to learn a language? No, but it may help them develop social networks in an increasingly multilingual environment. REFERENCES Anderson N (2006) Tim Berners-Lee on Web 2.0: "nobody even knows what it means". Web reference: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060901-7650.html Retrieval date: 30 July 2008 Cobb T (2007) Computing the vocabulary demands of L2 Reading. Language Learning & Technology http://llt.msu.edu/vol11num3/cobb/ October 2007, Volume 11, Number 3 pp. 38-63 EDA (2008) http://www.dyslexia.eu.com/whatisdyslexia.html Hartmann, T (1995). ADD Success Stories. Grass Valley, California: Underwood Books, xvii. ICD-10 (2008) The ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders - Clinical descriptions and diagnostic guidelines. World Health Organisation, Geneva. Kilgore, D. W. (2001). Critical and postmodern perspective on adult learning. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 89, 53-61.

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Lan Y-L, Sung Y-T and CHang K-E (2007) A mobile-device-supported peer-assisted learning system for collaborative early EFL reading. Language and Learning Technology, Vol 11.3, pp 130-151 (http://llt.msu.edu/vol11num3/langsungchang/) McLuhan M (1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man) London. Routledge Murphy P (2007) Reading comprehension exercises online: The effects of feedback, profiency and interaction. Language and Learning Technology, Vol 11.3, pp 107-129 (http://llt.msu.edu/vol11num3/murphy/) Nichols, M. (2003). A theory for eLearning. Educational Technology & Society, 6(2), 1-10, Available at http://www.ifets.info/journals/6_2/1.pdf Oliver M and Harvey J (2002) What does 'impact' mean in the evaluation of learning technology? Educational Technology and Societ 5(3) p18-26. O'Reilly, T (2005-09-30). What Is Web 2.0. O'Reilly Network. Retrieved on 2006-08-06. Polanczyk G, de Lima MS, Horta BL, Biederman J, Rohde LA (2007). "The worldwide prevalence of ADHD: a systematic review and metaregression analysis". Am J Psychiatry 164 (6): 942–48. Teachernet (2008) Special Educational Needs (SEN) policy. http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/management/atoz/s/senpolicy/ Web access date: 1 August 2008

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

Richard Harper

The Communication Paradox In this paper I will summarise some arguments I am putting forward in my latest book, Texture: communications in the 21st century (MIT Press, forthcoming). In particular, I will present an empirical and conceptual picture of our current communications patterns and habits as well as provide some historical reflections on the same. My remarks will not simply be about facts and figures though – volumes of traffic, mobile device ownership, modes of social expression enabled by the Internet, etc–but will be rather more interested in the ways in which the world-as-experienced is constructed and understood through various narratives, metaphors and vocabularies. I will want to suggest that our age is replete with such narratives. Castell’s coinage of the phrase, the Networked Society, for example, is simply one of the many tropes that we have for our current world. I will argue that this and other related linguistic formulas suffuse and infuse our daily experiences. I will note that these metaphors and tropes lead some to suggest that 21st Century individuals lead more intense lives than those of prior generations. I will end my discussions by asking whether this is true. I will want to ask whether Shakespeare had more time than the contemporary individual, and if so what he might have done with that time. My reflections on this will lead me back to our current world and to what I suggest is the communications paradox one can see within it: to the idea that we communicate so much that we have little time for doing the things that justify the communication.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

Stefan Hedelius

Digital Natives - Driving the Converged Information and Communication Market Telecom, media and internet are coming together to create a whole new ecosystem, the multimedia market place. By using their respective strengths and enablers, they give consumers new possibilities to enjoy, socialize, communicate and consume but also to make things more convenient and efficient. These three industries are now merging at a fast pace. Several of them can offer the same services i.e. Internet can carry voice, Telecom can carry and show media content and Media can be used for access to the Internet. The usage of Internet has developed from being mainly information and content oriented to becoming more and more communication and people related. Compared to two years ago today’s consumers are much more open towards using Internet on the mobile phone and the fact that communities constitute the main arena where young people interact, get together and socialize makes the online ‘digital appearance’ extremely important. The driving forces behind this multimedia market are digital natives who are born into digital technology. They are used to the immediacy of hypertext, downloaded music, phones in their pockets – available 24/7, a library on their laptops, connectivity anytime anywhere. The life arc of a typical 21-year-old entering the workforce today has, on average, included 5,000 hours of video game playing, exchange of 250,000 e-mails, instant messages, and phone text messages, 10,000 hours of mobile phone use. To that you can add 3,500 hours of time online. (Source: FT, 2006)

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

Larissa Hjorth

Framing Imaging Communities: Gendered ICTs and SNS (Social Networking Systems) in the Asia-Pacific

Introduction Unquestionably, the zeitgeist of Web 2.0 is symbolized by the dominance of Social Networking Systems (SNS) and user created content (UCC). MySpace, Facebook, and Cyworld mini-hompy are but a few examples of SNS that are becoming increasingly part of urban everyday life, and interwoven into the historicity of the Internet. Far from one SNS dominating globally, the rise of SNS has been multiple and divergent, reflecting the localised adaptations of Internet. In each different cultural context we see different examples of SNS that are subject to localised governmental and socio-cultural factors. SNS simultaneously reflect micro and macro extensions of the user and their community. This process of being “online” is augmented by localised offline definitions of place and home. In this divergence and contested picture of the Internet, the AsiaPacific provides a vivid picture sketching its undulating topography. Through the lens of SNS we can gain much insight into the deployment and engagement of socio-technological spaces such as the Internet. Housing some of the world leaders in 21st-century technologies and broadband centres such as South Korea and Japan, in contrast to the still uneven development of Web 2.0 in Australia, the region provides a poignant illustration of the growing significance of the local in interpreting the Internet. As a region, the rise of the Internet is indelibly linked to the burgeoning production and consumption of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) and the integral role of these sociotechnologies and media literacies in the continuum of domestic technologies. To chart a history of the Internet in the region is tied to the rise and adoptions of ICTs as an extension of domestic technologies and gendered forms of intimacy and labour. Thus to chart Web 2.0 in the region is to reconceptualise the gendered nature of labour, technology and intimacy in an age marked by the ‘publicness of intimacy’ (Berlant 1998). Through the index of SNS and IM, we can begin to explore emerging forms of intimacy and labour. In a region where ICTs have been lauded with democratic power (Kim 2003; Pertierra 2006) and yet also a site for burgeoning precarious labour and, more particularly, exploiting social, affective and creative labour, one is left to ask –– just how empowering is this rise in UCC? Is it but a further exploitation of social and creative labour? Moreover, in the far-from-neutral terrain of ICTs, is the

Mobile Communication Communicationand andthe theEthics EthicsofofSocial SocialNetworking Networking Mobile Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Larissa Hjorth: Framing Imaging Communities…

stereotypical user, the young female, empowered or subjugated? In order to understand the Internet and SNS in the region we must explore how ICTs reflect particular localised practices. In order to do so, I will briefly outline the context for ICTs and the Internet in region as a series of material practice that have deep symbolic levels. This will be followed by a conceptualization of current Web 2.0 and UCC as part of what I call ‘imaging communities’. As a reworking micronarrative version of Benedict Anderson’s ‘imagined community’ I seek to encompass some of the gendered forms of social, creative and affective labour. I will parallel these types of affective and creative labour with some of the gendered metaphors surroundings ICTs in the region that have, in turn, become attached to the representations and understandings of the region within global ICTs. These metaphors of gendered technologies and media are considered in relation to gender shifts in the region’s market. This paper hopes to provide a window onto some of the gendered modes of labour and intimacy surrounding ICTs and the Internet in the region that will lead into ethnographic comparative case studies of online communities in the region. The place of ICTs and the Internet in the region The Internet is no longer an area just for technologists. As an integral part of everyday life, the Internet and its various forms of uptake and adoption can give us much knowledge of the 21st-century in all its complexity (Miller & Slater 2000). Skim through any newspaper or online article and it is almost impossible to avoid the rapture surrounding the rise of the latest technological sublime — Web 2.0. Researchers such as danah boyd (2003, 2004) have been the first to address this new dynamic form of online practice in the case of Social Networking Sites (SNS). This promise of new forms of literacy, performativity, subjectivity, self-expression, and social labour (Wajcman 2008; Gregg 2007) is most apparent in the primary symbol of Web 2.0 — SNS. In particular, the Asia-Pacific provides a fascinating model for understanding the complex ways in which online practices reflect offline relations and ideologies. Boasting locations such as South Korea with the highest broadband rates in the world (OECD 2006) and Japan’s pioneering of mobile (keitai) Internet, the region has been instrumental in the production and consumption of 21st-century online technologies. Examples of SNS active in the region include Facebook, MySpace, Flikr, YouTube, LinkedIn, Cyworld, mixi and 2ch (ni channeru). Once a preoccupation of youth cultures, and associated with geeks, students and teenagers, SNS over the last couple of years have now been taken up by children, politicians, artists, business people and professionals as a vehicle

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

for self-representation and self-contextualisation. Web 2.0, specifically SNS, have become an integral part of urban everyday life. It seems that anyone and everyone is signing up and that in some circles not to have an online presence is not to have a social presence. Moreover, once just the activity of developed countries, SNS such as Facebook are becoming part of everyday life for urban people Filipinos. Thus, a study of the use of SNS today is therefore a study of people engaged in everyday life — and is more likely to give access to cultural mainstreams across the region than subcultural tributaries. Throughout the region we can find many examples of differing online/offline relationships influenced by governmental, cultural and socioeconomic factors, thus reflecting specific forms of locality and each locality’s unique socio-cultural context for appropriation of the Internet. In Japan, 2ch (2 channel or ni-channeru) is an anonymous forum visited by tens of millions per day (predominantly via their mobile phone, keitai) (McLelland 2006), whilst in the Japanese youth community, the online community called mixi has almost 8 million registered users. Within the world of mixi, one’s life is defined by the school one went to, the car that they drive, and the hobbies that occupy any notion of spare time (Mori 2005a, b, c; Mori & Hjorth in review). In the case of mixi, UCC becomes not just social labour, but an index for social and cultural capital. Indeed, UCC just becomes one more way for measuring lifestyle. Alternatively, the rise of UCC through keitai shôsetsu (or ‘portable novel’) has seen new media converge with older media (such as film and manga). Although keitai shôsetsu were initially written by professionals, by the mid 2000s everyday female users had begun to be inspired to write and disseminate their own keitai shôsetsu. This is an example of female driven UCC in which women write for female readers, thus rehearsing 19th-century English genres of women’s fiction. What’s more, the social and creative labour of female UCC is rewarded in the market with some successful UCC writers adapting their stories into manga and feature films. Distribution sites such as maho-island (maho meaning ‘magic’) were launched by i-mode in 1999 with four channels for keitai UCC –– novels, poems, photos and music. By 2007, nearly four million different keitai shôsetsu had become hard copy. With one million keitai shôsetsu being produced in 2007 and 1.9 billion page views per month, maho-island has become an exemplary case of the popularity of UCC. In Korea, the success of one of the oldest online communities (nearly ten years old), Cyworld mini-hompy, has seen over one third (18 million) of the nation’s 48 million people regularly accessing and updating their own and their friends’ pages (Hjorth & Kim 2005; Hjorth 2007; Cho 2004). With the world’s highest broadband rates and with strong online activism and blogging culture (Kluver & Park 2008), South Korea provides

Mobile Communication Communicationand andthe theEthics EthicsofofSocial SocialNetworking Networking Mobile Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Larissa Hjorth: Framing Imaging Communities…

an exemplary model of the online and mobile technologies as a site for democratic struggle (Kim 2003). With strong IT policies and the world’s best example of techno-nationalism (West 2006), the role of ICT consumption and production holds a central role in South Korea’s postmodernity. Despite the ubiquity of mobile (haendupon) and wireless Internet, many prefer the ‘third space’ (Chee 2005) of the PC room (PC bang). Unlike such sites as MySpace, Cyworld’s mini-hompy is dominated by a characteristically Korean penchant for cute customisation—avatars, cyber-gifts and virtual spaces such as the ‘mini-room’ in which friends can hang out online together (Hjorth 2008). As Yoo (2008) suggests, the visual differences allude to distinctive modes of online performativity that diverge from western models such as MySpace. In Hong Kong, a vivid illustration of the symbolic role of the ICTs as an icon for postmodernity (and thus also as a harbinger for problems associated with such ‘progress’) can be seen in the now infamous bus man video (http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=2AzD5H7vWek). In this video, a young man demonstrated his dissatisfaction with the older man talking loudly on the phone by patting the older man on the shoulder; an action that results in the older man taking exception to this and beginning to berate the younger man. Here, the etiquette around mobile phone usage is central to the discordance between generations; thus the mobile phone etiquette is seen as a central motif in the grappling of the Hong Kong of the past (symbolised by the old man) and the future (represented by the young man). The older man’s diatribe at the young man begins about the mobile phone and then quickly shifts towards his general anger towards contemporary Hong Kong life. Ironically, the whole incident was recorded by another passenger on their mobile phone. The bus man video became famous as an allegory for tensions around postmodernity; it was widely circulated both within Hong Kong and globally in the late part of 2005, and became symbolic of the new phenomenon of UCC and everyday photo journalism through the mobile phone. The phone, in this scenario, was indicative of a schism between the generations, between different epochs. The phone thus becomes the repository for a clash between two different Hong Kongs. It is the symbol of hyphenation (Abbas 1997) par excellence. Thus to explore the mobile phone in Hong Kong is to explore the clash between eras and cultures around the perceived ‘imagined community’ that is Hong Kong. The phone operates not only as a repository of the particular version of Hong Kong’s capitalism today, but also as a loaded symbol of social mobility (Robison & Goodman 1996) and as a vessel for the nostalgia (Ma 2005) that constitutes an integral part of Hong Kong’s ‘imagined community’ today. The role of wireless ICTs within the construction of 21st-century postmodernity has largely a product of ‘unique characteristics that are

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

informed by its own social, historical, and institutional pedigree’ (Qiu: forthcoming). As Fang observes in ‘China’s culture of the thumb’, ‘over half of all SMS transferred worldwide is sent by Chinese users’; making it a phenomenon difficult to ignore. As Fang notes, the dominance of SMS in Chinese everyday life is leading to new forms of cultures and SMS creativity. With the abundance and significance of SMS, new forms of profession have been born –– from the SMS writer to cell phone soap drama producers. As Jack Qiu observes, such media as SMS have seen the phenomenon of ‘SMS writers’ (duanxin xieshou) who regularly produce large quantities of messages to be sold or spammed to mobile subscribers. The rise in SMS from its beginnings in 2000 in China has seen its annual traffic volume has gone up from 1.4 billion messages in 2000 to 429.7 billion in 2006 (Qiu 2008: ibid). With this phenomenon rise, new forms of labour markets are being created –– some exploitative, others like the best duanxin xieshou or gold farmers of online multiplayer games such as World of Warcraft (WoW) can provide the ‘have-less’ with an annual income in one week (Chan 2006: n.p.). Through ICTs, some are able to enter new worlds of virtuality and creative industries. The region is home to companies such as Samsung (Korea), LG (Korea), Sony (Japan), Sanyo (Japan) that are global leaders in the production of personal and domestic electronics. Since the 1997 regional economic crisis, local interest groups have worked actively to redefine consumption and modernity as no longer synonymous with westernisation (Chua 2000). In a ten-year period since the crisis, the region has developed and adapted its technological and economic global power into ideological prowess. The instrumental role of technology in the region’s recovery highlights specific socio-cultural and political economy powers at work; forces that are interrelated with emerging transnational forms of globalisation, labour (Truong 1999; Parreñas 2001, 2005; McKay 2007) and consumption in the region. By analysing the emerging online communities in the region, we can gain a sense of the ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 1983) that inform and reflect localised notions of community (Park & Kluver 2008) and intimacy. Through the lens of the Internet, we can reconceptualise the region beyond dominant models such as NICs (Newly Industrialised Countries). The region’s role in supplying much of the current innovative socio-technologies globally cannot be under-estimated. Beyond “The New Rich”: Re-imaging the region In Richard Robison and David Goodman’s The New Rich (1996) it is the formation of new economic imperatives and ‘lifestyles’ that prefigure in the region’s new consumer identity. As The New Rich so aptly demonstrated, the region’s newly found industrialisation came with new

Mobile Communication Communicationand andthe theEthics EthicsofofSocial SocialNetworking Networking Mobile Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Larissa Hjorth: Framing Imaging Communities…

forms of consumer-driven identity and subjectivities, exemplified by the ICTs. For Singaporean cultural theorist Chua Beng-Huat (2000), one way to understand the region’s various arising modernities would be to chart the role of consumption in the region after the economic crash of 1997. After the financial crisis, government and industry worked to reconstruct consumption as no longer a subsidiary of production or, more importantly, of westernisation. Through the rise of Asian capital––both economic and cultural––the phenomenon Chua calls ‘consuming Asia’ (2000) has taken on new significance locally and globally. This can be seen in the ways in which transnational communities of online gaming have taken on new phenomenological dimensions, reflecting emerging localities and allegiances. Since economic crisis of 1997, emerging forms of production and consumption in the region have unquestionably shaped, and been shaped by, emerging of intimacy and labour. Through the rise of phenomenon such as Web 2.0, various unofficial imaging communities proffer ways to reimagine the region. These ‘unofficial’ processes and practices can provide insight into the region’s shift from economic and technological prowess to global ideological power. Through imaging communities we gain access to the micro politics and tactics of the user in expressing, challenging, intervening and even reinforcing the region’s uneven post-industrialism. Indeed, the rise of UCC epitomised by ICTs and Web 2.0 presents some curious questions for the future of creativity, labour and market value. By examining online practices as a canvas for new forms of imaging and reimaging the region, we can begin to reconceptualise the region’s complex and sometimes contradictory models of post-industrialism. This paper focuses upon the micro ‘unofficial’ imaging communities as a method for understanding ‘official’ ways in which communities are imagined in the region. Thus, it becomes increasingly apparent that one way to explore ICTs is vis-à-vis the imaging communities (UCC) practices that reflect localised and changing notions of intimacy. Whilst these practices are the unofficial they are increasingly, as intimacy becomes progressively more public through SNS and Web 2.0, creating new forms of what Benedict Anderson called ‘imagined communities’ (1983). For Anderson (1983), ‘nation’––as we understand it today––was born through the rise of distribution and printing techniques such as the printing press. Thus a sense of belonging and place––an ‘imagining’ of community––has never involved just face-to-face (1983: 18) and always deployed some form of virtuality or co-presence. Mechanisms such as the printing press, railway systems and now, global ICTs and Web 2.0, operate to further instil notions of intimacy, home and cultural proximity. As new forms of global ICTs, Web 2.0 could be this century’s printing press; the very vehicle of modernity that Anderson discussed as integral in

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

constructing what we define as nation-state today. Far from eroding a sense of place and locality, Web 2.0 reinforces the contingency of the local and the fleeting. Web 2.0 extends Anderson’s notion of ‘imagined communities’ being constructed through media –– from print media, to transnational Asian media in the form of Web 2.0 and ICTs. As Anderson noted in the case of print media, this reconfigured linguistic and geographic boundaries –– resulting in the decline of dialectics and the vernacular. In the case of Web 2.0 and its unofficial imaging communities we can see the rise of the vernacular and local –– the politics of intimate labour. Imaging communities facilitate new formations of community and collectivity as they also produce unofficial communities. It remains to be seen how these unofficial imaging communities start to challenge and intervene official enclaves and boundaries. Indeed, one of the important components in a country’s imagined community is the role of the everyday users’ depictions –– circulated within and outside the socio-cultural context. Often projected, exported, official images of a culture differ from the personal, unofficial, individual images disseminated amongst small communities –– what Michael Herzfeld called ‘cultural intimacy’ (1997). Mechanisms such as the printing press, railway systems and now, global ICTs, operate to further instil notions of intimacy, home and cultural proximity. An imagined community is a sum of both its official and unofficial depictions. With the rise in mobile media and SNS, the discourse of the unofficial is becoming increasingly important to the ways in which individuals and communities view themselves and other contexts. This has been clearly identified in the rhetoric surrounding the rise of the active user. As an extension of Alvin Toffler’s (1980) notion of ‘prosumers’, whereby he saw the diffusion between consumers and producers as a symptom of increasing conflations between work and social life, current proclamations about the potential of mobile media as an artistic and political tool for the people are debateable. In everyday life, practices of the prosumer can be found everywhere, but it is within the convergent space of mobile media that emerging paradigms of the users appear. As Katz and Sugiyama note, ‘users’ are no longer just passive consumers; they are prosumers or ‘co-creators’ (2005: 79). For Axel Bruns, the Web 2.0 user is part of the ‘produser’ revolution of UCC (Burns 2006). In the case of the region, the agency and empowerment of UCC is divergent to say the least. The rise of ICTs and Web 2.0 in the region can be read as both a series of material ‘imaging communities’ and as a poignant symbol for new forms of labour and intimacy. The attendant forms of online practices has been a site for both emphasising and contesting power inequalities, a repository for transcending new forms of class and subjectivities accompanying the uneven post-industrialism in the region. For others it was their labour that became mobile, as was often the case for women in

Mobile Communication Communicationand andthe theEthics EthicsofofSocial SocialNetworking Networking Mobile Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Larissa Hjorth: Framing Imaging Communities…

predominantly lower classes (Ong 2006; Truong 1999; Hochschild 2000). In these various forms of arising mobility and immobility, empowerment and disempowerment, the symbolic and actual role of ICTs and intimacy features prominently (McKay 2007). This is apparent with the various ways in which the gendered nature of technologies has been linked to the region’s own gendered representation within global capital. L.H.M. Ling (1999) in ‘Sex Machine: Global Hypermasculinity and Images of the Asian Woman in Modernity,’ argues that hypermasculinity is not just the product of East Asia but rather of the global economy. For Ling, globalisation carries with it an association of ‘capitalintensive, upwardly mobile hypermasculinity’, as opposed to a localised and ‘socially regressive hyperfemininity’ (1999: 278). In this light the mobile phone is an ideal vehicle for housing the twins of global industralisation –– hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity. For Thanh-Dam Truong (1999) the pivotal role of the female––as both consumer and producer––in the rise of industrialisation with the ‘Asian miracle’ of the region post 1997 cannot be underestimated. As Truong observes, the rise of industrialisation is also the product of conflicts around gender, and specifically around the role of gendered classes and forms of labour. Truong notes the rise of the ‘feminisation’ of industrial relations––in which women are the inevitable losers––highlights that the “Asian miracle” is a ‘fully gendered process’ (1999: 158). As she notes, the Asian miracle of ANICs (Asian Newly Industrialised Countries) ‘is best understood through two structures of symbolic domination, i.e. west vs. east, and male vs. female’ (1999: 158). This can be seen in the gendered modes of labour and intimacy around ICTs, reflect gender employment and educational shifts in the region. According to the International Labour Office (ILO) ‘Global Employment Trends for Women’ report (2008) female employment in AsiaPacific have increased more than other regions in the world from 19972007. Along with the increase in educated women, it is also predominantly women leading the move away from agriculture sectors and towards service (33.5%) and industry (25.5%) sectors –– epitomized by the role the AsiaPacific plays in manufacturing of much the global mobile technological hardware (mainland China being a case example). East Asia, in particular, demonstrates one the smallest gender gaps in the labour force with 79 women, per 100 men, participating in labour markets. Moreover, the ILO report noted that while the region still dominates globally with the highest amount of women working as contributing family workers (exemplified by Filipino female workers working for Hong Kong families), this trend is shifting as women move away from contributing family workers into two forms of labour markets –– own-account (‘self employed’) and waged work. Whilst self-employed work is noticeably precarious by

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

nature, there has been a large growth of women in salaried positions from 1997 (29.4%) to 2007 (35.1%). From 1997 to 2007 the region’s rise of female employment runs concurrently to their deployment of mobile media as a site for expression, creativity and intimacy. As more women enter the workforce with higher educational qualifications, it is ICTs that becomes a repository for these emerging forms of labour and intimacy. The conspicuous image of female mobile media users is not just a sign of their newly found economic independence, but also an indicator of the significant role women workers have played in the industry by occupying lower positions such as telephone operators and manufacturing workers. In Asia, women dominate mostly in lower-skilled, low-value-added positions and, in particular, data processing (especially outsourced work) with only 20 percent of programmers (ILO 2008). Unquestionably, the prominent role of women as active users (or produsers) creates a tension with the history of female employment in menial positions in the ICTs. This tension surrounding gendered ICTs, in turn, provides a lens to reconceptualise the region’s emerging forms of consumption and production. Through the lens of online communities such as SNS, we can consider how this produces a tension between, on the one hand, new emotional grammars of propinquity, intimacy, creative expression and female empowerment, and, on the other hand, the increasing exploitation and naturalisation of gendered reproductive and social labour. The former phenomenon can be seen in the emerging forms of ICTs and Web 2.0 through creative industries such as the mobile phone novels (keitai shôsetsu) in Japan, whilst the latter is particularly prevalent in uneven post-industrial economies in which women from countries such as the Philippines become ‘servants of globalization’ (Parreñas 2001). Through ICTs we can examine the emerging forms of mobility (social, economic, technological, geographic) and immobility of the region’s 21st century postmodernity. Regardless of the region’s role in the production and consumption of ICTs, and especially innovative deployment (exemplified by South Korea and Japan), it still remains relatively under-explored. Here, questions about mobility and mobilisation––informing what it means to practice co-presence, intimacy and social capital––are inextricably linked to the increased propensity of ICTs, and the attendant ‘feminisation of technology’ (Wajcman 2008; Fortunati 2008), to further inscribe insidious forms of reproductive labour. In particular, researchers have focused on the role of Filipino women as conduits for globalised care labour flows in order to conceptualise the impact of these diasporic forms of care labour on maintaining transnational intimacies (Parreñas 2001). For Deirdre McKay (2007) Filipino houseworkers in Hong Kong utilise the mobile phone to provide particular forms of intimacy that were previously

Mobile Communication Communicationand andthe theEthics EthicsofofSocial SocialNetworking Networking Mobile Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Larissa Hjorth: Framing Imaging Communities…

not available. Hence the charting of telephonic genealogies within the region is heterogeneous to say the least, mired by gendered work and lifestyle practices. McKay observes we need to utilise new models for viewing migrants as diverse agents rather than as heterogeneously passive victims of globalisation. She also observes that we need to comprehend notions of intimacy as part of the practice of global post-structuralists, and debunk the conventional western and romanticised notions of face-to-face intimacy being ‘real’ and mediated versions being of lesser legitimacy. Thus ICTs become a site for understanding new forms of intimacy and labour and its relationship to challenging notions of public and private space. Once associated with a sense of the private, practices of intimacy have increasingly become public. However, much more research into the micro practices of individual user’s imaging communities is needed if we are to gain insight into this emerging field of gendered labour, UCC. Technics of mobility: Conclusion To chart the uneven history of the Internet in the region is unquestionably entwined in the rise of ICTs. The various forms of labour and intimacy that have informed, and been informed by, ICTs have become part of the emotional landscape of the Internet and online communities in the form of imaging communities. Imaging communities demonstrate unofficial forms of reterritorialisation that counteract the bounded territorialisation of ‘imagined communities’. Imaging communities reflect the current technics of mobility in the region that differ greatly from pre 1997 status of region when Anderson was writing. In an age of so-called ‘democratic’ media––such as the camera phone––and the rise of distribution systems such as social software, the everyday user can become a prosumer or produser; an active producer of images to be consumed. Here we see the need to reconnect the politics of gendered emerging forms of intimacy and labour with the burgeoning imaging communities. This is particularly prevalent in a region where ICTs have become symbolic of both its 21stcentury consumption and production. Since 1997, the increasing presence of mobile technologies as one of the dominant booming industries is striking, highlighting the pivotal role ICTs play in shaping, and being shaped by, the region in 21st-century. At ICT hardware manufacturing plants in mainland China that service hardware companies globally, the employment of women is noticeable. However, as women move away from agricultural and contributing family realms, towards self-employment and service/industry sectors, can their forms of labour be acknowledged and rewarded? Or will women, within the ‘hypermasculine’ mechanics of post-industrialism, continue to be exploited? Can the prevalence of women’s creative mobile media practices translate

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

into them attaining positions of power and creativity (such as software design and even corporate management) in ICT industries? Or will the international labour divisions only further be exemplified by ICTs? I argue that ICTs practices reveal a broader process in which the region’s cartographies of personalisation are shaped by increasing feminisation of socio-technologies. This feminisation (or what Ling and Truong call hyperfeminine) constitutes technics of mobility –– whether deployed by a male or female user, we are witnessing new hyperfeminine forms of intimacy and labour. Seeded within this phenomenon a bigger question lies, whether these unofficial hyperfeminine imaging communities will indeed rewrite post-industrialism in the region. Indeed, these processes are particular to the region –– the conspicuous feminisation of customisation has a long history in the uptake of technologies in the region and is not comparable to the European models. These cartographies of personalisation reflect regional technics of mobility that are marked and formed by both literal and metaphoric gendered performativity. Through the localised imaging communities we can gain insight into the emerging forms of labour and intimacy and how they are shaping, and being shaped by, the emerging cartographies of personalisation in the region. In this paper I have briefly explored the literature on gendered ICTs and how they produce forms of intimacy and labour in the region. Through the imaging communities of UCC we can reflect upon the change constitution of the region. To chart the history of the Internet in the region is to map cartographies of personalisation in which gendered labour and intimacy are indelibly linked to imaging the AsiaPacific in the 21st-century. REFERENCES Abbas, A. (1997) Hong Kong: Culture and the politics of disappearance, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, London: Verso. Berlant, L. (1998) ‘Intimacy: A Special Issue,’ in Berlant, L. (ed.) Intimacy. Special issue of Critical Inquiry 24/2 (Winter): 281-88. boyd, D. (2003) ‘Reflections on Friendster, Trust and Intimacy’, presented at School of Information Management & Systems (SIMS), University of California, Berkeley.

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–––. (2004) ‘Revenge of the User: Lessons from Creator/ User Battles’, presented in the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, February, http://www.danah.org/papers/Etech2004.html Bruns, A. and Jacobs, J. (eds) (2006) Uses of Blogs, New York: Peter Lang. Chee, F. (2005) ‘Understanding Korean Experiences of Online Game Hype, Identity, and the Menace of the “Wang-tta” ’, presented at DIGRA 2005 Conference: Changing Views – Worlds in Play, Canada. Chua, B.H. (ed.) (2000) Consumption in Asia, Routledge, London. Dirlik, A. (2007) ‘Global South: Predicament and Promise’, The Global South, Winter 2007, 1(1): 12-23. Fortunati, L. (2008) ‘Gender and the mobile phone’ in G. Goggin and L. Hjorth (eds) Mobile technologies, London/New York: Routledge (forthcoming). Goggin, G. and McLelland, M. (eds.) (2008) Internationalising Internet Studies, London: Routledge. Gottlieb, N. and M. McLelland (eds) (2003) Japanese Cybercultures, New York, Routledge. Gregg, M. (2007) ‘Work where you want: the labour politics of the mobile office’, presented at Mobile Media conference, University of Sydney, July. Herzfeld, M. (1997) Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State, London: Routledge. Hjorth, L. and Kim, H. (2005) ‘Being there and being here: gendered customising of mobile 3G practices through a case study in Seoul’, Convergence 11: 49-55. –––. and Mori, Y. ‘Mobile and immobile imaging communities: a comparative study between mixi and minihompy’, (in review). Hochschild, A.R. (2000) ‘Global care chains and emotional surplus value’, in W. Hutton and A. Giddens (eds) On The Edge: Living with Global Capitalism, London: Jonathan Cape, pp. 130-146. –––. (2003) The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work, California: Uni of Cal. Press.

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International Labour Office (ILO) (2008) ‘Global Employment Trends for Women’, http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/global.htm (accessed 2 March 2008). Ito, M. (2002) ‘Mobiles and the appropriation of place’, in receiver magazine, 08, www.receiver.vodafone.com (10 December 2003). —–. (2005) ‘Introduction: Personal, Portable, Pedestrian’, in M. Ito, D. Okabe and M. Matsuda (eds) Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, pp. 1-16. Katz, J. and Sugiyama, S. (2005) ‘Mobile phones as fashion statements: the co-creation of mobile communication’s public meaning’, in R. Ling and P.E. Pederson (eds), Mobile Communications: Re-negotiation of the Social Sphere, London: Springer, pp. 63-81. Kim, S.D. (2003) ‘The Shaping of New Politics in the Era of Mobile and Cyber Communication’, in Nyírí, K. (ed.) Mobile Democracy, Vienna: Passagen Verlag, pp. 317-326. Ling, L.H.M. (1999) ‘Sex Machine: Global Hypermasculinity and Images of the Asian Woman in Modernity,’ positions 7(2): 277-306. Ma, E. K-W (2005) ‘Re-advertising Hong Kong: Nostalgia Industry and Popular History’, in J. N Erni and S. K. Chua (eds) Asian Media Studies, London: Blackwell. Margaroni, M. and Yiannopoulou, E. (2005) ‘Intimate transfers: Introduction’, European Journal of English Studies 9 (3): 221-228. Matsuda, M. (2005) ‘Discourses of Keitai in Japan’, in M. Ito, Okabe, D. and M. Matsuda (eds.) Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 19-40. McKay, D. (2007) ‘Sending Dollars Shows Feeling’ –– Emotions and Economies in Filipino Migration’, Mobilities 2(2): 175-194. McLelland, M. (2006) ‘Race’ on the Japanese Internet: Discussing Korea and Koreans on ‘2-channeru’, presented at AoIR conference, September, Brisbane, Queensland.

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Miller, D. and Slater, D. (2000) The Internet: an Ethnographic Approach, Oxford and New York: Berg. Mori, Y. (2005a) ‘An analysis on dual network structure on a SNS’, presented for the 2005 annual meeting of The Japan Society of Information and Communication Research, June 25, Graduate Institute of Information Security, Yokohama, Japan. –––. (2005b) ‘Toward the information distribution simulator based on a real human relationship structure from Social Networking Services’, presented for the Social Informatics Fair 2005, Joint Annual Meeting of the Japan Association of Social Informatics & the Japan Society for SocioInformation Studies, Social network analysis session, September 13, 2005, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. –––. (2005c) ‘Marketing opportunities on Social Networking Services’, presented for the Next Generation Internet Services symposium by Japan Research Institute for New Systems of Society, October 27, 2005, Meiji Kinenkan, Tokyo, Japan. Nakamura, L. (2002) Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet, New York: Routledge. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2006) OECD broadband statistics: http://www.oecd.org/sti/ict/broadband (accessed December 2006) Park, H.W. and Kluver, R. (2008) ‘Bloggers in South Korea’, in G. Goggin and M. McLelland (eds.) Internationalising Internet Studies, London: Routledge (forthcoming). Parreñas, R (2001) Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration, and Domestic Work, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. –––. (2005) Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Pertierra, R. (2006) Transforming Technologies: altered selves, Philippines: De La Salle University Press. –––. (ed.) (2007) The Social Construction and Usage of Communication Technologies: European and Asian Experiences, Singapore: Singapore University Press.

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Qiu, J. (2007) ‘The Wireless Leash’, International Journal of Communication 1: 74-91. –––. (forthcoming) ‘Wireless Working-Class ICTs and the Chinese Informational City’, Special Issue of The Journal of Urban Technology on ‘Mobile Media and Urban Technology’. Robison, R. and Goodman, D. S. G. (eds) (1996) The New Rich in Asia, London: Routledge. Toffler, A. (1980) The Third Wave, William Morrow and Company, Inc.: New York. Truong, T.S. (1999) ‘The underbelly of the tiger: gender and demystification of the Asian miracle’, Review of International Political Economy 6:2: 133-165. Wajcman, J. (2008) ‘Intimate Connections: The Impact of the Mobile phone on Work Life Boundaries’, in G. Goggin and L. Hjorth (eds) Mobile technologies, London/New York: Routledge (forthcoming). West, D. M. (2006) Global e-government, 2006. Providence, Rhode Island: Center for Public Policy, Brown University. Yoo, S. (2008) ‘Online community and community capacity’, in G. Goggin and M. McLelland (eds.) Internationalising Internet Studies, London: Routledge (forthcoming). Yoon, K. (2006) ‘The Making of Neo-Confucian Cyberkids: Representations of Young Mobile Phone Users in South Korea’, New Media and Society, 8 (5): 753-771. —–. (2003) ‘Retraditionalizing the Mobile: Young People’s Sociality and Mobile Phone Use in Seoul, South Korea’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 6: 327-43.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

Soo-yeon Hwang

Should I Use or Not Use Mobile Phone in Public Places? An Analysis of Museum Policies on Mobile Phone Use

In the past, the rule of thumb was that you do not use your phone in public places so as not to disturb others. However, as mobile phone has become a ubiquitous convergence technology, some public places such as museums are now considering mobile phone's potential for being an interactive learning companion, which leads to a clash of norms of mobile use in public places. What the designers of the new mobile learning services want is for museum visitors to use their phone to engage with exhibits, retrieve extra contents, and share their experience with others; in other words, the success depends on increasing use of mobile phone for innovative activities in the museums. Yet, if the visitors have been taught not to use their mobile phones in museums, and consider using mobile in public impolite and not allowed, the learning potential of mobile technology would decrease significantly. Hence, this study will examine how museums have dealt with mobile phone use in the past and present, focusing on what has been permitted and what has not, and how the rules have been implemented. We plan to study the policies of various kinds of museums (arts, science, etc) in different environments (big city and small town) in the United States. The goal is to find out the norms of mobile use in museums and any changing patterns by analyzing mobile phone use policies of museums and their ways of enforcement.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

Indrek Ibrus

Content Providers Facing the Device-agnostic Web Emancipatory Struggles of the Mobile Web

Introduction This paper is, in the first place, about the dynamic that gives media its many forms – that model, shape and re-shape it. In this particular case, the dynamic in focus is the one that started to shape the forms of the early mobile web – once it was reinstated around 2005 by the launch of 3G network technologies and more capable handsets. The mobile web had existed long before that – it was already in place in 1999 when WAP Forum, an industry body, standardised the WAP protocol. However, for a number of reasons (for instance, Sigurdson, 2001) WAP never took off as a mass media platform. But, at the same time, it is also important to realise that, to a certain extent, WAP was the ‘mobile web proper’. Standardised by the telecoms industry body, it was technologically differentiated from the ‘regular web’ and was principally designed for the small devices that fitted into the pocket. It was immature and undeveloped but independent. At that stage it was set to become emancipated into a self-sustaining new media platform, together with its own distinguished usage patterns, functionalities, representational conventions and media forms. However, with the development of 3G mobile networks and advanced handsets, the industry’s focus started to move slowly towards enabling access to the ‘big web’. New browsers emerged that enabled full-web-browsing and mobile operators, one after another, started to offer flat fee price plans that enabled unlimited and unrestricted web browsing. These moves effectively kick-started the take-up of mobile web browsing – for instance, Nielsen Mobile (2008) reported that in May 2008 there were already 40 million active users of the mobile web in the USA and MDA reported (2008) that 17 million people in the UK accessed the mobile web in December 2007 (that is 23% of the country’s mobile users). The message is that in the last couple of years these numbers have been growing exponentially – making some analysts (see Roberts & Mavrakis, 2007) predict that already by 2011 the mobile will be the dominant access platform to the web throughout the world. At the same time, Opera, one of the biggest mobile browser vendors, reported in May 2008 that WAP-sites and other mobile-optimised websites accounted for only 23% of that traffic, whereas ‘full Web surfing’ comprised more than 77%. This paper will focus on how did these developments effect the emancipation of mobile-specific web content.

Mobile Communication Communicationand andthe theEthics EthicsofofSocial SocialNetworking Networking Mobile Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the of Practice… Indrek Ibrus: Content Providers Facing theMetaphysics Device-agnostic Web…

The analysis in this paper will be based on the results of a study that I conducted in 2006 and 2007 in several European and Northern American countries. The study focused on the dialogic practices behind creating the many norms and standards for the mobile web as a nascent media platform. Methodologically, it was based on interviews with the representatives of various handset and browser vendors (for instance Nokia, Opera, Sybase 365/AvantGo), operators (T-Mobile International) various specific technology and service enablers (Segala, Volantis), standardisation bodies (dotMobi, W3C) and content providers (BBC, Buongiorno, Deutsche Welle, Microsoft, ProSiebenSat 1., Axel Springer) together with other institutions that were actively engaged at the time in establishing various technical, economic and representational characteristics for the mobile web as a new media platform. Using both Foucauldian and Luhmannian discourse analytic strategies (see Andersen, 2003) the paper will undertake an analysis of the emerging meta-discourses that these industry stakeholders had at that time on the representational conventions of the mobile web. It will focus on how the different norms for this new platform were established in relation to the ‘old form’ of the desktop Web. More specifically, it will examine the discourses on the balance between developing new representational conventions for the mobile web as an independent content platform or alternatively developing cross-platform content production strategies that would create the mobile web more or less as another extension of the ‘old web’. Analytic framework As will be seen below, the dynamic that shaped the mobile web platform, together with its forms, consisted of power struggles and dialogues at different levels between different sets of engaged agents. The analytic framework that this paper uses to critically inspect that dynamic is, in effect, a synthesised use of evolutionary theories from traditionally distant disciplinary traditions. This means integrating, firstly, the semiotic theories of cultural dynamics, especially the work of cultural semiotician Yuri Lotman (1990; 2001), with systems theoretic sociology (Niklas Luhmann and various others) and economic innovation studies, especially in the form of Schumpeterian evolutionary economics. An aspect that these theoretical approaches share to a certain extent, is the role of dialogues between different societal sub-systems as the basic mechanism for societal innovation and for the emergence of new structures. Hence also, the focus of this study is on the differences of the perspectives and discourses of various industry players, on their dialogic acts and on the potentially emerging shared normative discourse which results from these dialogues. Secondly, it could be suggested that normative meta-discourses that are evolving as a

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

result of dialogic interchange between the engaged agents, that lay out the characteristics of the emergent forms (all the possible design guidelines and codes of practice), also start, sooner or later, to work autopoietically for the new discourse community. Hypothetically, the meta-discourse that tries to impose norms for a design, is also, for the most part, the same discourse that autopoietically articulates the identity of the new social system. At least we ought to expect that they are interdependent. It is the logic of how the institution and its discourse go hand in hand that Foucault demonstrated in his “Birth of the Clinic” (Foucault, 1973). And, hypothetically, there could be a similar logic behind the evolution of the mobile web as a new media platform – in that the meta-discourses for the new forms and the social institution would be evolving interdependently. The aim of this paper is to study briefly this potentiality. Standardisation of the mobile web access While mobile web access was starting to gain momentum due to the new networks being deployed and the advanced handsets being launched on the market, the industry core was starting to recognise the ultimate fragmentation of the mobile domain in terms of the technological standards in use (especially in terms of mobile-specific mark-up languages and browsers in the market). It saw this as being a virtually unsurmountable threshold for mobile content developers who were aiming to develop content across most of the mobile devices and browsers in the market. As this technological complexity would have hampered the formation of a new potentially lucrative market, the industry started to look for ways to overcome this fragmentation and to create continuities within the mobile domain. With this goal in mind, it started to cooperate with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that had been rather successful in creating technological continuities in the Web domain. As a result, we can recognise increasing institutional convergence between the industries of the Web and telecoms in that various mobile industry standards bodies were establishing dialogic relationships with W3C, and several major mobile companies had started to support W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative. However, W3C was not without its own agenda in this alliance. My interviews with its members demonstrated that it was driven by its ‘One Web’ imperative – an understanding that the web should be equally accessible on all digital devices and that there should be uncompromised continuity between the representations of web content on different access platforms. By attending to W3C, the mobile industry ‘infrastructure companies’ – handset and browser vendors and network operators – effectively signed on to this imperative.

Mobile Communication Communicationand andthe theEthics EthicsofofSocial SocialNetworking Networking Mobile Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the of Practice… Indrek Ibrus: Content Providers Facing theMetaphysics Device-agnostic Web…

This cooperation resulted in various strategies to overcome both the fragmentation in the domain and the divergence into ‘two webs’. One of them was an initiative to introduce guidelines for ‘platform agnostic’ web authoring. However, this initiative that resulted in the document “W3C’s Mobile Web Best Practices” appeared, in effect, as rather problematic, especially with regard to how ‘One Web’ was understood. One of the main opposition groups to W3C’s vision was that of the content providers. They demanded the right to adapt their content to the ‘delivery context’ – i.e. to have full control over the communication act between themselves and their audience, i.e. over the form of the message on different access platforms, over what was communicated to whom, when, and on what platform. We could argue that this conflict is rather era-specific. We can see how, at that early stage, the various ‘infrastructure enablers’ were working towards merging and extending their markets – aiming to turn it effectively into a device-agnostic environment for accessing the global ‘long tail’ of content. At the same time, the content providers, who were supposed to start creating content for this environment, refused the proposition of deviceagnostic media content. In the following sections we will focus on their specific reasons for doing this. Limitations in channel enforcing discontinuities in media forms As already implied, one of the biggest challenges for mobile content providers was the utter fragmentation of the mobile domain in terms of its technological standards, input interfaces and the physical parameters of the mobile devices. This complexity as a conditioning factor seemed to directly affect the perceptions of content designers on what were the limits for cross-platform web content production. Interviewees representing various content providers claimed that the sheer variety of devices on the market did not allow one generic design for all. Hence, in order to avoid the ‘lowest common denominator design’, the ‘true best practice’ of content development for the web, as seen by the content providers, was the adaptation of content specifically for all individual devices or, at least, classes of devices. The core group of justifications for this was the difference in the limitations of individual platforms, whereas the ‘good user experience’ was seen to be achieved when that difference was taken into account. At that moment, despite having new distinctive capabilities with regard to mobility and location-aware data-processing, the mobile devices were still clearly more limited when it came to processing power, memory capacity, input-interfaces and screen-sizes. Hence, the general limitations of mobile technologies at the time were seen as the main factor that motivated the designs of mobile sites to remain low-key and effected the divergence into two separate web-media platforms.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

Differing functionalities seen to motivate the split A different set of motivations for keeping the mobile and desktop domains distinct in terms of their media forms was their perceived differing ‘functionalities’ as articulated by many of the interviewees. The main differing functionality of mobiles as compared to computers was rather evident – their mobility, their being ‘always on’ and with their users most of the time. This was seen as also potentially leading to different uses of mobile access. As stated by another interviewee, a mobile design consultant, mobile web applications should be designed to work when the user is mobile and thus has “many many different user needs”. There was a widely shared understanding that the nature of the device, the fact that it can be used ‘on the go’ and in varying contexts, motivated different uses of the web and hence also the ways in which the content should be presented. The analysis revealed four main groups of justifications for that difference. First of these was the stronger ‘utility feel’ of mobiles. An interviewee from the global ‘content aggregator’ Buongiorno posited that the desktop web is like an ‘archival resource’: “You can really drill down to detail.” As he suggested, the desktop web is a convenient means to “find out how many miles from here to Planet Pluto”, but on the mobile, such uses would not be typical. As he put it, mobile web access would be needed for more pragmatic purposes such as finding train times and directions. “A real kind of utility, a kind of workman type thing. Rather than a kind of a university resource. So I think this is more about applications that have an immediate… that can deliver immediately, an immediate kind of pertinent delivery.” The second main group of motivations for making use of mobile web access, as seen by the content providers, was boredom. Take the words of the interviewee from the German publisher, Axel Springer, who suggested uses for mobile web access: “When I use the mobile portal I use it when I’m bored and I am sitting on a train or something or in an airport, and when I have five minutes or something - I want to have a short look.” As suggested by another interviewee from Deutsche Welle, such a need for entertainment in situations of enforced inactivity such as commuting, may motivate content providers to come up with more attractive audio-visual forms. The third group of suggested motives for mobile web access that would differentiate it from desktop usages were the use of location-aware services. For instance, a desire to learn about one’s location or to find adjacent service providers of interest, to find the way to one’s destination or to be aware of the location of one’s family members. The fourth group of motivations to access the web via a mobile that would differ from desktop access was the possibly more private nature of a

Mobile Communication Communicationand andthe theEthics EthicsofofSocial SocialNetworking Networking Mobile Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the of Practice… Indrek Ibrus: Content Providers Facing theMetaphysics Device-agnostic Web…

mobile device. While desktop devices are often shared, used by colleagues or family members, mobiles are rarely in developed countries. This aspect was emphasised by several interviewees who claimed that this makes a mobile a ‘private web’, therefore encouraging slightly different usage as compared to the ‘big screen’. Practices establishing continuities While the above justifications were related to causes for existing and potential discontinuities between the two access platforms to the Web, the interviews also evidenced realities that were different from the stated principles as articulated above. The references that interviewees made to their real actions pointed to deliberately sustained continuities between the two platforms. First of these was the recognition that most of the content providers were dislocating their existing content relatively mechanically to the new platform. An interviewee from Volantis, a company that was producing mobile websites for several big media brands such as Channel 4, Discovery, CBS, Reuters, and the Financial Times, observed that the general strategy for these companies at the time was to simply take their traditional media and to “…just extend what they have got into another medium, into another channel”. We should realise that such an extension of existing content from other media to the mobile platform and, through this, the creation of continuities between these different platforms, was a rather era-specific phenomenon. For instance, the interviewee from ProSieben acknowledged that when mobilising their existing brands the principle they followed was not to rebrand anything in the mobile world, thus effectively manifesting continuities between different media. Another era-specific phenomenon was the emergence of various adaptation and transcoding engines and their role in creating automatised continuities between the mobile and desktop platforms. Various content providers developed their ‘content management systems’ that, in effect, where algorithms that adapted content (according to pre-designed templates) for different access platforms – be it desktop computers, mobiles or digital TV. The main justification for such a system was its cost. As suggested by an interviewee from BBC News, once the development work to create the adaptation engine and the relevant templates is finished, “…it can then be switched on and it can run”. The marginal cost of producing additional versions for the mobile was very low. The same was emphasised, for instance, by an interviewee from Deutsche Welle who underlined that such a system does not disrupt any established workflows and it does not create any extra work. And that was, of course, the main factor that made this solution cost-efficient.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

The fact that human input could not be afforded at that time and hence the ‘algorithmic translations’ for adaptation were used, refers to the then emerging automatised and therefore rather standardised continuity between the two platforms, whereas one was seen to determine the form of the other. The automatisation of the process brings about an unambiguous continuity, in that two platforms are in direct and causal connection. Since the desktop was seen as the prevailing form of digital interactive output at the time, it could therefore be seen to determine the form of the mobile. We realise that despite the fact that the content providers emphasised that in principle the two domains should stay separate, in reality however, they followed a different strategy. As the mobile platform was perceived as still being comparatively marginal in terms of its reach, user contacts and contribution to economic income, it was not allowed to emancipate as a medium. Without special content being produced by dedicated editorial staff, the medium-specific forms of content could not possibly evolve. Being economically tied to the desktop web, the mobile remained effectively part of the latter. Still, it should be recognised that the situation was not seen as ideal by the interviewees. When asked about the negative aspects of the current arrangement, almost all of them pointed out that the lengthy stories written for either the print media or the desktop web were rather inappropriate for the mobile. Many suggested that shorter stories would be needed and other strategies for content optimisation for mobile were gradually developed. For instance, Deutsche Welle was planning to start writing different headlines and teasers for the mobile edition of their website. Their aim, at the time, was to make their editors in general more aware of the specifics of crossplatform publishing and of writing for “both screens”. ProSieben, at the same time, was hiring special editors for their mobile output and was, in general, starting to build a separate institutional division for their mobile editions. What these developments suggest is that there was increasing impetus for moving towards discontinuities between the mobile and the desktop web, grounded potentially on differing practices of production and institutional divide. Conclusion This paper has demonstrated how the many institutions from a variety of traditional industries that are engaged in designing and standardising the mobile web have somewhat different perspectives and goals in this process. We saw that the ‘infrastructure companies’ (hardware and software vendors, network operators and web regulators) work in general towards extending their existing markets by merging them into one ubiquitous and device-agnostic content environment. At the same, we

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witnessed content providers in principle resisting that scenario. In their view the differences in the materiality and potential usages of different access platforms would motivate their emancipation into different media. However, we also saw that, in that early era, the majority of the mainstream content providers could not, in fact, afford to establish that difference clearly enough. As mobile platforms could not yet be emancipated in economic terms, the mobile optimised websites therefore remained as algorithmic low-key translations of the desktop originals. However, as mobile web access gained momentum, there was also recognisably more impetus for content providers to start changing their practices and untying the mobile web and its forms from their desktop parent. It remains to be seen if the later process can bring about the autopoietic process of self-establishment of the new mobile-specific web media domain. REFERENCES Andersen, N. Å. (2003). Discursive analytical strategies. Understanding Foucault, Koselleck, Laclau, Luhmann. Bristol: Policy Press. Foucault, M. (1973). The Birth of the Clinic : an archaeology of medical perception. London: Tavistock Publications. Lotman, Y. (1990). Universe of the mind: a semiotic theory of culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Lotman, Y. (2001). Kultuur ja plahvatus. Tallinn: Varrak. Mobile Data Association. (2008). The Q1 2008 UK Mobile Trends Report London: MDA. Nielsen Mobile. (2008). Critical Mass: The Worldwide State of the Mobile Web. New York: The Nielsen Company. Roberts, M., & Mavrakis, D. (2007). Future Mobile Broadband: Revenue Opportunities for HSPA to LTE, EV-DO to UMB & WiMAX. London: Informa Telecoms & Media. Sigurdson, J. (2001). WAP OFF – Origin, Failure and Future, EIJS WP (Vol. 135 ). Stockholm: Stockholm School of Economics.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

James E. Katz

Social Structure, New Communication Technology and Citizen Journalism This paper summarizes major conclusions from a larger study about how news blogs and citizen journalism are affecting not only the reporting of news but also the stability and legitimacy of dominant media outlets and governing elites. The study focuses primarily on Asia but looks at other regions as well. It is based on comments gathered through journalistic-style e-mail interviews of bloggers as well as by data from relevant websites and news services. Due to space considerations only a summary can be presented here. The information obtained through this process indicates that in many societies in Asia and elsewhere bloggers have become an important source of news outside as well as along side of traditional mainstream media. Citizen journalism and volunteer news co-creation activities are increasingly prominent in both Western and non-Western countries. Blogging has clearly become an ordinary part of news reporting that now accompanies the activities of the “old media.” Or to put it differently, online ancillaries generally exist for magazines, television news programs and especially newspapers. Given the often Western-centric view of blogging, it may be useful to note that among leading countries in terms of bloggers are Indonesia and Malaysia. By the same token, a worldwide trend is that information and communication technologies are reconfiguring the traditional balance between the creators and consumers of news and the journalistic reporting profession. Internet blogs and mobile phones, among other technologies, have made new information and perspectives available concerning local events; they have also added important and often oppositional interpretations of the significance and meaning of those events. The blogs and citizen journalists also constitute the economic threat to traditional journalism publications. This is because for those with online access (including mobile phones so equipped) can readily access the content, which can be an important convenience and which translates into reduced readership for the traditional outlets. (Of course those without online access will not be able to enjoy such convenience.) Even more consequential, in economic terms, is the fact that blogs and citizen journalist content is usually free, whereas traditional journalistic outlets typically charge for their content. Over the long run, it is difficult to charge people for goods and services that are freely and more conveniently available elsewhere. A Harvard study casts the situation in stark light:

Mobile Communication Communicationand andthe theEthics EthicsofofSocial SocialNetworking Networking Mobile Zsuzsanna Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… J. E. Katz: Kondor: Social Structure, New Communication Technology and Citizen Journalism

...it appears the fundamental issue for the future of journalism is not audiences splintering away to citizen media, corporate PR and other non-news venues. In many ways the audience for news—and for what traditional newsrooms produce— appears to be growing. Nor are journalists failing to adapt. There are more signs in 2008 than ever that news people embrace the new technology and want to innovate. The problem, it is increasingly clear, is a broken economic model—the decoupling of advertising and news. Advertisers are not migrating to news websites with audiences, and online, news sites are already falling financially behind other kinds of web destinations (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2008). These changes at the organizational, usability and financial levels pose critical problems for the continuing viability and impact of traditional old media, and most especially for the news-gathering and dissemination function that print journalism has traditionally played. Thus on both professional and economic grounds, the New Media are reducing the relative prominence of traditional news outlets as well as stature of professional journalists. Among the clearest consequences of these new voices seem to be to add competing narratives to official viewpoints and to bring previously undisclosed information to light. This in turn introduces new rationales for social change, and also encourages the entrance of new personalities onto the public stage to advocate those rationales. As a result, the policy arena may over the short-run experience increased disharmony and social unrest. However, the longer-term impact of these activities may be the opposite, namely that they may lead to an overall lower degree of intense unrest and social disharmony. That is, in keeping with the social change theory of Dahrendorf (1959) and others, the moderate (although sometimes severe) disharmony precipitated by these voices may actually allow for sufficient social mobility and redistribution of resources. This in turn would circumvent far more negative consequences that would otherwise result from revolutionary change precipitated in order to relieve the pressure of extreme social cleavages. At the level of professional journalism, the situation reinforces notions of Schumpeter’s (1962) view of “creative destruction” and dialectical processes. New structures are arising to address the functional and affective needs of the public and individual (McCaw, 2007) typified by the movement known as volunteer citizen journalists. By its very nature, this movement represents a challenge to official and semi-official organs of news, no less than

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their sponsoring governments and media conglomerates. Citizen journalists often interrogate generally accepted and sanctioned interpretations of events through the presentation of alternative facts, speculations and opinions. Yet among these groups of citizen journalists there is seldom a leader per se, but rather their work is carried forward by a decentralized, flexible system of various levels of participation with collaborative decision-making and analysis. Using the example of bloggers in his country (Cambodia), citizen journalist Preetam Rai told us that: In a place with a very young population like Cambodia, blogs and social tools have helped people mobilise support for their causes. Blog or internet based activism may not help them get the desired result at the moment but it does help in spreading messages and building a community (Personal communication). Shifting the level of discussion to the macro-social level, we can assert that there appears to be a relationship between content control and cumulative impact of citizen journalists’ blogs. Specifically, we speculate that there is a curvilinear relationship between the level of content control at the society-wide level (i.e., the inverse of freedom of expression and political activity) and the impact of citizen journalism news blogs. That is, that the impact of news blogs is least when there is extensive content control in the ambient environment, but also where there is great freedom of expression. This is because where there is little or no content control, it is more likely the case that there is a free marketplace of ideas. Thus the special voice of an alternative source loses its special status. Hence, where there is more competition, the relative advantage of a citizen journalist as having special insight or unique sources is likely to be diminished. There are occasional exceptions, of course, but we are referring to the broad and typical situation which prevails. To pursue this distinction, and in contrast to Cambodia, we can cite the situation in Taiwan. In Taiwan, where freedom of speech is relatively unrestricted, blogs serve as semi-public forums for social matters and have less to do with seeking to precipitate societal change. I-Fan Lin, a blogger from Taiwan, said about the blogosphere in Taiwan: I do not think most Taiwanese bloggers care about providing about Taiwan to the world or to the Taiwanese public. (Some English bloggers do.) Most blogs are places to share thoughts friends, not to broadcast, although some of the blogs do attract a lot of visitors. As a result, blogs act more like spreading ideas person by person (Personal communication).

Mobile Communication Communicationand andthe theEthics EthicsofofSocial SocialNetworking Networking Mobile Zsuzsanna Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… J. E. Katz: Kondor: Social Structure, New Communication Technology and Citizen Journalism

Our argument about the relatively muted impact of citizen journalists in open societies finds support in a systematic study of citizen journalist blogs in the United States. Specifically, a report released in 2008 found that “the most promising parts of citizen input currently are new ideas, sources, comments and to some extent pictures and video—but not citizens posting news... most [citizen media] sites are no more open—and often less so—than mainstream press. Rather than rejecting the ‘gatekeeper’ role of traditional journalism, citizen journalists and bloggers appear for now to be recreating it in other places” (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2008) On the other hand, the impact may actually be greatest where there is moderate control or where the society has recently transited from a rigidly controlled environment to one where there are fewer controls. The Philippines, for instance, illustrates this possible relationship. Filipino blogger Mong Palatino noted that in 2007 mid-term election, most candidates have set up their own personal websites, blogs and Friendster accounts. Further, the party-list groups, who represented the marginalized and underrepresented sectors of Philippine society, effectively used various social media, such as YouTube, to make large in-roads in recent elections. Also in terms of Malaysia, Sabah Umno Wanita Chief, Senator Datuk Armani Hj Mahiruddin, claimed that Malaysia has almost 500,000 blogs that are actively operated by various groups and individuals for different purposes: Sheer numbers have made the use of blogs most powerful in influencing the thinking of Malaysians, especially concerning politics. Usage of blog sites has the most effective coverage of information dissemination, given the large number of Internet users who surf the web and blog sites every day (Daily Express News, 28 April 2008). Armani said he was basing his claim on a Universiti Malaya’s Media Department study which asserted that 70% of the results of the 12th General Election had been influenced by information posted on blog sites. (Daily Express News, 28 April 2008). Malaysian blogger Ahmad Hj Abang claims that blogs in Malaysia were important in preserving what turned out to be a narrow victory for the National Front Coalition. Blogs allowed voters to express their concerns, but were insufficiently attended to by the party leadership. The importance of blogs, he finds is now much more recognized by political leadership. He relates the following:

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… Budapest 2008 Conference

For the past years our voters have communicated via blogs and websites. At the same time our government was misled by officers who are actually sycophants, in believing that all was well in the country. It was not well. The drive to fight corruption was dragged down and the judiciary in disarray. By this time attempts to coax our leaders to read the blogs and chatsites were to no avail. Thus, on polling day [8th march 2008] the voters deserted many of our leaders. The National Front Coalition still won the day but are deprived of their usual two-third majority. This is the power of Citizen Journalism…These examples are successful. So successful were they that now, even our Government Ministers resorted to blogging in order to explain some policies and actions (Personal communication) Shifting the level of discussion to the notion of competing voices, another conclusion that we derived from the study is that the mere existence of these outlets poses a challenge to traditional power structures, even when availability to the general public is limited. The reality of these challenges has implications that play out on at least four levels. First, they call into question the profession of journalism, since the issues of vetting, responsibility, and procedural training are pertinent to maintaining the relative autonomy and authority claimed by the profession. Blogs represent a challenge at this level because, to use the argument advanced by Peter Berger (1969) in a different albeit related context, the legitimating expertise is shown to be commonplace rather than uniquely conferred through training and certification, or the semi-charismatic civil religion of professional journalism. Second, it seems that the public looks for authoritative answers to the problems and events that confront them, and the oppositional readings of events that are provided by these outlets offer answers and solutions that pose a direct challenge to traditional sources of agenda setting in the media and in the larger society. The citizen journalists’ alternative evidence and explanations serve to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of the reader and displaces the sanctioned outlets in the determination of what the basic facts are and what their significance portends. Third, the alternative channel provides a competing explanatory framework through which outside interest groups can seek to persuade or pressure those in power to alter their decisions. As we have seen from these few examples, pressure from bloggers can embarrassment officials (and media, due to their lack of coverage) forcing them to take action. The fourth challenge stems from the nature of human cognition. This challenge arises because of the fact that the larger the number of alternative explanations presented to someone, the lower is the authority and

Mobile Communication Communicationand andthe theEthics EthicsofofSocial SocialNetworking Networking Mobile Zsuzsanna Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice… J. E. Katz: Kondor: Social Structure, New Communication Technology and Citizen Journalism

persuasive power of any particular explanation. This finding is robust across multiple domains of intellectual activity and is independent of subject area. Hence the credibility of any given source is reduced by the existence of alternative and provisional interpretations, no matter its actual validity. Thus the mere fact that citizen journalists and blogs are presenting alternative data and interpretations (assuming that they are read), the influence and authority of the mainstream outlets will be reduced. In sum, from the viewpoint of existing social institutions, political and news blogs and citizen journalists are costly competitors. From the viewpoint of social change, blogs and citizen journalists will provoke relatively moderate albeit costly change for a longer-term benefit of greater social stability and more equitably distributed social resources. REFERENCES Berger, Peter. (1969). The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Anchor Doubleday. Dahrendorf, Ralf. (1959). Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Daily Express News (Malaysia). (28 April 2008). Need to enhance blog use: Armani. Retrieved May 28, 2008 from http://www.dailyexpress.com.my/news.cfm?NewsID=57231 McCaw, Thomas K. Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Project for Excellence in Journalism. (2008). State of the news media 2008. Retrieved May 11, 2008 from http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2008/. Schumpeter, Joseph. (1962). Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, New York: HarperCollins. Acknowledgment The author is grateful to Chih-Hui Lai for her research assistance and analytical contributions.

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Zsuzsanna Kondor

Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice Sellarsian Ethics Revisited

Changes in everyday life are becoming more and more pervasive: mobile technology is creating new habits in nearly all aspects of life. Accessing information (be it textual or multimodal), colleagues, family members, or friends, can be done with a never-before-experienced ease. Accordingly, there is no need for fixed-term working hours (separated from spare time) or fixed-location offices (separated from home), but there is a strong need to be accessible and for others to be accessible as well. This new phenomena, often called new nomadism, reshapes homes, offices, and public rooms (such as cafés), thus it suggests the reshaping of cities and towns. We often encounter anxiety about the erosion of language, politeness, respect for each other, and consequently the erosion of traditional patterns of behaviour and moral commitments. Not surprisingly, we are often faced with the need for ethical clarification regarding practical, (although general), issues such as concerns regarding gene technology, medicine, the environment, pedagogy, and society, just to mention a few. Optimists usually emphasize an increasing ease thanks to communications technology, while pessimists call attention to imminent potential danger caused by the abovementioned ease. Instead of deciding whether either optimism or pessimism is called for, I suggest shedding light on the process of change, which makes a certain continuity between the traditional and the emerging new patterns of behaviour visible. In doing this, first I will underscore embeddedness as opposed to the traditional dualistic view of human beings and their environment. Then, relying on this important human characteristic, I suggest preparing an ethic which is consonant with the abovementioned image of man, i.e. an ethic which is anchored not in the sphere of abstract speculation, but rather in mundane practice. When delineating this framework of reference, I rely considerably on the main concerns of Sellarsian realism and the sociological point of view of Hungarian scholar István Hajnal. These ontological and sociological perspectives have gained empirical evidence thanks to recent research in the field of cognition and networks. I.

Embeddedness

The abovementioned anxiety towards the erosion of language is closely related to the traditional image of humans as beings whose main characteristic is the capability of abstract reasoning. Since reasoning has mostly been expressed via language, and especially via written language,

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language was expected to be as unambiguous as possible. Accordingly, its syntax and vocabulary was considered unchangeable. However, the attempt to improve it has been on the scene from the beginning of alphabetical culture. The dominance of verbal expression is easily detectable in the longlasting idea which considers cognition as symbol manipulation, a certain kind of calculation. The distinguished capability of reasoning is considered to be separated from the physical world, i.e. the human body does not play any role in the process of creating concepts. According to the main concern of this tradition, labeled either atomistic individualism (by E. Gellner) or objectivism (by G. Lakoff and M. Johnson), real knowledge, eternal truths, reality, and values worthy of attention are all the fruits of the reasoning mind, separate from its environment. This one-sided approach is based on the dualism of the body and mind, to formulating it in a Cartesian manner: the division of extended and thinking substances. Accordingly, understanding, language, and even free will were determined one-sidedly, i.e. matter-related constellations were ignored. Although this led to anomalies from several points of view, the Cartesian division of thinking and extended substances became the dominant paradigm. And recognizing that dissolving the emerging anomalies is only possible outside of this paradigm is not at all obvious against the background of literacy. During the last few decades, the situation has radically changed: after the long centuries of literacy (the age of written records), we can now talk about the age of secondary literacy, viz. an epoch that is characterized by the rationality of literacy, but which allows for multimodal enhancement due to changes in communications technology. Now there is no need to constantly translate or encode experiences and ideas into verbal, and thus propositional, structures. This possibility increasingly opens the floor to perceptual and motor processes which do not need permanent conceptual supplementation (though sometimes conceptual apparatuses might facilitate responses). The representational theory of the visual mind1 clearly shows that visual perception, as opposed to verbal processing, gains its immersive potential from its close relation to motor activity. Recent research on motor functions reveals how motor activity yields the necessary conditions for the capacity for cognition on the one hand, and how motor activity might facilitate reasoning on the other. Thanks to these investigations, it becomes obvious that motor functions, (as opposed to conceptual processing, for example), are holistic. This holism means the vanishing of the boundary between the body and its environment. That is, the traditional separation of thinking and extended entities can be questioned, at least to some extent. As we can see, recent findings in cognitive research and in neurobiology suggest the importance of these heavily matter-related activities, and thus 1

See Pierre Jacob and Marc Jeannerod, Ways of Seeing: The Scope and Limits of Visual Cognition, Oxford University Press, 2003.

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the importance of the environment and the functional interrelatedness of the thinking entity with its extended surroundings. Humans are deeply anchored in their material world via their body, as Bergson had earlier quite explicitly suggested.2 This holistic view of human beings sheds a different light on language as well. The embedded mind presupposes that language is embedded too. Conceptual/cognitive metaphor theory attempts to create a direct relation between bodily experiences and symbols of language. The term embodiment clearly expresses that symbols/words have their meaning not coincidentally, rather they are determined by bodily experiences. As Lakoff put it, “conceptual structure is meaningful because it is embodied, that is, it arises from and is tied to, our preconceptual bodily experiences. In short, conceptual structure exists and is understood because preconceptual structures exist and are understood.”3 According to this theory, we gain basic-level categories on the basis of kinesthetic and perceptual experiences, and we are capable of building up an extensive network of categories through cross-domain mapping with the help of imagery. The final step to language is associating linguistic elements with these categories. II.

Sellars’ Realism

Wilfrid Sellars devoted considerable effort to clarifying the ontological status of concepts (with his term abstract entities), as well as beliefs and norms, but he sought to supplement rather than destroy Cartesian dualism. Although he believed that “all awareness of abstract entities … is a linguistic affair”,4 he tried to anchor theoretical entities in everyday routine, i.e. in the life of the community. “In short,” as he formulates the old puzzle, “we are brought face to face with the general problem of understanding how there can be inner episodes – episodes, that is, which somehow combine privacy, in that each of us has privileged access to his own, with intersubjectivity, in that each of us can, in principle, know about the other’s.”5 2

As he writes, “[t]he reality of matter consists in the totality of its elements and their actions of every kind. Our representation of matter is the measure of our possible action upon bodies.” (Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, New York: Zone Books (first published in French, 1896), 1991. p. 38) 3 George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind (1987), Chicago and London: The Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990, p. 267. 4 Wilfrid Sellars, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” in W. Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963, p. 160. Cf. basic level categories. 5 Ibid., p. 176.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice…

The difficulty of handling sensation and conceptual thinking, or “matter and consciousness”6, within the same frame of reference clearly emerges in the attempt to harmonize the scientific and the manifest image of man. The scientific image of man can be manifold, since different disciplines can shed light on even the same topic from different points of view. Against the background of manifold and diverging scientific knowledge, the manifest image of man is still coherent and wellfunctioning. On the other hand, the scientific image of man is considered by Sellars as being merely conceptual, while the manifest image emerges out of sensations and perceptual experiences. As Sellars puts the main difficulty, “dualism is an unsatisfactory solution, because ex hypothesi sensations are essential to the explanation of how we come to construct the ‘appearance’ which is the manifest world”.7 Moreover, he calls attention to the fact that “conceptual thinking is a unique game in two respects: (a) one cannot learn to play it by being told the rules; (b) whatever else conceptual thinking makes possible – and without it there is nothing characteristically human – it does so by virtue of containing a way of representing the world”.8 As far as I know, Sellars offers no ultimate solution to this problem,9 but he does attempt to bridge the gap between the two universes. In order to build the pillars of this bridge, Sellars introduces community to serve as the basis of certain patterns to be followed. As he wrote, “I wish to stress … that the concept of looking green, the ability to recognize that something looks green, presupposes the concept of being green, and the latter concept involves the ability to tell what colours objects have by looking at them”.10 But this fact involves a regressus ad infinitum, since “observational knowledge of any particular fact, e.g. that this is green, presupposes that one knows general facts of the form X is a reliable symptom of Y”.11 That is, beyond the analysis of language, Sellars stresses the practice of community which provides the framework for certain behavioural patterns due to which we are able to learn and identify concepts, norms, and theoretical constructs. [T]he conceptual framework of persons is the framework in which we think of one another as sharing the community 6

Wilfrid Sellars, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man” in W. Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963, p. 36. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., p. 17. 9 It is obvious that it is not possible to solve the problem within the Cartesian framework. I believe that to consider abstract entities as being an exclusively linguistic phenomenon is a mistake. The abovementioned embodiment could solve Sellars’ puzzle, since it relates sensations and concepts. However, Sellars’ deliberation with regard to community yields a basis for associating linguistic symbols and categories. 10 Wilfrid Sellars, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”, in W. Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality, p. 146. 11 Ibid., p. 168.

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intentions which provide the ambience of principles and standards (above all, those which make meaningful discourse and rationality itself possible) within which we live our individual lives.12 As we can see, Sellars does not overcome the framework of objectivism, although he reveals its crucial constrains and anomalies. Nonetheless, he introduces community into the philosophical discourse as a necessary basis for theoretical entities, norms, and behavioural patterns, and we should note, for abstract entities as well. Although Sellars himself does not provide a clear view on the ontological status of abstract entities, it seems reasonable to consider them in the same manner as theoretical entities, since theoretical entities are impossible without abstract entities and both provide a background against which different phenomena are communicable and understandable, thus facilitating a shared access to both everyday and scientific experiences.13 III.

Objectification

Embodiment relates even our most abstract terms to bodily experiences/sensations, and Sellarsian community provides ground for both the epistemological and ontological senses of abstract entities. I will recapitulate the manner in which rules and patterns of behaviour might crystallize from mundane practice, forming an institutional framework. Hungarian scholar István Hajnal grasped this concept through the process of objectification. 12

Sellars, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man”, op. cit., p. 40 Cf. Johnson’s considerations: “image schemata can have a public, objective character (in a suitably defined sense of ‘objective’), because they are recurring structures of embodied human understanding. They are part of the structure of our network of interrelated meanings, and they give rise to inferential structures in abstract reasoning. They are thus quite public and communicable in the required sense – they play an indispensable role in our sharing of a common world that we have knowledge of” (M. Johnson, The Body in the Mind, p. 196). 13 An illuminating example (the concept of looking green, being able to recognize that something is green, and the concept of being green) clearly shows that abstract entities (e.g. being green) are necessary for being able to recognize something as a thing and to talk about it. In “Empiricism and Abstract Entities” the emphasized difference between the concepts of river, on the one hand, and that of quality, entity, etc., on the other hand, is misleading to some extent because in each case we use these concepts for the sake of recalling a phenomenon (or rather constellation), be it either close to mundane practice or rather far from it, i.e. abstract. That is, the availability of concepts facilitates cognitive processing in the same way, regardless of whether we speak about a river, or the quality of the water of the river.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice…

Hajnal attempted to apprehend the process of institutionalization, i.e. to understand how solidified structures could occur in a vivid, permanently changing framework of community/society. Objectification yielded a convincing solution for this difficulty. Objectifying thoughts, Hajnal believed, is inherent in human nature since it is always inclined toward materialistic support, i.e. human beings tend to vest their thoughts and their experience with matter-related forms. “Movements and sounds do disappear, still, humans can use them and their matter-relatedness to produce something that is objective, something that functions as an extrinsic intermediator for inner life.”14 This idea determines Hajnal’s views on technology, culture, society, and even the rationality of literacy. The different instruments of technology can be seen as an objectification of different kinds of knowledge regarding how to handle different raw materials. As regards literacy, allow me to go into some detail. Hajnal’s idea, formulated in the 1920s and 1930s, suggesting that Western rationality was intimately grounded in alphabetic writing, became the dominant paradigm of the so-called Toronto Circle in the 1980s. Things that had earlier happened instinctively in human beings’ inner and outer lives, started to take a conscious turn with the appearance of literacy. This sphere of life becomes objectified and abstracted; the human being projects this sphere in front of himself, and examines it consciously and from the outside. There arises the possibility for methodical purposefulness, for the conscious handling of concepts, and for combinational and complicated work.15 Hajnal’s paleographical research clearly shows that proper technique is not sufficient for a long-lasting and successful story. Hajnal believed that the guarantee of success lies in social need and acceptance. 14

I. Hajnal, “Történelem és szociológia” in F. Glatz (ed.), Technika, mővelıdés, Budapest: MTA, 1993, p. 203 15 I. Hajnal, “Európai kultúrtörténet – írástörténet” in F. Glatz (ed.), Technika, mővelıdés, p. 18. Hajnal believed that the emergence of alphabetic writing had a similar effect to that of language itself. As Hajnal put it: “Language picks out certain aspects of this insecure and elusive movement-sphere [i.e. human community-life], expresses them in an artificial manner, and transforms them into notions with a validity for all the community ... language is not solely an extrinsic instrument of communication, but it is thinking itself. ... Language creates the cognitionlike preconditions for that which it expresses, creates a basis on which understanding among human beings in this form becomes possible altogether. Something that would dissolve into nothing, will be turned into ideas by the symbols of language.” (I. Hajnal, “Racionális fejlıdés és írásbeliség”, in F. Glatz (ed.), Technika, mővelıdés, p. 32.)

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The age of antiquity achieved the level of shorthand. But the use of written records did not develop into a universal method of communication, and people remained mainly within the sphere of oral culture. Nonetheless, writing was widely used in those times and its benefits were known to those societies. “Literacy also strengthened rationalism in the peoples of antiquity…”, says Hajnal, but “collective life could not yet be wholly imbued”16 by the use of writing. After the external framework collapsed, writing technology died away as well. That is, since only a thin stratum of society used alphabetical writing, the use of writing could not penetrate everyday practice even though it reaches high degree of rationality. The reconstruction of the history of Western culture excellently performs the effect of objectification. Hajnal believed that those patterns in everyday practice which are convenient for the community and the actual operational activity are capable of surviving and gaining long-lasting form.17 These institutions are consonant with the requirements of a given technology, for the people who are engaged in this activity, and fit the rest of community life. The case of guilds well-illustrates how this institutional setting fits the particular knowledge of raw material and its manufacturing, and at the same time limits individual interests, thus helping the development of technique. Hajnal describes the phenomenon, perhaps strangely but aptly, with the distinction of “reason/instinct” and “customs/habit”. The history of Western culture is described by Hajnal through this mechanism of objectification. After a long period of deepening (which can be considered the preparatory phase for further development) came the age of heyday/blooming, where development is spectacular. This is possible because the grounding was wide and deep enough for further specialization, i.e. for a further and more sophisticated process of objectification. But objectification involves the danger of over-mechanization. That is, objectification means at the same time a separation from roots, and due to this separation, certain other rules start to determine the new objectified realm. This inevitably leads to decline. However, Western development was the result of long and recollected work, and the constantly refined specialization of it. This specialization split up each form of activity, the result of which was one-sided and comfortless mental and physical work. Hajnal’s criticism is not part of our focus for my present purposes, rather it is his key concern that is worthy of special attention. According to Hajnal, the process of objectification is unavoidable and inevitable. That is, 16

I. Hajnal, “Racionális fejlıdés és írásbeliség”, in F. Glatz (ed.), Technika, mővelıdés, p. 34. 17 Cf. the view of Charles Ess et. al. on the impossibility of “culture- and value-neutral” technology, i.e. the refusal of “technological instrumentalism”. See S. Hongladarom and C. Ess (eds.) Information Technology Ethics: Cultural Perspectives, Hersey: Idea Group Reference, 2007, p. xxiii.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Zsuzsanna Kondor: Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice…

everyday activity creates routines in any community, habits from which some gain a solid form, be it a rule or institution. Hajnal suggests that a community evolves in the right manner if its structures and institutions are tailored in accordance with customs that are determined by the capabilities of the community members. Institutions, so to speak, take shape from customs/habits, and due to this crystallization they can resist individual interests which are ruled merely by reason. That is, in the Hajnalian frame of reference, moral laws seem to be the basis of the given structure (the complete institutional framework). In accordance with the Sellarsian claims of “reasonable principles”, moral rules can guard the evolution of a community. Language, and thus abstract entities as well, are objectifications in the Hajnalian sense, and according to Sellars, they gain meaning and power via the intercourse of community members. Considering ethical questions, the notions of abstract entity in the light of Sellarsian realism and objectification as used by Hajnal create a framework within which the main reference points are derived not from speculation, but rather from everyday routine. Weak Ties and Cohesion Research targeting the nature of networks often quotes Mark Granovetter’s finding which stresses “the cohesive power of weak ties”.18 Weak ties, as Granovetter suggests, play an important role not only in individual carriers but also in connecting different subcultures. That is, due to weak ties, behavioral patterns can gain wide acceptance when they meet general demands. The strength of weak ties is endangered by isolation and enclosure in subcultures, as suggested by earlier anxieties regarding the spread and usage of computers and computer networks, and recently by anxieties regarding mobile communication as well. Fortunately, nowadays attempts which recognize the worrisome fact that a connected presence is gaining dominance over face-to-face communication have emerged. That is, there is a need to facilitate face-to-face communication in public places (socalled third places between home and the workplace) such as cafés, by creating facebook-like institutions for guests, enabling them to communicate with each other relying on their mobile device. In the mobile age, several spectacular changes have emerged in various aspects of everyday life.19 Beside these changes, scientific developments also raise the question of how it is possible to adapt 18

Mark Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties” in The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 78, No. 6. (May, 1973), p. 1360. 19 See these changes and some main concerns of ethic (like privacy, surveillance, etc.) in the light of the multi-cultural approach of the comprehensive volume edited by C. Ess at. al. Information Technology Ethics, op. cit.

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alterations in harmony with earlier patterns or how to establish new ones. Permanent change does not favour traditional or fixed preferences, rather it requires flexibility, while successful adaptation presupposes an immediate relation to practice. Institutions and behavioural patterns regarded as results of the process of objectification, and community, more precisely communication among community members seen as the establishment of a conceptual frame of reference, I believe, can provide suitable conditions for the theoretical deliberations of ethical issues even in the mobile age.

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

Chih-Hui Lai – James E. Katz

A Multi-stakeholder Investigation of Ethical and Usage Issues of Mobile Social Networking Introduction Mobile social networking (MobSocNet) has long been considered an exciting potential service offering. However, uptake among mobile phone users, estimated in 2007 to be substantially less than 4% (M: Metrics, 2007), has not come close to matching either initial or continuing enthusiastic projections. Possible reasons for its relative lack of popularity compared to online/PC-based social networking have been debated in the media, but only a few academic studies shed light on the obstacles to MobSocNet use. Among them is Lai, who noted that many users felt "no need to be connected all the time" (Lai, in press). Humphreys (2007), who looked at US-based Dodgeball, concluded that the abusive behaviors by some users drove out many others. Given the scant research on the social implications of MobSocNet, we aim to provide an inventory addressing MobSocNet use with a goal of further clarifying the perceived obstacles and potential problems of MobSocNet. Our particular focus is the ethics and usability of MobSocNet, as seen by survey respondents and online writers and we draw upon Rogers’ Diffusion Theory to examine the data. Methodology Data Collection Much of our data consists of the opinions of mobile phone academic researchers and practitioners solicited via a web survey. The population we sought to tap through this study was researchers engaged in the study of mobile phones supplemented by an additional category of practitioners and service providers. Respondents were recruited through two rounds of announcements sent to two mailing lists of specialists (i.e., Mobile Society and the Center for Mobile Communication Studies) along with 84 invitation emails sent to individuals whose names were gathered via snowball and purposive sampling. The data collection took place from May 15 through June 25, 2008. Each participant was asked to list up to five issues in each of four dimensions (ethics, usability, user behavior, and economics). In total, 457 responses were gathered from 34 participants. Demographically, this sample of 34 participants consisted of 18 males and 15 females with a mean age of

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking C.-H. Lai – J. E. Katz: A Multi-stakeholder Investigation of Ethical…

37. In terms of professional background, the participant pool included mostly researchers from industry and academia, but also included students and generalists. The geographical distribution of the participants concentrated in North America (n=12), followed by Asia (n=10), Europe (n=7), Latin America (n=3) and Africa (n=2). Parallel to the web survey, we reviewed commentaries concerning MobSocNet that appeared in relevant media outlets and industry reports as well as online reflections and blog postings from professionals. Analysis Ethical Issues: Privacy Rated as Priority Among the 457 responses, 43 categories emerged. The ethical issue of privacy (n=39) was most prominent. Under privacy, various subcategories emerged such as control over one's privacy, locational privacy, privacy of one’s own phone number, and group-consensus over distribution of shared location information. In addition to privacy, 11 other subcategories of ethical issues were identified which included (with examples): data use (ability to eliminate historical data), misconduct (sexual harassment), accessibility (designs for low-end users), identification (revealing user background and demographics), social norms (mutual respect of boundaries), intrusive communication (spam and scam), security (transaction security), responsible communication (honesty), surveillance (corporate surveillance), dependency (more mobile device dependency), and overloading (demanding responses to posts). These ethical issues also have been discussed by both academic and applied researchers. First, a study by Humphreys’ (2007) found that abusive behavior by some drove out many other users. This observation speaks to the factor of misconduct leading to users’ discontinuance of the use of MobSocNet. Second, online commentators Hudson (2007) and Yadav (2008) have underscored the importance of enabling users to maintain a degree of privacy control over who has access to their profile/presence information. Third, as far as the categories of overloading and intrusiveness are concerned, industry researcher Broden’s (2007a) study found that most active social networkers also desire time off the network. Another comparable way of interpreting overloading relates to the feeling of users being overwhelmed by distracting advertisements proffered by mobile operators (Current Analysis, 2008; Khan, 2008). The lack of an efficient mechanism that allows users to filter information may be a factor in the problems behind MobSocNet services, such as Dodgeball (McCarthy, 2008). Yet, some have argued that with appropriate safeguards, locationbased presence information may become a profitable service (Arrington, 2008; Pierce-Grove, 2008). This argument is based on the fact that users

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

would be more motivated to share content with people based on common location identifiers (Arrington, 2008; Baig, 2007; Yadav, 2008). Survey responses indicate that accessibility can be linked to questions of the "digital divide," and thus can be seen through an ethical lens. The relative success of MobSocNet in many countries, it has been claimed, stems from those countries' relatively low personal computer penetration. Thus the mobile phone is a surrogate for the PC and its social networking capabilities in, for instance, South Africa, India, Taiwan, Thailand and Philippines (Buzzcity, 2007; Hagermark, 2008; Lai, 2007). Usage Issues: Interface Design Topping the List In terms of usage issues, interface design (n=46) was cited most often. Comments included issues ranging from the need for a simple interface (and a restricted number of operations needed to work the system, e.g. only a few buttons to push), performance, multimodality, user search, filtering mechanisms to address the presumed onslaught of information to be received, and notification capability. In addition to interface design, 12 other usagerelated categories emerged: affordability (low-cost or free), compatibility (interoperability), convergence (integration with non-mobile), content design (variety of content), technical bandwidth (fast secure connections), device design (screen size), ease of use (low technical skills), tracking (automatic location detection), quality of service (debugging), opt-in (opt-in and consent), community feature (customized for a particular community needs) and open-source technology (copyright and intellectual property). Our review of media commentaries point to similar aspects that were included in our survey. First, it is conceivable that usability considerations are magnified in the mobile context (Broden, 2007b) given the fact that MobSocNet is built on the integration of multiple modes of interaction with social networking sites, including SMS, email, WAP, and MMS (Hiloa, 2008). Second, because of this perspective, the discussion of MobSocNet has long focused on interface design (Martin Dawes Systems, 2008; Rehak, 2008), compatibility (both interoperability and phone compatibility), and cross-community-enabling features (Ballard, 2008; Conahan, 2007; Corvida, 2008; Yadav, 2008). In the web survey, affordability (n=27) is another frequently mentioned category under the usability dimension. By comparison, a Buzzcity (2007) user study has shown that higher frequency use of its myGamma service tends to be related to the popularity of flat-rate data packages. Related to this is the concept of ease of use and a shallow learning curve: users, with minimal skills, should be able to input into their mobiles via audio and voice, video and typing their immediate experience both easily and at a reasonable cost. Nonetheless, in most cases, complicated pricing mechanisms appear to discourage potential users (Winterbottom, 2007).

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking C.-H. Lai – J. E. Katz: A Multi-stakeholder Investigation of Ethical…

Survey responses also indicate the importance of robust system support, including sufficient technical bandwidth and user-friendly device design. After all, it is possible that the unequal two-way data traffic afforded in the current 2.5G or 3G networks will discourage users from being engaged in content generation in the mobile community, which through negative feedback loops will result in non-adoption (Winterbottom, 2007). Other technical limitations of mobile devices that would also pose challenges to the development of MobSocNet include the lack of keyboards, coverage spotty and the proprietary blocking of applications by mobile service providers (Arrington, 2008; Baig, 2007). Implications The 25 categories derived from the web survey provide insights into the current and potential development of MobSocNet. Privacy and interface design were singled out as the most crucial issues under the dimensions of ethics and usage, respectively. Yet, in addition to the descriptive understanding, we also wanted to explore MobSocNet from a more abstract communication theory perspective. Specifically, we found that Rogers’ (1983, 1995) diffusion of innovation framework is relevant and illuminating but also misses some important dimensions of the adoption process (Ling, 2001). Incorporating communication as the main mechanism in the adoption and diffusion of innovations, Rogers’ diffusion theory consists of four components: innovations, time, communication and social system. Given the context and approach of our study reported in this paper, we focus on the "innovation" aspect. Rogers posits that the characteristics of innovations as perceived by individuals can help to explain different rates of adoption; these characteristics include relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, trialability and observability. Corresponding with the first two attributes (relative advantage and complexity), the earlier discussions of the usability dimension of MobSocNet (e.g., convenience of mobile communication over PC-based social networking, the affordable price and the use of existing mobile phones, simple interface design) can thus be well explained. Moreover, it is explicable that trial installment of MobSocNet is associated with trialability while the use of location-based applications in the public place is linked to observability. Compatibility among different MobSocNet applications and convergence among different modes of networking platforms are also understandable in relation to the attribute of compatibility. The ethical dimension reported in the survey is more relevant to the attributes of relative advantage and compatibility. First, accessibility afforded for those who have limited or no access to PC-based Internet renders MobSocNet a useful service for reducing the digital divide. Yet,

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

concerns about violating social norms (e.g., use in inappropriate settings) give rise to the question of whether such innovations are congruent with the existing sociocultural values and practices. Second, and more importantly, privacy concerns, coupled with issues of misconduct, intrusion, data abuse, and information overload, are serious concerns from the potential user’s viewpoint. To some extent, it may be that the services will necessitate a trade-off for users. Yet the nuances of this concept may not be adequately incorporated within the fivefold Rogers framework (Katz & Hyman, 1993). Hence, in this context, a dimension may need to be added in terms of controllability (Katz, 1991). In other words, one issue that users of MobSocNet would be concerned about is whether they have control over their presence/locational information, and whether they have a convenient mechanism for eliminating or protecting historical data (i.e., the category of data use) or turning off any alerts (i.e., the categories of intrusion, overloading). Conclusion In sum, from our survey specialists in the field see that interface design is not only important for its own sake but also has implications for the perceived ethics of MobSocNet usage. Even more significantly, the issue of privacy seems paramount in terms of the ethical dimension of MobSocNet. From a communication theory perspective, privacy and information control also appears to be an important (albeit insufficiently attended to) construct in theorizing about adoption of new technologies, particularly at their early "pre-takeoff" stage.

REFERENCES Arrington, M. (2008, April 9). I saw the future of social networking the other Day. Message posted to http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/09/isaw-the-future-of-social-networking-the-other-day/ Baig, E. C. (2007, Nov.14). Social networkers reach out more with cellphones. USA Today. Retrieved June 20, 2008, from http://www.usatoday.com/ tech/wireless/2007-11-13-moible-networking_N.htm Ballard, B. (2008, April 15). Mobile social networking. Little Springs Design. Retrieved June 20, 2008, from http://www.littlespringsdesign.com/ blog/blog/2008/04/15/mobile-social-networking/ Broden, N. (2007a, April 27). Research insights: Social networking and mobile communities. Punchcut. Retrieved June 20, 2008, from

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http://idlemode.com/2007/04/27/research-insights-social-networking-andmobile-communities Broden, N. (2007b). User insights into mobile social networking. Presented at the BREW 2008 Conference. Retrieved June 20, 2008, from http://brew.qualcomm.com/bnry_brew/pdf/brew_2007/Biz702_Broden2.pdf Buzzcity. (2007, Dec. 24). Mobile social networking: A cross-country survey of myGamma members. Retrieved July 2, 2008, from www.buzzcity.com/l/coverage/MobileSocialNetworking.pdf Conahan, S. (2007, Feb. 14). What is mobile social networking? Message posted to http://mt.intercastingcorp.com/company/blog/archives/anthem/#a000124 Corvida. (2008, May 15).

What's plaguing your mobile social network? Message posted to http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ whats_plaguing_your_mobile_soc.php Current Analysis. (2008, March 12). Mobile social networking aims to mimic growth of wired nets. Retrieved June 30, 2008, from http://www.researchrecap.com/index.php/2008/03/12/mobile-socialnetworking-aims-to-mimic-growth-of-wired-nets/ Hagermark, P.-F. (2008, Feb. 29). Is mobile social networking only for the big web guys? Message posted to http://pfhagermark.wordpress.com/ 2008/02/29/is-mobile-social-networking-only-for-the-big-web-guys/ HILOA. (2008, April 10). The mobile social networking market. Message posted to http://www.hiloa.com/2008/04/mobile-social-networkingmarket.html Hudson, C. (2007, March 7). Working in the United States. Message posted to http://www.charleshudson.net/?p=264 Humphreys, L. (2007). Mobile social networks and social practice: A case study of Dodgeball. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 17. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/humphreys.html Katz, J. E. (1991). Public concern over privacy: The phone is the focus. Telecommunications Policy, 15 (2), 166-169.

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Katz, J. E., & Hyman, M. (1993). Dimensions of concern over telecommunications privacy in the United States. The Information Society, 9, 251-275. Khan, M. A. (2008, May 28). Millennials drive growth of mobile social networking: Study. Mobile Marketer. Retrieved June 20, 2008, from http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/research/1060.html Lai, C. H. (2007, March). Understanding the design of mobile social networking: The example of EzMoBo in Taiwan. M/C Journal, 10(1). Retrieved 19 Mar. 2007 from http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/08-lai.php Lai, C. H. (in press). Young adult’s use of mobile phones and online social networking: The role of social networks. In K. Nyíri (Ed.), Communications in the 21st century. Budapest: Passagen Verlag. Ling, R. (2001, June). The diffusion of mobile telephone among Norwegian teens. Presented at ICUST 2001, Paris, France. Retrieved June 30, 2008, from http://www.richardling.com/papers/2001_Report_from_after_the_ revolution.pdf M: Metrics. (2007, Aug. 15). Mobile social networking has 12.3 million friends in the US and Western Europe. Retrieved April 11, 2008, from http://www.mmetrics.com/press/PressRelease.aspx?article=20070815socialnetworking Martin Dawes Systems (2008, Feb. 28). Customers cautious over latest mobile operator service. Retrieved July 2, 2008, from http://www.mvnoservices.com/news/press2008_02_28.php McCarthy, C. (2008, May 7). Brightkite: A bright future for mobile social networking? CNET. Retrieved June 20, 2008, from http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-9937898-36.html Pierce-Grove, R. (2008, May 19). Vodafone: ZYB acquisition facilitates more mobile social networking. CBROnline. Retrieved June 20, 2008, from http://www.cbronline.com/article_feature.asp?guid=6A58957F-4BB142CD-A1EE-62D53B810155 Rehak, A. (2008, Feb. 28). Advertising revenue won't make mobile social networking profitable. Analysys Research. Retrieved July 2, 2008, from http://www.analysysmason.com/research.industrycomment/insight/advertising-revenue-wont-make-mobile-socialnetworking-profitable/

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Rogers. E. M. (1983). Diffusion of innovations (3rd ed.). New York: Free Press. Rogers, E. M. (1995). Diffusion of innovations (4th ed.). New York: Free Press. Winterbottom, D. (2007, Nov. 19). Social networking has potential to drive mobile revenues, but also to add to network woes. Informa Telecoms & Media. Retrieved June, 20, 2008, from http://www.informatm.com/ itmgcontent/icoms/s/sectors/mobile-content-apps/20017480656.html Yadav, S. (2008, May 27). What I want from my mobile social network. Message posted to http://sachendra.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/what-i-wantfrom-my-mobile-social-network/

T-Mobile / Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 2008 Conference

Monika Langenberger

Determinants of Chosen Unavailability in SMS Communication An Experiment Concerning Gender, Personality and Aspects of Content

Sending a text message is a common way to communicate with other persons. A lot of research has been done according to mobile availability. But what effect does a missing answer have on the sender and otherwise what is the intention of this kind of “silence”. Dorothee Arlt found in her study of 2008 that the unavailability of the addressee has indeed an impact on the sender of a text message. The results have shown that these impacts depend e.g. on the different forms of unavailability and that the sex and personality of mobile users have different effects on the reaction. Also evidence for gender differences has been found. (for more details compare Arlt 2008). When we take a look at communication it is always important to include both sides of the communication process. Therefore the focus also has to be on the addressee of a text message. As we know from Watzlawick it is impossible not to communicate because communication is a form of behaviour and behaviour has no opposite (compare Watzlawick, P., Bevin, J. & Jackson, D. 1996). So the aim of this study was to answer the research question: “Why and with what intention unavailability is chosen”. Therefore the first steps of the recent study were some interviews with students. The aim of these interviews was to identify potential determinants of the reactions caused by a received text message. The results have shown that the content of the text message and the sender as well as the sex of the addressee and the situation have to be taken in account when looking at chosen unavailability in mobile communication. Method To answer the research question and therefore to reveal the intention of chosen unavailability in text communication an experiment with the help of a questionnaire was conducted. All subjects had to put themselves into a flirt situation with an imaginary person they have met on the night before. The situation was the same for every subject. Only the received text message they were given to was variable. Based on the interviews and on authentic text messages three different contents of text messages have been developed. First of all there was a message which was regarded to be a so called standard one. The second message was considered

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Monika Langenberger: Determinants of Chosen Unavailability in SMS Communication

to be more individual with reference to the night before. The last one was formulated in a more intrusive way. The students were grouped by chance. Measures In the first section of the questionnaire the subjects had to decide whether they would answer the given text message and if so after what time. Also the reasons for the chosen time of answering were requested. The categories had been developed with regard to the results of the interviews. The following parts of the questionnaire contained the German NEO-FFI (Borkenau & Ostendorf 1993) and the German version of the BSRI (Schneider-Düker & Kohler 1988). The last one had to be taken into account because the (biological) sex can not be regarded as an appropriate explanation for differences in behaviour. Sample All subjects were undergraduates. The hyperlink of the questionnaire has been distributed via mailing lists of two different universities. The addressees were also asked to forward the e-mail to other students. This resulted in a total sample of N=646. Subdivided into sex and received text message six different partial samples of approximately the same size have been generated. The participants were aged between 19 and 39 years (M=24, SD = 2.47), 278 were male, 247 were female. Results The assumption that women differentiate from men in the way they react to a received message could be confirmed in different ways. First of all the computed analysis of variances has shown that the average period of time until women (M=1.84, SD=0.82) answer is longer compared to men (M=1.61, SD=0.75, p