Corinne Martin · Thilo von Pape (Eds.

Images in Mobile Communication

VS RESEARCH
Corinne Martin
Thilo von Pape (Eds.)

Images in Mobile
Communication
New Content, New Uses,
New Perspectives

VS RESEARCH
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Published with financial support from the Paul Verlaine University of Metz (France) and its Centre
for Research on Mediations (CREM), the Région Lorraine (France), the Urban Community of Metz
Métropole (France), the Fédération française des télécoms (FFT) and InTech SA (Grand Duchy of
Luxembourg).

1st Edition 2012

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ISBN 978-3-531-17992-6
ContentV

Introduction............................................................................................................ 7

I The Production of Photography in the Users’ Hands? .......................... 19

Anne Jarrigeon
Images in Mobile Uses:
A New “Middle-brow Art”? ........................................................................ 21

Iren Schulz
Visual Mobile Phone Content and Developmental Challenges.
The Mediatization of Social Relationships in Adolescence ........................ 41

Frank Möller
Celebration and Concern.
Digitization, Camera Phones and the Citizen-Photographer ....................... 57

II Strategies and Tactics at the Advent of Mobile Images ......................... 79

Cornelia Wolf and Ralf Hohlfeld

Revolution in Journalism?
Mobile Devices as a New Means of Publishing .......................................... 81

Thilo von Pape and Veronika Karnowski

Which Place for Mobile Television in Everyday Life?
Evidence from a Panel Study ..................................................................... 101

Julien Figeac
The Appropriation of Mobile TV through Television Preferences and
Communication Networks ........................................................................ 121
6 ContentV

III Images and Representations of Mobile Communication ..................... 141

Corinne Martin
Images and Representations of the Mobile Internet .................................. 143

Veronika Karnowski
Symbolic Models of Mobile Phone Appropriation.
A Content Analysis of TV Serials ............................................................. 167

Miguel Ángel Nicolás Ojeda

The Image of Youth in Mobile Phone Advertising ................................... 189

Contributors ....................................................................................................... 209

Introduction

Thilo von Pape and Corinne Martin

In the beginning was the word, and the word was through GSM, and GSM was
voice only1. Despite the first generation of cellular networks in Japan, North
America and Europe beginning in the early 1980s, mobile communication re-
mained a marginal phenomenon for ten years until the emergence of second gen-
eration networks based on the digital standard of the “Global System for Mobile
Communications” (GSM). What followed was a textbook example of the suc-
cessful diffusion of innovations, starting with almost no adopters in 1992 to one
subscription per European citizen in 2006 (Eurostat, 2006). It is also the evolu-
tion of a new medium, from a channel for the human voice to a universal means
of communication. We argue that the advent of images is a key moment in the
evolution of mobile communication. Here we outline how this book investigates
this period throughout the subsequent parts and chapters.

1 From Voice Only to Written Text

When mobile phone adoption rapidly increased in the late 1990s, it was due not
only to the dynamics inherent to diffusion. Rather, the evolution also benefited
from the new short messaging service (SMS), which was embedded into the
GSM standard and the software of existing phones. Embraced with much enthu-
siasm, particularly by adolescent phone users (cf. Ling, 2000), SMS accompa-
nied and flourished with mobile communication in general. Communication,
which previously could only be said and heard, was now visual. Some observers
tend to relativize this advance, arguing that the language used in SMS messages
is phonetic and therefore not anchored in the written tradition (Soffer, 2010),
whereas others see it as a milestone in a universal comeback of the written
language. In his social ontology of the mobile phone, Maurizio Ferraris (2006, p.
45) points out “we cannot agree with those who say that what we have here is a
creolization, in which the written becomes a variant of the spoken”, insisting that
the mobile phone “is not […] an instrument for talking but an instrument for

1
Loosely based on the Gospel of John, 1:1.

C. Martin, Thilo von Pape (Eds.), Images in Mobile Communication,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-531-93190-6_1,
© VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2012
8 Thilo von Pape and Corinne Martin

writing” (Ferraris, 2006, p. 48). Consequently, Ferraris traces the genealogy of

mobile phones not to Thomas Edison, but rather to the Sumerans’ tablets. While
this argument appeared to be surprising in 2006, it has gained legitimacy as the
evolution of smart phones produced a new class of tablet devices, thus closing
the circle.
If we assume that the introduction of short messages establishes a new tra-
jectory of ancestry in the evolution of mobile communication, then it can be ar-
gued that this led to new uses and meanings of the technology, which were soon
associated with mobile communication in general. As Goggin and Hjorth (2009,
p. 3) claim, “text messaging took on a life of its own – spawning a career in
technology that quickly moved beyond mere signal or data to direct suturing into
youth culture, interactive television, mobile commerce, and so on”. The begin-
ning of this evolution is well documented. The “perpetual contact” that is now
possible due to mobile communication (Katz & Aakhus, 2002), was extended
through the asynchronous character of SMS communication and the opportuni-
ties it offered in order to communicate with friends and family even when they
were not available. If the phone was a popular tool for “micro-coordination” in
everyday life and the “hyper-coordination” of social relations (Ling & Yttri,
2002), these activities were reinforced by the low cost and convenience of short
messages. Thus, teenagers could afford not only to arrange their leisure activities
through SMS dialogues, but also to affirm and enhance their social relationships
through sending symbolically charged messages to their friends in what Taylor
and Harper (2002) compare to age-old gift-giving practices. In the course of this
appropriation, mobile communication turned out to be more than merely words,
as users applied a reinvention of letters to form smiley faces and other emoti-
cons. Their seemingly inevitable presence in text messages today is seen by
some – with reference to the school of Palo Alto – as an analogy to the un-
avoidable non-verbal elements in face-to-face communication (Rivière, 2002;
Watzlawick et al., 1967).

2 From Words to Images

The success of emoticons foreshadowed a second major advancement in the

qualitative evolution of mobile communication, which is at the heart of this
book: the advent of images. Evolving from emoticons to black and white
graphics, photos and videos, images on mobile phones soon improved in quality
(e.g., the objectives of the camera, the size of the screen, resolution and the
transmission bandwidths). This evolution ultimately permitted integration of the
Internet into mobile communication and fulfilled the “convergence” between in-
Introduction 9

formatics, mass media and telecommunications for mobile end devices. The In-
ternet experience demands images in convincing quality. This lesson could be
learned from the failure of the “light” WAP format (Joakar & Fish, 2006), and
Apple applied this lesson in the development of the first iPhone, which gave us-
ers an almost uncompromised experience of the Internet (West & Mace, 2010).
Now that the number of users with mobile Internet access is exploding, mo-
bile phones are no longer just devices for telecommunication but are “becoming
media” (Goggin & Hjorth, 2009, p. 3). While some researchers are exploring
whether this shift will mark the beginning of a new era “after the mobile phone”
(Hartmann, Rössler, & Höflich, 2008), it can be assumed that this is a very dis-
ruptive moment in the evolution of mobile communication.
Just as the arrival of text allowed for completely new meanings and uses of
mobile communication, we argue that the arrival of images is a key moment that
may determine the further development of mobile communication for a con-
siderable amount of time. Enriching the evolution of mobile communication now
is the wide visual tradition of popular culture and mass media. This raises
questions about how to analyze these processes and the specific role images play
in it.

3 “Thou Shalt Not Make unto Thee Any Graven Image”

A widespread choice for the study of images is to consider them as signs in the
tradition of semiotics, as explored by Roland Barthes (1981). Building on
Barthes, Rivière (2005) suggested that snapshots produced by mobile phones
break with the relation to time that is characteristic of traditional photographs,
through the idea that photographs testify that “that has been.” While customary
photographs juxtapose present reality with the past by both authenticating the
latter and representing it – often creating a nostalgic emotion – mobile snapshots
are mainly embedded in the present and develop their meaning as such. Whether
they are immediately watched on a camera’s display or shared wirelessly with
others, they evoke an instantaneous sense of “being together”. Thus, they intro-
duce a new imaginary and visual language that is also embedded in the present.
However, just as written words are more than the written form of oral language,
some argue that images also go beyond what can be reduced to language. One
such argument that underlies the difference between words and images can be
found in the bible and history of the church. Consider, for example, the Second
Commandment, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any like-
ness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is
in the water under the earth” (King James Bible, edited by Carroll & Pricket,
10 Thilo von Pape and Corinne Martin

2008). Not only does the existence and prominence of this interdiction among
the commandments underline the power attributed to images (as opposed to
text), but its importance is also confirmed by the course of church history.
Marie-José Mondzain (2005) makes this point in her analysis of the byzantine
roots of our contemporary understanding and use of images. She refers to the
iconoclasm under Constantine V in the VIIIth and IXth century, and more pre-
cisely to the patriarch Nikephoros who defended images, to explain to what ex-
tent they are completely different from text: “When the image is operative, it
does something that the speech does not. […] Nikephoros reminds us that the
image is a Gospel and that there is a perfect equivalence between the scriptural
message and the iconic message. Nonetheless, he never loses sight of the fact
that teaching and persuading by means of the icon are superior to hearing as a re-
sult of the speed with which they operate, and their emotional effectiveness”
(Mondzain, 2005, p. 6). Through their emotional efficiency, images are vectors
of power. Michel Foucault expresses the same idea of untranslatability in his
analysis of the painting Las Meninas (Vélasquez) in The Order of Things: An Ar-
chaeology of the Human Sciences (1994): “it is not that words are imperfect, or
that, when confronted by the visible, they prove insuperably inadequate. Neither
can be reduced to the other’s terms: it is in vain that we say what we see; what
we see never resides in what we say” (Foucault, 1994, p. 10).
Images have functions beyond the symbolization of semiotics; according to
the psychologist Serge Tisseron (2007), the image transforms the spectator and is
transformed by him/her, which provokes the question of “truthfulness” in the
digital age. Secondly, the image works as an “envelope” for the viewer, who can
then “inhabit” the image. The contemplation of images and access to the imagi-
nary is the origin of the happiness we find in an image. It is through this process
that the famous phrase “I was there” is expressed, which implicitly accompanies
the exchange of photos/videos among friends.

4 Studying Images in Mobile Communication

How can we analyze the role of images in mobile communication, if we want to

go beyond a perspective that considers them as signs? One approach for posi-
tively understanding the significance of images is “visual studies”, which was
created in the 1980s as a confluence of art history, esthetics, history of ideas and
cultural studies (Mitchell, 1986). While these disciplines may appear distant
from the questions confronting mobile communication today, there are actually
some parallels. For example, the work of Marie-José Mondzain (2005) on
iconoclasm and its meaning for our contemporary understanding of images
Introduction 11

suggests a connection between mobile communication and art history. Mondzain

links images not only to religious power but also to economic power, which is
much more salient in the struggle today regarding the future of mobile commu-
nication. As Mondzain claims, “The question of the economy cannot be separat-
ed from the question of the image itself” (Mondzain, 2005, p. 3). This confers a
very particular power to the image: “It is precisely because the icon is endowed
with a power specific to it that it mattered so much to the emperor to deprive the
church of it and to reserve for himself its exclusive rights and benefits” (Mon-
dzain, 2005, p. 6). This power acquired by the image appears today in the age of
digital devices.
The advent of images on the screens of mobile phones can crystallize and
reveal the enormous economic stakes of the so-called convergence between cul-
tural industries (e.g., music, press, information, editing, cinema and audiovisual
media) and the industries of communication and information (Bouquillion,
2008). The mobile phone may become the mass medium that fosters the diffu-
sion of visual content: from the photo to television, games to graphic novels, and
other content available online. The entry of new actors from the communication
industry means that the cards are reshuffled and distributed to these new actors.
If their strategy aims mainly at differentiating their offer from the competition
(and not to transform themselves into producers of content or holders of exclu-
sive rights), large actors such as the mobile operators will compete with content
producers in order to keep the position they own through their direct access to
the consumers (Bouquillion, 2008). These large actors of communication tend to
become infomediaries (intermediaries between producers of content and con-
sumers/users) and acquire meta-positions as they enter the content business
(Bouquillion, 2008). The most recent example of this is Apple’s strategy to
bypass the traditional relationship between providers of content (such as pub-
lishers or record companies) and consumers by establishing direct and exclusive
links of users to their iPhones (West & Mace, 2010) and iPads.

5 Outlook: Parts and Chapters

Thus far, it can be concluded that the stakes as well as the rules of the game and
the players change when images are involved. This follows historical trends and
seemingly applies to the current evolution in mobile communication as well.
Given the wide scope of these changes, this book deliberately explores only three
axes, each of which is addressed in a part containing three chapters.
The first part of the book, titled “The Production of Photography in the Us-
ers’ Hands?” addresses the consequences of utilizing mobile phones as cameras.
12 Thilo von Pape and Corinne Martin

In the first chapter of this part, “Images in Mobile Uses: A New “Middle-brow”
Art?”, Anne Jarrigeon draws on Bourdieu’s research on the “social uses of pho-
tography” in order to examine whether the mobile phone facilitates a new mul-
timedia “middle-brow” art. She first explores what new types of images are
created and produced with mobile phones. Relying on an analysis of the continu-
ities and discontinuities provoked by new visual uses of the cell phone, this
approach attempts to uncover the aesthetic template common to a large number
of mobile productions. This approach is based on studies of various cases, such
as family photos, citizen journalism, everyday life ethnography, spectacular
performance and reflexive use. Several hypotheses about the way mobile phone
pictures fit into our historical visual culture have been proposed and these
stimulate further questions on how these images affect our sense of representa-
tion as well as our social interactions. Everyday snapshots also play an important
role in the work of Iren Schulz titled “Visual Mobile Phone Content and De-
velopmental Challenges: The Mediatization of Social Relationships in Adoles-
cence”. However, this chapter has both a broader and tighter focus as it explores
the topics and types of any visual content that can be found on adolescents’
mobile phones including the context in which it is exchanged. Schulz links this
content to strategies of participation in adolescent relationships. Groups of peers
hence appear as dynamic social networks of negotiated meanings. Ranging from
everyday-life situations via favorite media content to sexuality and violence,
visual content and its use reveal meaningful differences beyond gender and
education. Schulz’s empirical findings are based on pictures, photos and video
clips that are examined alongside the in-depth interviews of ten adolescents. The
final chapter of the first part, “Celebration and Concern: Digitization, Camera
Phones and the Citizen-Photographer” by Frank Möller, addresses the changes
created by digitization to the techniques of producing, altering and disseminating
images and discusses the social and political consequences of these new possibi-
lities. The photos produced by simple citizens may help construct an internation-
al visual/virtual community, but they are not always welcome due to the difficul-
ty of controlling them and their ability to undermine authority. Möller analyzes
citizen-photography by discussing the possibilities that digitization, especially
the use of camera phones, offers to marginalized groups of people to exert
agency by becoming photographers. The author chose photographs of the 2005
bombings on the London Underground and of the former Prime Minister Tony
Blair. Furthermore, he focuses on both photojournalism and irony in the digital
age with a discussion on the concept of “sousveillance”.
The second part of the volume covers “Strategies and Tactics at the Advent
of Mobile Images”. It comprises three empirical studies on the ways users and
producers prepare and react to the potential of mobile communication receiving
Introduction 13

multimedia content and multimedia content becoming mobile. Cornelia Wolf

and Ralf Hohlfeld consider this question from the perspective of those actors
providing journalistic content by administering an editorial survey among the
news desks of German radio stations, TV channels, as well as newspapers and
newsmagazines with local regional and national coverage. If their title “Revolu-
tion in Journalism? Mobile Devices as a New Means of Publishing” raises the
question of how profound the upcoming changes to journalism will actually be,
the data confirm that the producers expect them to have a large impact on news
production and the very structure of journalistic work and organizations. Perhaps
the least predictable variable in the producers’ expectations are the users and
their acceptance and appropriation of mobile services. Both Thilo von Pape and
Veronika Karnowski and Julien Figeac deal with these questions. Unlike the
news desks and device manufacturers, users generally do not create the content,
devices or environment in which they use mobile media. Rather, they try to
maximize usage of the given technology by applying what de Certeau (1984)
would describe as using their own tactics on the foreign “territory”. In the
chapter “Which Place for Mobile Television in Everyday Life? Evidence from a
Panel Study”, Von Pape and Karnowski explore, how users integrate a mobile
television service into their everyday life over the time span of 12 weeks. Based
on a mobile experience sampling methodology, their findings question the
optimistic visions that often accompany the idea of mobile television. Yet they
also suggest how this struggling technology may still be successful among users
and find a place in their everyday routines. Whereas these findings draw on
mostly quantitative data, Julien Figeac presents a purely qualitative study on the
same object of research, using a similarly innovative methodology. Titled “The
Appropriation of Mobile TV through Television Preferences and Communication
Networks”, this chapter provides ethnographic observations of Parisian Mobile
TV subscribers. It relies on recordings from camera glasses that users wore
during a week of mobile TV usage in addition to in-depth interviews. Thus
radically, and literally, taking the users’ perspective, Figeac is able to see the
problems that users are confronting regarding network availability. Insights into
the actual situational context uncover not only preferences in terms of content,
but also the conditions of reception. Carefully analyzing users reflexivity toward
both content and conditions, Figeac comes up with the notion of “opportunist
attachment” to describe the users’ relation with mobile television today. Given
that the utilizations of technological opportunities are heavily restricted, the
tactics with which users seize these opportunities for specific forms of everyday
use provides a more in-depth understanding than any survey among users, let
alone the usage scenarios developed by the producers.
14 Thilo von Pape and Corinne Martin

The third part of the book, “Images and Representations of Mobile Com-
munication”, examines the image and social representations of mobile commu-
nication itself. The first chapter, “Images and Representations of the Mobile
Internet” by Corinne Martin, addresses questions about the producers’ strategies
as discussed in the previous part of the volume, but then applies them to the
question of how various social actors create different images of the emerging
mobile Internet. The first image of the mobile Internet user, as constructed by
various audience measurements in France, appears as a blurred and embellished
picture that is still under construction. The second image is produced in the
public space by the aggressive strategies of network operators and handset
manufacturers, as will be illustrated in a case study of the iPhone. Third, Martin
utilizes the concept of social representation in order to analyze the users’ repre-
sentation of the mobile Internet in relation to the computer. Mixed methodology
is applied, utilizing analysis of statistics of use and experts’ forecasts, question-
naires and in-depth interviews among young adults. In comparison with this
chapter on the very specific application of the mobile Internet, the last two
chapters deal with the more general question of how mobile communication as a
whole is socially constructed. More precisely, these chapters are dedicated to the
role of images for the construction of mobile communication in the context of
advertisement and TV series. Based on the assumption that actors in television
series may serve as role models for their viewers, Veronika Karnowski analyzes
how mobile phone use is represented in TV serials broadcast in Germany. The
findings are presented in the chapter “Symbolic Models of Mobile Phone Appro-
priation: A Content Analysis of TV Serials”. These longitudinal insights give a
unique impression of how fictional audiovisual media have pictured the evolving
innovation of mobile communication with respect to its various dimensions
(such as pragmatic use, symbolic use, restrictions). Another visual reflection of
mobile communication, even more directly aimed at reconstructing the evolving
innovation by influencing its users, is the representation in graphical advertise-
ments. Such advertisements, appearing in the Spanish journals El País and El
Mundo, are the basis of Miguel Ángel Ojeda’s chapter “The Image of Youth in
Mobile Phone Advertising”. In his analysis, Ojeda attempts to shape the image
of mobile communication with the characteristics of youth culture. He offers a
more subtle effort to frame youth culture as a virtual phenomenon, taking place
in the digital space of mobile social networking.
While these three parts are distinct due to the specificity of their questions,
they also constitute three levels of time and reflection, leading the reader from
common uses and meanings of mobile images today (part 1) via expectations and
pilot studies of their future production and appropriation (part 2), to representa-
Introduction 15

tions and visual reflections of mobile communication over longer periods of time
(part 3).

6 Acknowledgements

The editors of this book gratefully acknowledge the intellectual, practical and fi-
nancial support they have received from both scholars and institutions. The
members of the international editorial board have reviewed all proposals and
given important suggestions, thus helping to find the best possible contributions
in addition to improving the quality of the work. Our thanks go to Richard Ling
(IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark), Christian Licoppe (Telecom Paris
Tech, France), Francis Jauréguiberry (University of Pau, France), Sebastian
Schnorf (Harvard University, United States), Luc Massou, Brigitte Simonnot and
Sébastien Genvo (Paul Verlaine University of Metz, France). We also thank
Elisabeth Günther (Hohenheim University in Stuttgart, Germany) for turning the
various contributions into one homogeneous format ready to print. Finally, we
thank the Paul Verlaine University of Metz and its Centre for Research on
Mediations (CREM), the Région Lorraine (France), the Urban Community of
Metz Métropole (France), the Fédération française des télécoms (FFT) and
InTech SA (Grand Duchy of Luxembourg) whose financial support made this
publication possible.

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Part I

The Production of Photography

in the Users’ Hands?
Images in Mobile Uses: A New “Middle-brow Art”?1

Anne Jarrigeon

1 Introduction

Today, the use of the multimedia functions of mobile phones is far from mar-
ginal and is not limited to the younger generation. In France, among the “ex-
tended uses” of the telephone (Licoppe & Zouinar, 2009), video and photog-
raphy are progressing the most rapidly.2 From the unique experiments on the first
day when one explores a new telephone, to hastily taken photographs of one's
friends and family, to advanced use of these audiovisual devices by artists, the
use of mobile phones’ image-making capabilities has begun to redefine common
practices dealing with images and sound. These effects extend beyond the field
of interpersonal relationships and interactions upon which many researchers
choose to concentrate (Riviere, 2005, 2006; Koskinen, 2007).3 “There are
indicators of practices of picture taking and sharing that differ both from the uses
of the stand-alone camera and the kinds of social sharing that happened via
mobile phone communication”, write Okabe and Ito (2006, p. 79).
In fact, artistic practices are developing alongside “vulgar” uses. In this
way, the mobile phone stands out from the multitude of objects that communi-
cate or aid in communication, such as landline telephones, computers, or PDAs.
It is also making a place for itself in the history of photographic devices such as
the disposable camera, the Polaroid, and the digital camera or, in the realm of
animated images, portable super-8 and video cameras. These audiovisual prac-
tices are new, yet they maintain a dialogue with existing devices. It is therefore
important to examine them closely from both the perspective of developing am-
ateur practices, which build upon family photography and videos, and the pre-

1
Bourdieu et al., 1965
2
The latest survey commissioned by the AFOM (French Association of Mobile Operators) from
TNS-Sofres (TNS-Sofres, 2009). Available: http://www.archive.afom.fr/v4/STATIC/
documents/OBS_2009_AFOM_TNS_Sofres.pdf [November 15, 2010].
3
For example, Ilpo Koskinen employs conversation analysis ethnomethodology and considers
"mobile multimedia as interaction" (Koskinen, 2007, p. 33).

C. Martin, T. von Pape (Eds.), Images in Mobile Communication,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-531-93190-6_2,
© VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2012
22 Anne Jarrigeon

mise of an artistic aesthetic, which is contributing to developments in the visual

arts.
More than fifty years after the research directed by Bourdieu on the “social
uses of photography”, the mobile phone seems to be outlining a new multimedia
“middle-brow” art. In reality, what sorts of images are produced with mobile
phones? What meaning do they hold for their creators and their various “audi-
ences”? In what way do they modify the social interactions that they mediate?
Starting in the 1980s, Roland Barthes already considered “pleasure through
images” to be one of the defining characteristics of contemporary societies. The
present enthusiasm for mobile phone (audio)visual practices reinforces the pre-
dominance of the photographic regime, but ultimately, they may paradoxically
weaken it. Does the mobile phone not banalize photography by circulating im-
ages through various spaces, digital or not, “to the point that it [photography] is
no longer faced with any image from which it can be distinguished, relative to
which it can affirm its specificity, its scandal, its madness”? (Barthes, 1980, p.
182) [translation by the author].
Mobile images cannot be correctly analyzed without taking their conditions
of production into account. Both technically and practically speaking, the tele-
phone combines two devices: it is at once a production tool (a still and/or video
camera) and a broadcasting tool (a photo album, a gallery, a portable player, or a
medium). Showing a film on a mobile phone has become common enough that it
is sometimes considered to be the “fourth screen” (after cinema, television, and
the computer).
The Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is not the principal use of mo-
bile photography in everyday life, and it seems to be overrepresented in qualita-
tive studies that use quasi-experimental methods (Koskinen, 2005; Koskinen,
Kurvinen & Lohtonen, 2002; Ling & Julsrud, 2005; Voida & Mynatt, 2005).
Okabe and Ito explain that these studies tend to focus on anticipating future
technological developments that are not yet widespread among consumers. They
instead employ “naturalistic observation of camera usages” in their ethnographic
research (Okabe & Ito, 2006). In this approach, the analysis of “photographic
acts” (Dubois, 1990) and image-viewing situations is not separated from the
analysis of images themselves, of which a significant corpus has been built
through extensive field research conducted over several years’ time in a collec-
tive framework.4 The results presented here thus combine the anthropological
and semi-pragmatic approaches that were employed.

4
This work was part of two collective research projects commissioned by the AFOM: Jeanneret
& al., and Jarrigeon & Menrath, 2007. Associating direct observation in contrasted, significant
situations with in-depth semi-directive interviews, we sought to describe and analyse contem-
porary uses of the mobile phone, without neglecting the material nature of the object itself and
Images in Mobile Uses: A New “Middle-brow Art”? 23

The mobile phone is far from initiating a break with our motion picture her-
itage, and, in fact, relies strongly upon it. The intent of this approach – an analy-
sis of the continuities and discontinuities provoked by new visual uses of the
telephone – is to derive the aesthetic template common to a large number of
mobile productions. Based on studies of various cases including family photos,
citizen journalism, everyday life ethnography, spectacular performance, or re-
flexive use, I shall form hypotheses about the way mobile phone pictures fit into
our historical visual culture. This will lead to another crucial question: how does
this style of images affect our sense of representation as well as our social inter-
actions?

2 Mobile Images: Amateur Images?

As a “middle-brow art”, mobile phone-based multimedia production is essen-

tially practiced by amateurs. There are numerous professional downloadable
content creators, but a large part of visual creation and the organization and col-
lection practices characteristic of mobile phone usage are indeed carried out by
amateurs. The term is used here in a general sense: an “amateur” is, of course,
not a “professional”,5 but is also not an “artist”. On this subject, Roger Odin
(whose perspective I adapt for my own use) notes that “the professional/amateur
opposition is related to the author/spectator opposition and tends to mask the
contemporary redefinition of spectator postures” (Odin, 1999, p. 43) [translation
by the author]. The mobile phone shifts borders and invites us to question con-
temporary spectator activity, just as so-called family photography and film, for
example, have done before it. A veritable “reactor” (Jarrigeon & Menrath, 2007),
it tends to transform the old-style spectator, who is considered to be passive, into
a genuine participant in what’s happening. Laurence Allard (1999) generally
considers the amateur to be a “full-fledged figure in aesthetic modernity”, a cre-

the audiovisual productions which it begets. The first study dealt with the world built around
the mobile phone by its representation in cinema, literature, and advertising. It is in the second
study that I concentrated more specifically on mobile visual and audiovisual productions. I
analyzed a corpus of mobile films created or presented by artists for different festivals like the
Pocket film festival created by the Forum des images (Paris) and Mobile Film Festival (Paris).
Available: http://62.210.119.76/ [May, 15, 2011]. Available: http://fr.mobilefilmfestival.
com/video.php [May 15, 2010]. I also included mobile films distributed on internet sites like
YouTube, Dailymotion, and personal blogs, as well as still or animated images which were
shown to me in the course of field research. I did sixty interviews in Paris and other French cit-
ies, as well as the countryside, and conducted observations of people in different social situa-
tions.
5
This is particularly relevant, for example, when comparing "citizen journalism" carried out
with the mobile phone and "full-time journalism".
24 Anne Jarrigeon

ative figure that helps us understand the importance of practices catalyzed by the
mobile phone. Thus, unlike other approaches that distinguish between artistic
and ordinary usage (Koskinen, 2007; Ling & Julsrud, 2005), the intent is not to
separate images with “artistic” goals from those that are much more trivial or
functional (i.e., the “unpretentious” or even completely “failed” images that are
generally produced with mobile phones). I shall consider the full range of visual
creation processes while still paying attention to their specific features. New
non-telephony mobile phone uses yield a rich repertoire; this continuous spec-
trum of photographic and video uses includes everything from simple tests to
assumed, instrumentalized mastery.

2.1 First Steps and Discoveries

One element in this repertoire is exploratory uses, in which the user tests the
potential of the mobile phone with no intent other than to “find out what it can
do”. Photography and video tests are among the larger set of actions carried out
by those who are interested in knowing the technical capabilities of their tele-
phone. For example, a 40-year-old skilled worker named Bertrand explained:

“I mostly tried taking photos at the beginning, I mean the first day, to see how it
worked. Since then, I have to admit that it doesn’t interest me much. I didn’t take
photos before, so...”

Pierre, 15 years old and the happy owner of the “latest Sony Ericsson walkman”,
is in the same situation. He has made a few short photomontage videos to ex-
plore the different “options” on his telephone. The first time we met him was
immediately following his purchase, and he was proud to show me what he knew
how to do. Three months later, he had completely stopped:

“I wanted to have it, but then I realized I don’t like it. When we need to take photos,
it’s usually other friends who take them, and they send them to me later – that way I
can have them.”

2.2 Occasional Uses

Our observations and interviews indicate that a great number of photographic

uses are, in fact, occasional, as 25-year-old Nicolas explained:
Images in Mobile Uses: A New “Middle-brow Art”? 25

“Well, I don’t use the camera much. Plus, the video is kind of complicated, you have
to go through all kinds of settings. In fact, something really has to be going on, or
someone has to ask me to use it. But often in those cases, I pass my telephone to
someone else.”

The mobile phone allows moments to be captured when they are deemed worthy
of being photographed. These are most often celebrations or meetings of an ex-
ceptional nature, though in the case of “evenings with friends”, what is described
as exceptional may actually occur rather regularly. For example, Charlie, 17
years old, explained that

“I only take photos with my mobile for my mates, when we have parties you have to
take photos. It’s for exceptional things. Then again, it’s almost every weekend!”

Charlie is among those who clearly distinguish between “old style” photography,
which he practices with his father’s film camera, and mobile phone photography,
which he reserves for marking events connected with friendship and social life.
This dichotomy is frequently present in the interviewees’ discourse: it corre-
sponds to a practice of mobile phone photography that is marginal but occurs
regularly in the organization of everyday life. Mobile phone photography thus
follows the rhythm of small communal events.

2.3 Functional Uses

Today, mobile phones give a larger number of people individual access to pho-
tography and video. Some, like 30-year-old trumpet player Julien, are quite
happy to finally have access to these tools:

“I managed to get a great mobile phone, that way I can finally do what I want. I can
even film bits of concerts and practice sessions. Well, it’s not always great, but it’s
practical anyway. What I often do is take photos of sheet music, then I send them by
Bluetooth and the whole group can have them!”

Julien has invented a personal functional use, and his mobile phone now partici-
pates in the organization of his professional life. He appreciates being able to
circulate information and uses his mobile phone as a scanner. Other uses of this
type are developing, as in the following scene observed during a winter sale in a
women’s fashion store: A young girl is admiring a jacket with her friend.
26 Anne Jarrigeon

“Do you think I should buy it?”

“It’s nice, it’s useful to have an everyday jacket like that.”
“Yeah, and plus I don’t have one. But if I don’t ask my mother, she’s going to kill
me. I have an idea – I’m going to send a photo to my sister, that way she can show
Mum and I’ll know what she thinks about it.”

The two girls then set about photographing the jacket as discreetly as possible.
They kept it with them and continued to browse the store while waiting for the
mother’s response.
Subjects thus find applications for photography when subjected to practical
imperatives, and smart phones have amplified this kind of use. It is now quite
common to see people photographing a shop’s opening hours or wall labels at a
museum exhibit. Before the camera phone was omnipresent, they would have
most likely noted this information on paper.

2.4 Careers6 toward Aesthetic Photography and Video

Possessing a mobile phone can also lead users toward more artistic practices.
This is, for example, the case of 28-year-old Emmanuel. He had never really
done any photography before. Happy to have a small still and video camera in
the palm of his hand thanks to his telephone, he went through a short period of
technical tests and then set about making portraits, paying careful attention to
framing and lighting. He reflected on poses, the composition of images, and the
rhythm of surfaces, among other things. One day, I even found him lying on the
floor in the stairway of his apartment building. He was trying out different me-
thods to capture the play of light and shadow. Emmanuel’s development in the
field of photography passed through steps that are in some way classic: from a
discovery use, he moved on to systematic exploration, then to the desire to create
photographs that take a back seat to the content that they capture, before truly
understanding the formal and expressive possibilities of this kind of art.
He was initially disappointed to see that his photos were blurred once trans-
ferred to and viewed on the computer, but he then tried to take advantage of
these “faults”. This transition from the desire for a classic, beautiful image to a
more open consideration of what exactly an image is reveals the artistic dimen-
sion of these practices. Artists who attempt mobile phone art are generally “ex-
perimental” artists, genuinely preoccupied with the particularities of images
produced by telephones. Imprecise focus, pixilation, and blurring due to move-
ment of the device are some of the characteristics that remind them of Jean-Luc

6
Here I use “career” in the interactionist sense of the term (Becker, 1985).
Images in Mobile Uses: A New “Middle-brow Art”? 27

Goddard’s famous saying: “Not a just image, but just an image”. From this point
of view, mobile phone photography and video belong to the category of pictorial
or abstract images, and not that of “bad photographs.”
The ability to question the device without being disappointed that some-
thing is missing relative to existing photographic devices is probably the only
factor that clearly distinguishes amateurs from artists who produce work for
mobile video festivals or meetings. For example, several art schools have added
film projects to their programs that are to be produced with mobile phones. This
is the case at the Fine Arts School of Grenoble, L’ECAL (the Cantonal Art
School of Lausanne) and the national contemporary art studio Le Fresnoy. Alain
Fleischer, its director, is himself the creator of several “pocket films” presented
on the big screen during the Forum des Images festival. At its second edition, he
explained his choice to make students work with mobile phones as a manner to
reflect upon “the adaptation of a tool to a subject”.
Though these photographic and video uses differ from the amateur practices
that they extend and reinvent, there is nonetheless a certain continuity. In no case
is there a logic of substitution: the mobile phone does not replace existing video
or still cameras.

3 “Precarious” Mobile Images

Inseparable from their conditions of production and distribution, mobile phone

images are obviously marked by certain evolving technical constraints that make
them particularly “precarious” images. I have borrowed this expression from an
essay on photography by Jean-Marie Schaeffer (Schaeffer, 1989) because mobile
phone images are, first and foremost, photographs. As photographs, they have a
specific kind of connection to the real, the referent, or a subject. However, mo-
bile phone images are even more “precarious” because they possess a certain
fragility (Koskinen, Kurvinen, & Lehtonon, 2002).

3.1 Images of Lesser Value

People consider images made on a mobile phone to be less valuable, which does
not necessarily prevent them from being objects of affection.

“You have to admit that they aren’t real photos!”

“Anyway, you don’t print these images.”
“I don’t even know where they went, I think I erased them by accident.”
28 Anne Jarrigeon

All of these expressions tend to discount mobile phone images relative to other
photographs. They are indeed rarely printed and are subject to mobile-specific
hazards. They are lost, erased by mistake or to make space, and forgotten in the
depths of interface menus. Even individuals who keep their mobile photos orga-
nized or archived on a computer tend not to ascribe them much importance. This
circulation itself, the metamorphosis of passing from one medium to another,
contributes to their fragility by desacralizing them as images.7

3.2 Honestly, You Can’t See Anything

“A mass of pixels”, underexposed images, rough framing, uncontrolled move-

ments of the camera… In practice, mobile phone images are far from having the
resolution that is constantly claimed in advertisements. Often, one must admit
that “you can’t see anything” in them (Arrasse, 2003). Bernadette, 50 years old,
is amused when she tells us:

“The other day, a colleague showed me photos of his children on his mobile phone.
He was really proud of them... I was a bit embarrassed, I couldn’t even tell the little
boy from the little girl!”
One of the great paradoxes of amateur image use is the simultaneous desire for
technical perfection (connected to the promises in advertising) and the denial of
inferior quality in reality. Bernadette’s colleague was quite proud to have a tele-
phone with “I don’t even know how many pixels”, but did not see that his photos
were of very low quality.
Let us now look at the case of Laura, a 14-year-old adolescent who really
“pestered” her parents to get her a mobile phone with a “good camera” for her
birthday because she was going to a Bénabar concert and is a big fan of his. Her
persistence paid off, and she went to the concert well equipped. After vaunting
the merits of her mobile phone’s camera, she showed me her images, in which
one distinguishes a vague silhouette on a stage saturated with light. “Wait, I’ll
show you more detail!” She began to zoom in, and the face of what was sup-
posedly Bénabar blurred increasingly as it enlarged to fill the screen.
In practice, the denial of low image quality allows happiness about having
been able to make the image as well as initiating a discussion of the concert
experience using the photo as a prompt. In many cases, the photographic act
supersedes the photograph itself. The image triggers comments that are initially

7
This explains the economic failure of the Orange/Photoservice partnership. Relatively few
clients came to print their mobile phone photos at these photo development stations.
Images in Mobile Uses: A New “Middle-brow Art”? 29

a description of what should be seen. In turn, and more importantly, this serves
to initiate remembrance and engage conversation about a personal experience.
One of the characteristics of silver photography brought to light by Roland
Barthes – the index point – is accentuated in mobile photography (Barthes,
1980). The “that has been” Barthes describes is perhaps the principal mechanism
behind these mobile practices. Mobile images are, in fact, destined to be shown
(preferably on the mobile phone itself) and allow Laura to discuss an event and
tell her story using her low-quality photos of Bénabar.

4 The Everyday Production of Special Events

The mobile phone stands out among photographic capture and display tools. It
cannot be considered equivalent to other devices because few objects, techno-
logical or not, are so continuously situated within the bodily sphere of their users
(Jarrigeon & Menrath, 2007). This omnipresence increases the number of oppor-
tunities for photography, as it is the only photographic device that allows its user
to capture images without planning.

4.1 Creating Photographic Opportunities

Unexpected use falls under the “kairos regime”, which is to say the regime of
chance and opportunity (de Certeau, 1990). That is, the unplanned and the sur-
prising are likely triggers for photographic acts. In this way, the mobile phone
acts as the enabling factor for a shared fantasy wherein we imagine ourselves to
be “making films all the time”, to borrow an expression from artist Christophe
Atabékian.8
In a way, the mobile makes expression of the “autobiographical impulse”
possible (Cooley, 2005). It can potentially transform one’s life into a series of
rehearsals and takes, a studio in which images are collected for an upcoming
album or film. However, in practice, one wonders what should be done with
these images once they have been shown in raw form on the mobile’s screen.
Among the people I interviewed, there was no lack of plans to archive them, but
the work was often put off for later. The musical group Mogwai humorously
reinvents the real through collage, combining different moments captured from

8
Christophe Atabékian, during the 2nd edition of the Pocket Film festival. He also proposes
"artistic performances" in which he creates one film per day, every day, using mobiles that are
lent to him. Available: http://lesfilmsdepoche.com/pocketfilms/category/christophe-
atabekian/[May 15, 2010].
30 Anne Jarrigeon

life. For example, they have made a fictional concert on mobile phone from
different concerts recorded over the course of several years.9

4.2 Ordinary Testimony or Amateur Journalism

This multitude of photographic opportunities tends to transform mobile phone

users into small-time journalists (Okabe & Ito, 2006) and ethnologists of every-
day life. Once equipped, they lie in wait for something that could become a no-
table event.
The mobile is often considered to be a new form of “pen-camera” that fa-
cilitates improvised reporting. Extraordinary events recognized or lived as such
are favored moments for using mobile phones. In France, the social movements
of 2005 and the extensive demonstrations against the First Employment Contract
(contrat première embauche) were often captured in images by participants who
then posted them on official newspaper blogs to reach a wider audience. The
confrontations between police and individuals at Paris’ Gare du Nord station at
the beginning of 2007 also yielded a large number of mobile phone images that
were subsequently posted on various web sites. Some of these images were
problematic due to the violence they depicted and were therefore rapidly deleted.
Others circulated widely, particularly via Youtube and Dailymotion. As yet an-
other example, as I am finishing this article, it is snowing over all of northern
France, and the press is asking for amateur images to illustrate the hourly stories
about blocked roads.
The mobile phone is thus an essential element in the current redefinition of
the border between professional journalism and what supporters call “citizen
journalism”. However, a law concerning the “prevention of delinquency” en-
acted in April 2007 halted this movement and may represent a step backward.10
It includes an amendment addressing the subject of “happy slapping”, i.e.,
assaults recorded and broadcasted in almost real time. The amendment explicitly
prohibits the recording of violent images, including those that could incriminate
representatives of the State. This restriction does not concern professional

9
Available: http//www.mogwai.co.uk [May 15, 2010].
10
The text sets penalties of up to five years in prison and a 75,000 euro fine for distributing
images depicting the infractions mentioned in articles 222-1 to 222-14-1 and 222-23 to 222-31
of the penal code. These infractions include everything from extreme violence ("torture" and
"acts of barbarism") to simple aggression. The article 222-13 concerns violence "committed by
representatives of public authority (...) in the exercise (...) of their functions". The law specifies
that this prohibition "is not applicable if the recording or distribution is a result of the normal
exercise of a profession whose objective is to inform the public, or is carried out in order to
serve as proof in court."
Images in Mobile Uses: A New “Middle-brow Art”? 31

journalists and could thus rapidly halt the general movement towards greater
public participation in media production.
We must recall that amateur testimony covering important events is not at
all a new phenomenon; the best-known images of trench warfare during the First
World War were made by anonymous individuals. The question of a photogra-
pher’s complicity that is captured by the camera is indeed an integral part of the
history of documentary photography.

4.3 Small Images and Short Formats: Optical Haiku

Other relationships to events exist beyond these quasi-journalistic practices. The

mobile phone often serves to transfigure the banal and the everyday into some-
thing outstanding. It gives rise to a greater attention to the picturesque (i.e., to
that which is worthy of being painted). For example, Martine, a 35-year-old
independent country nurse, tells us:

“I was in the car, it was cold and the whole landscape was frozen. I saw a tree that
surprised me. I wasn’t in a hurry, so I stopped to take a photo. It’s funny, I would
never have done that before!”

In many situations and in many different ways, mobile productions take the form
of amateur haiku. Like this classical Japanese art, the mobile phone permits an
“art of very little” (Keblaner, 1983), both because it allows minor situations lived
by the individual to become premises and because it produces short, condensed
forms. Like the haiku, it allows us to transfigure the everyday through calcula-
tion and spontaneity, although it obviously uses more trivial means. This dimen-
sion can also be found in older uses of the mobile phone such as SMS. As an
abbreviated form, it requires special attention to the relationships between obser-
vations, lived situations, and a message that is sometimes destined to be kept by
the recipient.
“Calm sea. Champagne. Happiness”, Martine writes to her friends. She is in
Biarritz, where she has gone on an amorous escapade with her boyfriend. Anne
receives a supportive message: “Bad weather. Hang in there, just a few meters to
go.”
32 Anne Jarrigeon

5 The Desacralization of Family Photographs and Films

The growing multitude of opportunities to use photography and video and the
instantaneous character of mobile practices are playing an increasing role in how
we construct images of personal life, and in particular family life.11 In the 1960s,
Pierre Bourdieu and the research team that he coordinated (1965) demonstrated
that the primary social function of family photographs was to consolidate or even
produce the myth of the family. Today, the mobile phone plays a part in the
ongoing desacralization of these practices and extends the “Kodak culture” ef-
fects analyzed by Chalfen (1987) in the eighties.
In the 1960s, the myth of the family was primarily an origin myth: with
group photographs, one was able to produce evidence of heredity through the
interplay of resemblances and differences. Since then, family uses have opened
up to photographic moments that are somewhat less official than births, bap-
tisms, and marriages. An increasing variety of moments are considered worthy of
being photographed: not only the “big” events, but also other festive times such
as birthdays, Christmas, or vacations. The birth of a child is also an important
motive for acquiring photographic or video equipment.
The emergence of digital photography has brought great change by permit-
ting a larger number of photographs to be taken. However, the occasions for
digital photography generally remain conventional and repetitive, and one usu-
ally does not get the camera out without a good reason. Events are photographed
when they are considered to be key moments providing evidence of familial
happiness. Family photographs are like home videos in the sense they show very
little intimacy; crises, tensions, and disputes are eliminated in favor of eternal
smiles, light-hearted poses, and programmed embraces. From this point of view,
the mobile phone seems be opening a new phase in the movement toward de-
sacralization. More spontaneous (at least for those who use them!) and more apt
to capture moments humorously, they allow a new sort of family image to be
produced, in which ridicule and the grotesque, for example, have an important
place. Consider this observation made in a family setting:

“At the crucial moment where the youngest member of the B. family is going to
blow out the candles, everyone takes out their camera. But those who instead ‘draw’
their mobile phones do not seem preoccupied by the idea of creating the same sort of
images. Cousin Pierre, for example, amuses himself by taking photos of the others,

11
One should not forget that photographs and films of families were present from the very
beginning of these media. Photographers made portraits of those around them. Jacques-Henri
Lartigues, today considered to be one of the great artists of the beginning of the 20th century,
was an amateur, and his subjects included his friends and family in their daily lives. Among the
first films made by the Lumière brothers was "Baby's lunch!"
Images in Mobile Uses: A New “Middle-brow Art”? 33

who are themselves taking photos. He immediately shows these images to his sister
and both laugh, saying: ‘Ah, did you see Uncle Bernard, do you see the face he’s
making?’”

Apparently, a space is being created for more open and spontaneous family im-
ages and for a plurality of family stories to come into play.

6 From Staging to Performance: The Inner Workings of Mobile

Sensationalism

Though it makes the immediate production of more spontaneous images possible

and contributes to the desacralization of familial photographic practices, the
mobile phone does not prohibit staged action (mise en scène). Mobile phone
home videos provide particularly convincing evidence of this. The absence of
narrative construction is characteristic of family films (Odin, 1999); in mobile
phone video, overlong passages disappear and narrative emerges, as amateur
filmmakers are forced to adapt to small, short formats. These short films are
much denser in terms of action than those produced with a video camera, which
are exciting to make, but much less so to watch (most of us have had the experi-
ence of being obliged to watch our uncle’s endless cassettes at one time or an-
other). Within the space of a few seconds or a few minutes, mobile videos pre-
sent scenes that are more structured, more focused on a single moment, or that
lead directly to a punch line. A beginning, a middle, and an end: according to
Aristotle’s ancient precepts, these are the ingredients of drama, and they are
being rediscovered (perhaps involuntarily) by users of mobile phone video func-
tions.
These short films are thus clearly distinguished from classic films by their
improvised staging, which is related to an often intuitive grasp of the format. On
the other hand, they retain a certain visual common ground including motion
blur, overly rapid panning, and acute “zoom-itis” when the equipment allows it.
The temporal laxity and blur characteristic of family films allow each person to
produce his or her own interpretation of the family. Roger Odin clearly demon-
strates how these “defects” are, in fact, intrinsic necessities of the family film, as
they allow those who do the recording to avoid imposing a certain meaning of
familial relations upon other members (Odin, 2004). Newer, mobile video
productions also require reflexive (internal) conflict to be ‘defused’. This neces-
sity is not so much a result of the films themselves as how they are produced and
shown: right away and without planning. In the past, one would set up equip-
ment and even a sort of scenery for family film sessions. Mobile films, though
34 Anne Jarrigeon

more structured, allow a plurality of sometimes contradicttory points of view –

notably the emergence of female viewpoints – whereas the video camera often
remained in the hands of the father. In this way, according to Roger Odin (1999),
“they are perhaps better objects for the family.”12

6.1 Recycling Media Referents

If mobile phone mise en scène is starting to stir things up in the domain of home
movies, it is already essential in cinematographic practices among friends, where
media referents from diverse sources intervene. The most obvious example is
probably the universe of advertising. It greatly inspires youths, particularly ado-
lescents, who appropriate it to humorous effect. For example, Marie and her
friend Géraldine, 15- and 16-year-olds, respectively, amused themselves by re-
making various shampoo commercials, whereas Pierre and Julien, of the same
age, mimic the “sports action” around which Nike or Adidas advertisements are
centered. Both pairs of friends sing their own interpretations of slogans, modi-
fying the words and mimicking gestures. The scenery receives less attention: a
simple exterior shot for the boys, who employ a parcel of grass, or “interior –
bathroom” for the girls, who are in any case filming themselves close-up.
Additionally, many videos reproduce the codes of certain television series
or news programs. Long shots, off-camera voice commentary, and intonations
indicate how much these young people are amused by actively re-appropriating
images produced in more institutional frameworks.

6.2 Happy Slapping: Morbid Mise en Scène between Gag Videos, Snuff Movies,
and Jackass

Staging is an important element when practices are in some way performances.

Sensationalism is a particularly effective mechanism and can take a multitude of
forms, from the banal to the extremely violent. The mobile phone allows the
combination of staged action with its instantaneous execution. It is a tool that can
incite people to do the audacious, as in this typical scene overheard in the metro:
Two boys are commenting on a video on a mobile phone that they are pass-
ing back and forth. One says to the other:

12
Jarrigeon and Menrath (org), « Le téléphone mobile, une affaire de famille? », Round table
discussion organized for the AFOM at the Maison de la Chimie, Paris, 3 April 2009. cf Mobile
et société no. 8, July 2009. Available: http://www.afom.fr/eclairages/famille-et-telephone-
mobile [September 15, 2010].
Images in Mobile Uses: A New “Middle-brow Art”? 35

“You’ll see, I dared to do it, in the middle of the store, my boss was right there, but
oh well, I did it anyway.”
“No way, you turned the music up that loud?”
“Yeah, and look, I’m dancing like crazy, it was so funny, like a music video in the
middle of the store!!! It was my other colleague who recorded it, he was dying
laughing. Ah, see there, you hear it...”

In this case, the video seemed innocent enough, but staged action can sometimes
border on pathology or seriously threaten one’s own safety and that of others.
There are numerous “pocket films” that make use of a register combining the
grotesque and the macabre. This register is not new, and the media have been
exploiting this brand of humor particular to amateur films for quite a while, no-
tably in the “funniest home videos” series that chains together images of falling
babies, domestic accidents, fainting brides, and spectacular sporting mishaps.
This fusion of the grotesque, the playful, and the macabre is at the heart of
Johnny Knoxville’s business. In 1997 in the United States, he invented the
“Jackass phenomenon” by devising and recording risky and disgusting exploits,
such as spraying pepper into his eyes, sitting without pants on the stinger of a
scorpion, jumping off the roof of a house on a bicycle, or diving into a swim-
ming pool full of excrement. In 2002, MTV began broadcasting his show, which
had considerable success not only among stunt lovers like skaters, but also
among a more general audience.13 Certain practices spread through the popula-
tion and fed into this particular aesthetic, which is especially likely to be seen on
the screens of mobile phones.
During our investigation, we had the occasion to view a great number of
these kinds of images on the mobile phones of our interviewees. Even when
images did not directly evoke this referential, viewer commentary may refer to it,
as in the following example:

During an evening among friends, 32-year-old Fabrice approaches us with his mo-
bile phone.
“Wait, take a look, I have something great to show you. I have a real snuff movie.”
We all approach him, a bit surprised, because this is not really something he would
be into – unlike Antoine, who the other day had shown us scenes of fights, which
were apparently real and filmed in the entry hall of his estate in Cergy Pontoise. He
opens the film. It is a distorted close-up of the face of a friend, that we have diffi-
culty recognizing.

13
We recall that extreme sports enthusiasts have long delighted in sensational images of this sort,
and that skate videos always include a chapter showing the most impressive failures and the
most spectacular accidents.
36 Anne Jarrigeon

“Check out this snuff movie! Karim, recorded live, with no special effects... sleep-
ing!”

This scene reveals the banality of mobile-phone humor’s morbid clockwork,

which is not entirely alien to the phenomenon of happy slapping. This type of
humor conforms to an aesthetic template, which pre-exists yet greatly transcends
it. This can perhaps explain the relative success of happy slapping images,
which, as our survey of young people shows, circulate rather freely from one
mobile phone to another, in parallel with equally violent images of current
events, such as those at Abu Ghraib or the recorded execution of Saddam Hus-
sein.
Young people in particular sometimes watch these images repeatedly and
look to them for inspiration when creating their own imitative scenes. After
showing us the video of a teacher being attacked in Porcheville (which was ex-
tensively covered in the French press), Sylvain, 15 years old, explained to us that

“Once, one of my friends did something great. She pretended to get slapped, and had
someone make a video of her falling on the ground. It was fake, but really well
done. I don’t know how she did it.”

Gilberto, 14 years old, tells us that

“I know people who act like they’ve had an accident at the side of the road, for fun.
They make videos of how people react when they stop, and count the cars that don’t
stop. It’s just a game, but well, something bad could end up happening!”

There is indeed an aesthetic template and, thus, a certain continuity between

simple staged action, playful imitation, and happy slapping videos in the strict
sense. However, we should not be too hasty to declare the banalization of evil,
nor too directly incriminate the tool itself. Though the mobile phone assists in
the production and circulation of hard-hitting images, we must take care to
clearly distinguish the different levels of involvement that social subjects can
have in these uses. The psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Serge Tisseron has shown
that it is essential to take the viewing conditions of violent images seriously in
order to understand what is at stake in our relationship with them, and more
specifically, what is at stake for children and adolescents (Tisseron, 2003). The
act of collecting, showing, or even drawing inspiration from violent imagery for
fictional or playful imitations does not imply approval, but rather a form of dis-
tance, which operates through manipulation and action. With the arrival of the
mobile phone among existing aesthetics, the question of image literacy education
must be re-examined.
Images in Mobile Uses: A New “Middle-brow Art”? 37

7 A Tool for Reflexivity

The mobile phone invites us to question our relationship with images and the
devices that produce them. It is a tool for reflexivity on several levels. First, it
allows us to establish new forms of introspection: family and friends are favored
subjects for mobile phone images. Self-portraits also have an important place,
both in uses with no real artistic intent and in those that are openly aesthetic. We
photograph and film ourselves in close-up, we watch ourselves look into the
curious lens, which points to another reference: the photo booth, in which we
squeeze together, close to friends and family, cheek to cheek, to fit everyone into
the frame.
On another level, it is also often the telephone itself and its uses that inspire
mobile productions. This is one of the recurring themes for those who present
their films at festivals: they use the mobile phone to analyze mobile practices. It
would be possible to give many examples that in a way reveal contemporary
mobile uses ad absurdum (Jarrigeon & Menrath, 2008, p. 192). However, we
shall only mention two of them here. The “versatility of the object” is quite often
represented in a humorous way, as in the film Coup de fil rasoir (“Dull phone
call”) by Ronan Fournier-Christol,14 wherein the director shows himself shaving
in front of a mirror with his telephone in hand. His phone rings, and he responds
that he can’t hear anything, he’s late, he’s shaving, and that his correspondent
should speak louder. Another film presented on YouTube shows the multiple
uses of the mobile phone, serving as both a razor for the husband and a steam
iron for the grandmother. The film ends with an exterior scene where we see the
grandmother taking a walk with her telephone in hand, and what looks vaguely
like an earphone hanging from her neck. A thief on a scooter snatches her mobile
phone; she presses the earphone and the scooter explodes.
As another example, way-finding practices and the fabrication of memories
in the present are at the heart of Alain Fleischer’s Chinese Tracks,15 which wan-
ders for half an hour through a Shanghai neighborhood undergoing reconstruc-
tion. The narrator has been in the neighborhood the night before with a friend
who lives there, and he hopes to find a grey door behind which, he says, “is the
most beautiful girl in Shanghai”. Taking seriously the fact that a telephone is not
an ordinary camera, but a device “without a viewfinder, and with no real fram-
ing”, Alain Fleischer asks himself what “filming with a telephone means – is it
not basically ‘filming with the ear’?” He progressively loses himself in the nar-
row neighborhood streets and comments on his wanderings as though he is being

14
Fournier-Christol R., Coup de fil rasoir, 2005. Available: http://62.210.119.76/spip.php?
article155 [May 15, 2011].
15
Fleischer A., Chinese Tracks, 2006.
38 Anne Jarrigeon

guided from afar. In doing so, he continuously captures video with the telephone
held at ear-level. He stops after half an hour of continuous performance, finding
himself in front of the door in question. He describes it, but on the screen we
observe only the wall that the ear would see, if it could see.

8 Conclusion

Artistic productions often focus on the technical and social specificities of the
mobile phone, and establish this device as a contemporary aesthetic experience
analyzer. They ask us to take seriously the effects of the mobile on pre-existing
visual production methods, which continue to be its contemporaries. The prac-
tices analyzed here dialogue with other, older ones, shifting the “social uses of
photography” (Bourdieu et al., 1965). This new middle-brow multimedia art
contributes, as we have shown, to a reconfiguration of contemporary spectator
activity, shifting our relationship with images bit by bit, but also more generally
modifying our relationship with our perceptible environment, visual or auditory.
Photographable situations and the various moments of audiovisual sharing,
during which a group of people crowd together over a single telephone, trans-
form a supposedly individual object into an instrument of conviviality. These
situations often take precedent over the images themselves. From this point of
view, the (audio)visual uses of the mobile telephone have a place among mobile
phone sociabilities, which extend well beyond the communications framework
for which it was designed and in which it is most often studied.

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Visual Mobile Phone Content and Developmental
Challenges
The Mediatization of Social Relationships in Adolescence

Iren Schulz

1 Introduction

In public debates and scientific discussions, young people are often described as
“Generation Mobile” (Schuh, 2007) or as “Digital Natives” (Tapscott, 2009).
Not only are adolescents provided with a label, but they are also provided with
the “media society” in which to grow up. These labels include two main genera-
lizations. First, they reflect the adult outsider perspective on young people and
refer to the integration of youth in societal contexts. Second, these labels empha-
size the increasing importance of media for growing up today. In fact, adoles-
cents are “digital natives” because they deal with a comprehensive and complex
media ensemble including PCs and laptops with internet access, MP3 players
and portable PlayStations and, of course, mobile phones (Kraut, Brynin, &
Kiesler, 2006; MPFS, 2009). Nearly every adolescent owns at least one mobile
phone with a variety of multimedia-based functions and digital services. It is
assumed that girls and boys use media to deal with developmental challenges
that are very important in this phase of life, especially to negotiate relationships
and develop identity, but also to organize everyday life in school and leisure and
delineate norms and values.
Against this background, this article addresses the increasing diffusion of
new media technologies as a main characteristic of communication in the 21st
century and analyzes its meaning for socialization processes in adolescence. The
aim is to explore strategies of participation in adolescent relationships by focus-
ing on topics, types and contexts of communication using visual mobile phone
content. The theoretical foundation integrates assumptions from developmental
theory and phenomenological network concepts and refers to the concept of
“Mediatization” as a meta-theory to describe social changes in a mediatized
society. Within this framework, adolescent relationships will be conceptualized
as dynamic social networks of negotiated meanings. These negotiation processes

C. Martin, T. von Pape (Eds.), Images in Mobile Communication,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-531-93190-6_3,
© VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2012
42 Iren Schulz

are contextualized by developmental issues that are typical for this age. Further-
more, mobile phone communication will be examined in line with face-to-face
communication and communication carried out using other media technologies,
such as television or the internet. The empirical findings support and substantiate
the theoretical framework. The results are based on 400 pictures, animations,
photos and video clips that are examined together with in-depth interviews with
thirteen adolescents age 12 to 17. The final part of the article draws several con-
clusions concerning the consequences that materialized in the participation pro-
cesses with mobile content.

2 Mediatization of Communication Processes and Social Relationships in

Adolescence: Theoretical Framework

With regard to the comprehensive appropriation of digital media devices and

media content in all contexts of everyday life, it is assumed that media-based
communication amalgamates more and more with communication practices that
were historically unrelated to media. These changes result in new and diversified
patterns of communication and have an important influence on socialization
processes in adolescence, especially on the negotiation of social relationships.

2.1 Mediatization as a Social Change

The concept of “Mediatization” describes the integration of new media with old
media into social life on a meta-level and as a long term process:

“[…] People think and live their everyday lives ever more connected to these media
and the possibilities that are opened up. The concept of mediatization of course in-
cludes that this have consequences for people, their everyday lives, their identity and
their social relation, as well as for culture, democracy, the economy and society in
general because all areas of human life are involved, leisure and work, learning and
entertainment, social relations and forms of communication, etc.” (Krotz, 2005a, p.
450).

The starting point of these complex processes are the technological changes
based on the digitalization and convergence of media. Notably, the mobile phone
has evolved into a multifunctional medium that integrates “old media” like radio,
TV or print and works as a telephone, game console or as a player for music and
video files. Furthermore, it can be connected to a PC or the internet to upload
and download media content and to use online services. Modern phone’s multi-
Visual Mobile Phone Content and Developmental Challenges 43

ple functions are the reason they seem to not only be a mobile telephone but a
portable computer with a connection to the telecommunications network. They
provide complex possibilities for communication, entertainment and information
based on language, text and images (Krotz & Schulz, 2006). Therefore, it is ne-
cessary to find an adequate description of communication using multifunctional,
digital media like the mobile phone. Here, Friedrich Krotz refers to the assump-
tions of symbolic interactionism and describes communication using media as a
kind of symbolic action and a kind of interaction:

“If one understands communication with media as a modification of face-to-face-

communication it can be generally asserted that communication with media is also
embedded in situations and individuals are also acting from the perspective of a spe-
cific role. Every process of communication with media and of understanding is
based on an anticipated adoption of perspectives and is shaped through an inner dia-
logue. In that way, communication with media can be accomplished and understood
(Krotz, 2001, p. 74).

In line with that definition, Krotz specifies three types of media-based communi-
cation that are also relevant for analyzing communication practices with mobile
phones. The first type refers to media-based interpersonal communication, such
as by landline phone or e-mail, whereas the second type involves the communi-
cation of a person using standardized media content, such as the production of
media, for instance, when a person writes a book or makes a film, as well as to
the reception of media, as when one reads a book or watches a film. A third type
he names is communication with interactive media content, for instance, com-
munication with intelligent software like computer games or Tamagotchies
(Krotz, 2007, 2008) In addition, the article takes into consideration types of me-
diatized communication that are directed at or related to interpersonal relation-
ships, such as when a person carries a mobile phone to show it to everybody or
uses that medium as a diary.
These types of mobile phone-based communication have become a part of
the social practices of everyday life (de Certeau, 1988). On one hand, communi-
cation practices with digital media result in processes of integration on a tem-
poral and spatial level. Permanently available media devices and content are
present in all contexts of everyday life and connect different areas of work, lei-
sure or social relationships. On the other hand, mediatized communication refers
to processes of social disintegration because the use of digital media like the
mobile phone constitutes new motives, purposes and situations which lead to
modified and new social arrangements. All of these processes of integration and
disintegration represent comprehensive forms and practices of mediatized com-
munication (Krotz, 2001).
44 Iren Schulz

The mediatization of social practices is especially relevant for socialization

and for developmental negotiation processes in adolescence. The literature gives
two reasons for this fact. First, adolescents are known as “Early Adopters” who
face new technologies and their possibilities in a very curious and open-minded
way. Adolescents undertake multifaceted and creative forms of appropriating
media, especially the mobile phone, into their everyday life. The media use of
young people also points to technological developments and communicative
practices that could be of importance in our future society. Second, adolescents
turn toward media to deal with developmental challenges. These processes are
increasingly intertwined with mediatized communication and reveal new and
changing ways to socialize during this important phase of life. Looking at the
communicative practices of today’s adolescents gives us an idea of how adults
and future generations will communicate in a social context. Against this back-
ground, the next chapter provides a concept of social relationships in adoles-
cence that takes the developmental perspective into account and refers to the
communicative processes of constituting relationships as social networks. Fur-
thermore, the importance of media, and especially the mobile phone, in adoles-
cent relationships will be analyzed.

2.2 Social Relationships and Digital Media in Adolescence

The time of adolescence is characterized by a simultaneous curiosity toward new

experiences and doubts concerning the perception of self in relationships. Young
people must confront physical and cognitive changes, especially concerning
social issues (Havighurst, 1972). One of the most important social challenges
lies in obtaining and differentiating new relationships. Peer-relations are consid-
ered the frame of action in which adolescents deal with developmental issues
such as forming a gender-specific identity or achieving a certain kind of appreci-
ation. Within peer-relations, girls and boys are able to test different roles and to
break boundaries they accepted during childhood. (Oerter & Dreher, 1998) Peer-
relations are mostly same-sex ties between adolescents of around the same age
that are contracted voluntarily and shaped through collective activities and
communicative practices, such as routines to demonstrate status, attempting to
stand out from others or renegotiating levels of membership:

“Everyday activities in preadolescent and adolescent culture enable peers to nego-

tiate and explore a wide range of norms regarding personal appearance and the
presentation of self, friendship processes, heterosexual relations, and personal aspi-
rations and achievement.” (Corsaro & Eder, 1990, p. 215)
Visual Mobile Phone Content and Developmental Challenges 45

Within and in addition to peer-relations, there are a number of more important

relationships in adolescence that are negotiated through communicative practices
and interactions. Best friendships are a special type of peer-relation and are cha-
racterized by a high level of acceptance, understanding, self-disclosure and mu-
tual advice (Corsaro & Eder, 1990). The status of “always being there for each
other” is expressed in shared activities and experiences as well as in support in
solving problems and uncertainty (Kolip, 1993). In contrast to best friendship,
the first romantic relations are more a “clumsy experiment”:

“In these beginning relationships, the focus is not on the nature of the relationship or
the fulfillment of various needs, but on who the partner is, the partner’s attractive-
ness, how they should interact in a romantic context and what their peers think of
the relationship” (Brown, as cited in Furman & Simon, 1998, p. 734).

According to these intentions, partnerships do not last longer than several days
or weeks and are constituted by playful interactions like dating and kissing but
also by communicative practices like disclosing doubts and anxiety (Barthelmes
& Sander, 1997; Lenz, 1989). Besides peer-relations, best friends and romantic
partners, the re-negotiation of the relationship with parents plays an important
role in adolescence. Young people try to attain more independence and autono-
my, but their mother and father play an essential part in financial and emotional
support. The relationship of an adolescent with his or her parents is characterized
by an ambivalent mixture of psychological dissociation and functional attach-
ment (Gille, Sardei-Biermann, Gaiser, & de Rijke, 2006; Shell Deutschland
Holding, 2006). Furthermore, young people relate to siblings and other relatives
but also to other adults like teachers or coaches (Zinnecker, Behnken, Maschke,
& Stecher, 2002).
These relationships are differentiated in adolescence and are negotiated
through specific interactions. To integrate these diverse relations and their com-
municative practices in a theoretical framework, phenomenological network
concepts are very useful when taking into consideration the assumptions of sym-
bolic interactionism (Blumer, 1969). For instance, Fine and Kleinman (1983)
conceptualize social networks as dynamic sets of relationships and assume that
the negotiation of meanings provides the basis for social relationships. The social
structure of such a network is constituted through meaningful self-other interac-
tions and communicative negotiation processes:

“Since meanings provide the basis for individual and collective actions, people’s
meanings will have consequences for their actions, the production of social struc-
tures, and changes within those structures. […] Understanding actor’s meaning is
fundamental to any analysis of social structure” (Fine & Kleinman, 1983, p. 98).
46 Iren Schulz

Using these theoretical assumptions, adolescent relationships can be conceptua-

lized as dynamic social networks, including different and changing relationships
with peers, best friends, partners, parents and other adults. These relationships
are negotiated through communicative practices that are increasingly intertwined
in processes of mediatized communication.
Historically, media like books, music cassettes, TV series or computer
games play an important role for adolescents in negotiating their different rela-
tionships. For instance, adolescents use media with their peers and best friends or
talk about media. They share media content as a sign of affection for potential
partners and use media as an object to demonstrate their inclusion in special peer
cultures and create their own styles and preferences that are different than the
interests of their parents (Barthelmes & Sander, 1997; Livingstone, 2002;
Suoninen, 2001).
With the digitalization of media, more possibilities were created for media-
tized communication within adolescent networks. Interactive TV shows, online
games, social network sites and instant messenger programs broaden and change
communicative practices and therefore the structure and meaning of relationships
during adolescence. The mobile phone plays an especially important role as a
personal, convergent and multifunctional medium within these relational com-
munication processes. Within peer-relations, girls and boys use the mobile phone
to coordinate and sustain these relationships. Furthermore, the phone acts as a
lifestyle object for self-presentation among peers (Castells, Fernández-Ardèvol,
Qiu, & Sey, 2007; Haddon, 2004; Ito et al., 2008). To socialize with potential
partners, girls and boys establish communicative practices that regulate the ba-
lance between intimacy and distance. Ling (2004, 2007) describes the mobile
phone as a “quasi-illegal medium” that allows adolescents to communicate be-
hind the backs of their parents and provides them with the possibility to develop
qualifications for future partnerships. For example, short messages are used to
initiate romantic relations and to flirt in secrecy, or these messages work as sym-
bolic gifts to demonstrate sympathy and belonging (Taylor & Harper, 2003). The
mobile phone can also be described as an “extended umbilical cord.” Mothers
and fathers use this medium to retain control and a sense of security when their
children go out with friends, peers and partners (Feldhaus, 2004). To communi-
cate with their parents, adolescents mainly use the telephone function of their
mobile phone. Communicative practices with peers, friends and (potential) part-
ners include all multifunctional possibilities: sending and receiving text mes-
sages; producing, saving and sending pictures, music files and video clips; and
selecting logos and ringtones to personalize the mobile phone. In summary, dif-
ferent mobile phone communicative practices have become a constitutive part of
negotiating relationships in adolescence.
Visual Mobile Phone Content and Developmental Challenges 47

3 Visual Mobile Phone Content and the Negotiation of Relationships in

Adolescence: Empirical Results

The following chapter describes adolescent communicative practices using vis-

ual mobile phone content. The findings are part of a longitudinal research project
with a qualitative, ethnographical, multi-method design. From 2006 to 2008,
three groups of best friends and their social networks were explored. During
single and group interviews, observations, media diaries and content analysis,
the focus was on the everyday life of these young people and their current
developmental challenges, especially regarding relationships, and the mediatized
communicative practices they use to deal with these challenges. The empirical
data on visual mobile phone content presented in the next chapter is part of this
longitudinal study and was conducted in February and March 2007.
In multiple group interviews, the friendship groups (three girls aged 16 with
higher-level education1, four girls aged 13 to 15 with high education, and two
boys aged 16 with lower-level education) were asked to show and comment on
the visual content they collected on their mobile phones during the last months
and years. Furthermore, they were asked to send all of the pictures, animations
and video clips via Infrared or Bluetooth2 connection to the interviewer’s laptop.
The two girls (one from each girl group) in possession of a mobile phone without
the necessary features to receive, watch and send visual mobile phone content
were also included in the group interviews to further explore the function and
importance of visual mobile phone content for the negotiation processes in their
friendship groups and their social networks. In addition to the group interviews
with the girls and boys from the longitudinal study, the interviewer was able to
convince four other boys to take part in the study. The intention was to extend
the scope of the study in age and gender. The boys, aged 12, 14 and 15, with
lower-level and higher-level education, were contacted on a public place in the
city centre and took part in the research project on this one occasion. They were
interviewed in one group session several days after the first contact in March
2007. These boys also sent their phone’s visual contents to the laptop of the
interviewer. In general, the girls and boys from the longitudinal research project
as well as the boys who were a single time were rather uninhibited in showing
and sending their mobile phone content to the interviewer’s device. Only a few

1
In Germany we have different types of school. They differ in duration and intensity of
education. The ten years education is not so intense and qualifies for apprenticeship. The
twelve years education is very intense and qualifies for academic studies. Hence I use the
phrase higher-level education to refer to the twelve years education.
2
Infrared and Bluetooth are wireless and free phone-to-phone transmission functions. The
Bluetooth function is especially important to transmit large files like video clips in a short time.
48 Iren Schulz

pictures were not sent to the interviewer (e.g., one boy was very reluctant to send
a picture of a girl he got to know on the instant messenger program “ICQ”).
In summary, the results presented in the next chapter are based on 404 pic-
tures, animations and video clips and attempt to answer the following questions:

What are the topics reflected in the pictures, animations and video clips?

What can be said about the origin and distribution of this content?

How do the girls and boys evaluate and use this content, and for what rea-
sons?

Are there any interesting differences among the adolescents related to age,
sex and education?

The interpretation of the empirical data was carried out through reconstructive
methods using Grounded Theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1998; Krotz, 2005b). The
aim was to extract categories reflecting the perspective of the adolescents and the
content of the pictures, animations and video clips. For this reason, the group
interviews were taped and transcribed. In a second step, the interviews and the
mobile phone content were structured using Hyperresearch qualitative analysis
software. Using the theoretical background of mediatization and social relation-
ships in adolescence, the following categories represent the main results from the
analysis of visual mobile phone content.

3.1 Everyday-Life Situations

First, the material revealed “Everyday-Life Situations” as one of the most im-
portant topics. The girls and boys from age 12 to 17 used the camera function of
their mobile phones to record positive experiences with their friends during
shared activities. They also took pictures of their pets, their own room, their bike
or their hometown. These pictures and video clips are used in a very intimate
way, meaning that the adolescents watched this content when they felt bored or
lonely. Furthermore, they shared the content with close peers via the Bluetooth
function of their mobile phone, but they do not send it to others. Sometimes they
uploaded pictures to personal profiles such as social network sites on the inter-
net.
Visual Mobile Phone Content and Developmental Challenges 49

3.2 Favorite Media Content

The second topic deals with “Favorite Media Content.” The adolescents most
often saved pictures of music stars on their mobile phones, but they also saved
clips from movies or television. The girls and boys downloaded this content
from web sites for free or from their peers via Bluetooth. Typical sharing
situations are during school, while waiting together at the bus stop or while
spending time together at a party. No picture or clip observed originated from a
commercial provider. The adolescents gave two reasons for this fact. First,
commercial content is too expensive, and they are not willing to pay for it.
Second, it is very important for them to exchange the clips and pictures via
Bluetooth with friends and peers, and commercial content often prevents such
transfers. Thus, commercial content becomes unattractive. The girls and boys
used their favorite media content to express their interests and preferences and to
talk about it with best friends and peers.

3.3 Sexuality

The third important topic concerns “Sexuality” on different levels. On the first
level, the adolescents, especially the girls at the age of sixteen, dealt with their
gender identity and sexuality. They took pictures of themselves with different
make-up, in underwear or in different outfits, presenting their femininity. But the
girls also took pictures of the boys from their social network who they are in-
terested in or took pictures of their current or ex-boyfriends. Sometimes the girls
took these pictures covertly, for example, during a party. In some instances, the
boys strike erotic poses consciously to please the crowd and appeal to the girls.
By this means, the girls tried to document and reflect current developments con-
cerning gender identity and partnership. They kept this content very private,
showing it only to their best friends, and they do not send it to anybody else.
On the second level, the girls and boys dealt with sexuality in a funny, pro-
vocative and stereotypical way. The pictures and animations show well-known
comic figures, like Garfield or Homer Simpson, in explicit activities, or include
statements with allusions to sexuality. The main interest of the adolescents in
this context was to collect and share the content and to present it to peers to joke,
to provoke or to attract attention. The older boys collected pictures revealing
stereotypical scenes, like a well-proportioned fair-haired girl in a bikini, lolling
on a red Lamborghini. The funny and stereotypical content was not bought from
commercial providers, but exchanged via Bluetooth and downloaded from free
websites, mostly via the search engine Google.
50 Iren Schulz

The third level includes pornographic video clips of typical, explicit scenes
similar to a porn film as well as scenes of more or less extreme activities (for
instance, between two very corpulent persons) contextualized with funny or
dramatic background music. Only the boys – but including all ages and educa-
tion levels – dealt with these kinds of video clips. They received this content
from other, often older, friends from school or leisure activities. The older boys
were interested in and curious about this content because it touches new and
forbidden topics, and it is common practice to save this kind of content on the
mobile phone for a length of time. After some time, they lost interest in such
video clips and deleted them. The younger boys said that they shared this content
because they wanted to have what the others have. Nevertheless, they have an
ambivalent perspective on this. The younger boys argue that the clips are funny
to watch with friends, but they also acknowledge that they are sometimes dis-
turbing to watch. They want to collect these video clips but do not like to watch
them.

3.4 Violence

The last topic refers to different levels of violent content. Girls and boys of every
age and every education level collected and shared funny animated clips where,
for instance, comic figures like Tom & Jerry fight each other.
Psychological violence includes pictures and video clips taken in private
and awkward situations. Typical examples are covertly-made tapes of teachers or
classmates in school. The boys produced and shared this type of video clip. The
aim was to laugh about somebody when the clip is exchanged with others. Each
adolescent wanted to become the owner of the coolest video clip in the peer
group.
The pictures and video clips of physical violence show animals and human
beings being beaten, tortured and killed, including car accidents. Again, the boys
got this content from their peers via Bluetooth, but they cannot say who the
original owner or producer was. The more realistic a picture or video clip seems
to be, the more popular and interesting it was for them. The boys watched it
together and loved the provocation and the thrill that goes along with it. Like
with pornographic content, the younger boys had to force themselves to watch
extremely violent content.
At least one additional topic should be mentioned, even though it did not
play an important role in this study, as it may become important in the future.
Another topic of content exchanged portrayed political statements and ideolo-
gies. This content type is also shared with peers and could create new avenues of
Visual Mobile Phone Content and Developmental Challenges 51

political participation among adolescents. However, this content also provides

problematic political organizations with the opportunity to reach young people
and propagate ideologies in a very easy and direct way.

4 Conclusions

The empirical results of this study confirm that the investigation of communica-
tive practices with visual mobile phone content must take into consideration
specific relationships and their negotiated meanings. Those negotiation processes
are embedded in the everyday life contexts and especially in developmental
challenges that are typical for adolescence. The thirteen participants in this study
use visual mobile phone content to save everyday life situations and to reflect
their own gender development, but mainly to negotiate relationships. The ado-
lescents, especially the girls, share intimate content with their best friends to
sustain and deepen these friendships. To reflect their relationship to potential or
lost partners, they take and collect pictures from them. The girls and boys try to
test and break boundaries and to demarcate their communicative practices from
the adult world by sharing and collecting provocative animations and video clips.
The boys are also interested in sexual and violent content because they want to
be as cool as their friends. After observing the communication content, it be-
comes clear that the person who is able to acquire the funniest, most embarrass-
ing or even the most violent pictures or video clips is considered the coolest or
most admired member of the peer group. This fact is most relevant for the boys
of the study.

When we look at the process of communication itself, it appears that the inter-
viewed adolescents are able to obtain almost everything they want from another
mobile phone owner. Therefore, getting most out of the pictures and clips subse-
quently means passing it on to the next person in the group. Thus, communica-
tion with mobile phone content can be described as an important practice of
participation that is not confined to the communication between two people. The
sharing practices are directed toward the integration of one person into a best
friends group or into a network of relationships. In doing so, the process of
sharing itself seems to be more important than the content that is shared, which
means that participating in the analyzed peer relationships means participating in
a dynamic and continuous exchange of mobile content. The consequence is that
the two girls who own a mobile phone without the Bluetooth features are ex-
cluded from this important practice that links peer-relations. During the inter-
view sessions both were very unhappy that they could not join the conversation
52 Iren Schulz

in this way and felt neglected. Furthermore, they were angry at their parents
because they do not support their intention to buy a new multifunctional mobile
phone with a Bluetooth feature.
The more practical study conclusions deal with implications surrounding
the use of problematic mobile phone content during adolescence. From the in-
vestigation of other media, especially television, it is known that the reception of
violent content such as horror films, reality shows or news magazines can lead to
an emotional overload in childhood and adolescence and can have an a negative
effect on the development of one’s worldview and the steps one can take to solve
conflicts. This media mainly includes clips of physical violence, but also psy-
chological and structural violence (von Feilitzen, 2009; Kunczik & Zipfel, 2004;
Murray, 2003; Theunert, 1996). Furthermore, there is a difference between the
reception of violent media content and one’s own violent activities that are
linked to media content. Adolescents watch violent movies because they are
curious to see unknown and forbidden content. They use it for trials of courage,
to gain status and prestige, and to test and break boundaries. Only those adoles-
cents that grow up in a problematic social context (e.g., living in a problematic
family, having no friends, being outsiders in school) and do not have any other
strategy to solve conflicts use violent media content as a valve or as role model
to deal with their problems (Grimm & Rhein, 2007; Schell, 2007).
These findings about the use of problematic and violent mobile phone con-
tent must be updated and reconsidered because of at least four reasons. The first
reason refers to equipment and access. Nearly every adolescent owns a mobile
phone with audiovisual features and transmission functions, and unlike TV sets
or personal computers, they carry their devices with them constantly and have
instant access to them. Second, it is not only possible to watch problematic me-
dia content with the mobile phone but also to easily produce and distribute this
content without needing money or any special knowledge or equipment. Fur-
thermore, it is very easy to publish private media content from the mobile phone
on other media like TV or the Internet by sending multimedia messages to music
programs or by uploading pictures or video clips to personal profiles on social
network sites. The third reason alludes to the changed inhibitions of using prob-
lematic media content. Because virtually everybody owns a portable and multi-
functional mobile phone, there are nearly no temporal, spatial, technological,
financial or educational barriers to the use of this material. Hence, because of the
Bluetooth function, every mobile phone owner, even children, can be considered
potential recipients and users of pictures or video clips dealing with pornogra-
phy, violence or problematic political content. It only takes one click to get what
somebody wants and when he or she wants it. Furthermore, it is very easy to take
a picture or to film somebody and to upload or download material onto or from
Visual Mobile Phone Content and Developmental Challenges 53

the internet, which leads to the fourth aspect of traceability and control. It is
very difficult or even impossible to determine the identity of the original pro-
ducer or first sender of problematic or violent mobile phone content.
These four reasons emphasize that there are new ways of using violent me-
dia content. In particular, more subtle but also very extreme forms of violence
are connected to the mobile phone and can have serious consequences for ado-
lescent development. For example, a person may laugh at or take revenge upon
somebody using a mobile phone by filming him or her in a private or awkward
situations and publishing the content. Thus, the use of mobile phones during
adolescence poses new questions about the legal protection of minors and the
encouragement of media literacy. The stabilization of a critical use of new com-
munication technologies becomes more and more important not only for children
and adolescents but also for parents and teachers as well as providers of techno-
logies and services.
In summary, the mediatization of social networks in adolescence is ex-
tended by communicative practices with the mobile phone and especially with
visual mobile phone content. In this regard, mediatized communication is rea-
lized against the background of developmental challenges and is intrinsically tied
to face-to-face-communication and other media. This mediatized intersection of
negotiation practices in the relationships of adolescence goes far beyond single,
technology-centered media effects. In fact, these processes have to be understood
as a comprehensive mediatization of cultural practices involving the change of
processes and results of socialization in adolescence.

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Celebration and Concern
Digitization, Camera Phones and the Citizen-Photographer

Frank Möller

1 Introduction: Photography in a Pixellated Age

We live in what Danchev (2009, p. 71) calls a “pixellated age”. Digitization has
changed how people communicate with each other, as is nicely illustrated in the
following episode from a Michael Dibdin book (1999, p. 288):

“Give me your mobile,” the other man told Zen.

“I don’t have one.”
The man stared at Zen in total disbelief.
“Well, actually I do”, Zen went on, realizing that he was cutting a poor figure.
“But I left it at home. I never use it, to be honest. The last thing I want is people
being able to get in touch with me day or night, wherever I may be. I’m [sic] sup-
pose I’m old-fashioned.”
Nello laughed.
“You’re not just old-fashioned, Papà. You’re extinct!”

Digitization has also changed, perhaps even revolutionized, the techniques of

producing, altering and disseminating images. According to Ritchin (2009, p.11),
some 250 billion digital photographs were taken in 2007, and “nearly a billion
camera phones were said to be in use”. Ritchin (2009, p. 126) also notes that the
worldwide reach of the Internet “is a source of both celebration and concern”.
Likewise, the worldwide production and dissemination of digital imagery is
similarly a source of celebration and concern. Is the pixellated world a better
place? Or is it just a different place?
The digital age is different from the analog age because, among other rea-
sons, many people who formerly would not have thought of taking pictures now
take them as a matter of course. To adapt the episode that opened this chapter to
the age of the camera phone: The individual who does not own or use a camera
phone is not merely old-fashioned but (almost) extinct, at least in the image-
obsessed Western world of multimedia. Questions pertaining to the ethical re-
sponsibility of the photographer, which were previously relevant only to a rela-

C. Martin, T. von Pape (Eds.), Images in Mobile Communication,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-531-93190-6_4,
© VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2012
58 Frank Möller

tively small group of people, affect many more people when everyone is a photo-
grapher. No one equipped with a digital camera can avoid such questions when
taking photographs of other people, thereby treating them as subjects of one’s
photography. Further, no one looking at images of other people can avoid ques-
tions pertaining to the responsibility of the spectator.
The pixellated age is different also because digitally produced images and
especially pictures taken by camera phones can be disseminated much faster and
wider than analog photographs by submitting them to diverse online communi-
ties. From these virtual networks, photographs often develop their own dyna-
mics, which are uncontrolled by the photographer, for example, by becoming a
part of another person’s blog as an image that was either copied or altered. This
acceleration of images, that is to say, the increase in the number of images com-
bined with worldwide access to them in near real-time, potentially transforms
common spectatorship into global spectatorship. It helps develop civil society
into a global society, thus transforming what Azoulay (2008) calls the citizenry
of photography into a truly global, de-territorialized citizenry that extends be-
yond the boundaries of nation-states. However, the implications of these de-
velopments have not been sufficiently examined. We tend to think, talk and write
about digital photography in terms and modes suggested and informed by the
literature on analog photography – critical as well as affirmative, skeptical as
well as idealizing, and thus in terms other than its own. There is a marked pau-
city of literature on such contemporary and important trends as the introduction
and widespread use of camera phones while every other day new books are pub-
lished and exhibitions organized on the classics of photography (Greenough,
2009; Sire, 2009). Books such as Grey’s (2009) and Ritchin’s (2009) and exhibi-
tions such as Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera1 are exceptions.
Digital photography is often said to have a different and more problematic
relationship to reality than analog photography. However, the relationship of
photography to any prior reality has been and always will be problematic. As
Simmonds (2009) has argued, photographs are always pre-edited by the photo-
grapher prior to the act of actually taking a photograph; they are edited during
the process of taking a photograph by selecting the frame (the question of
inclusion versus exclusion), the lens, the depth of field and so on. Photographs
are also edited by the photographer or a photo editor in the process of preparing a
given photograph for publication, including publication on the Internet. Thus,
regardless of whether they are analog or digital, photographs are always fabrica-
tions.

1
Tate Modern, London, May 28–October 3, 2010; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
October 30, 2010–April 17, 2011; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, May 21–September 11,
2011 (see Phillips, 2010).
Celebration and Concern 59

Of course, there are substantial differences between analog and digital pho-
tography. Ritchin (2009, p. 141) concludes that digital photography “represents
an essentially different approach than does analog photography”. However, the
degree of authenticity has arguably been over-emphasized as a difference be-
tween analog and digital. This is not to say that digital photography is more au-
thentic than it is normally alleged to be but instead that analog photography is
less credible than it is usually said to be. Thus, it can be argued that our concern
over the authenticity and credibility of digital photography including camera
phone images is due to an overestimation of the authenticity and credibility of
analog photography. We overestimate the authenticity of analog photography not
only owing to the powerful tradition of photojournalism and documentary pho-
tography (which has a long tradition of claiming that what we see is “real”), but
also because in a rapidly changing world, we seek some degree of assurance.
However, as identified by numerous writers, such assurance is a myth. If we
were aware of this myth, the “public laments about the […] loss of authority and
truth” associated with “the increased capacity for pictorial manipulation arising
from the use of digital cameras and computer imaging” (Campbell, 2003, p. 65)
would perhaps be less frequent.
As Danchev (2009, p. 36) suggests, analog photographs are “not merely il-
lustrations of what was already known. They are new knowledge”. They show us
something we would not know without them. Otherwise, we would not need
them. Digital photographs are also new knowledge. They too show us something
we would not know without them (even if this “something” is different from the
“something” communicated by analog photography). This knowledge cannot
simply be dismissed with reference to digital photography’s lack of an original,
which renders difficult the verification or falsification of a digital image. Even
without verification, digital photographs are new knowledge.

2 “We’re Photographers, Not Terrorists”2

Owing to the ubiquitous presence and use of camera phones to take pictures and
disseminate them in near real-time, the visual construction of political space and
the democratization of image-making seem to have reached a new stage. This
stage was anticipated by the introduction of digital cameras, which offer new
possibilities for the construction of visual space including visual opposition that
are beyond governmental control. The triangle that connects the photographer,

2
“We’re photographers, not terrorists,” Guardian, (12/15/2009). Available online:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/dec/11/photographers-section-44
-terrorism-act [December 15, 2009].
60 Frank Möller

the subject and the spectator has become tighter. In visually constructed political
space (which will be discussed in greater detail below), there is a compulsion to
depict, a compulsion to be depicted and a compulsion to look at the depictions of
others if one does not want to exclude oneself, or to be excluded by others, from
the realm of the political, incapacitated from acting politically.
In some cases, the non-professional citizen-photographer appears to have
replaced the professional photographer as the most important producer of images
because professional photographers cannot be in all places at all times. The citi-
zen-photographer can be understood as someone who takes pictures not only for
private consumption but to apply his or her politically educated view to photog-
raphy to inform and educate others politically, thus helping to construct a visual/
virtual political community. Even if professional photographers happen to be at
the right place at the right time, they might choose different subjects than a non-
professional photographer, or they might choose the same subjects but photo-
graph them differently. In addition, professional photographers find it increas-
ingly difficult to go about their business. Based on the re-designation of public
space as what has been called “state space”3 in the journalistic discourse, govern-
ments in such different places as Iran and the United Kingdom seem to be
interested in suppressing the production of images. Indeed, photographers and
the visual construction of political space are not always welcome. An increase in
the use of CCTV surveillance techniques can be observed in ostensibly liberal
societies, primarily in metropolitan areas. Photography bans are often related to
post-9/11 policies focusing on security and are accompanied by omnipresent
police officers and private security personnel with obscure accountability. As has
been noted in the journalistic discourse on surveillance, these trends endanger
every person who “engage[s] in the act of photography in a public place”,4 albeit
to different degrees.
Governments might be able to inhibit the work of professional journalists.
Restricting the work of citizen-photographers using camera phones for the pro-
duction and dissemination of images is a different thing entirely, though. Camera
phones are vehicles for both instant photography and the instant dissemination of
images. As shown by the production and dissemination of the notorious photo-
graphs taken at Abu Ghraib prison, digital photography is indeed difficult to
control. In particular, photographs and videos taken and disseminated by means
of camera phones are capable of upsetting those in power, as illustrated by the
video of the death of the student Neda Agha-Soltan during the turmoil in Iran in

3
“Protecting the media from the police,” Guardian, (07/01/2010). Available online:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2010/jan/07/police-photography-public-
space [January 8, 2010].
4
“We’re photographers, not terrorists,” see note 2.
Celebration and Concern 61

2009. The international response to these images transformed the student into a
symbol and icon of the Iranian democratic movement.5
Authorities’ lack of controllability and the fear of the international response
to images (and the conditions depicted therein) help explain the lack of propor-
tionality often underlying their disproportionate response to digital photography.
This disproportionality was reportedly acknowledged by Scotland Yard’s assis-
tant commissioner for special operations John Yates, who said that there is “‘an
enormous amount of concern’ about the use of anti-terror laws against people
taking photographs in the street.”6 From the point of view of the authorities, pho-
tographs may be dangerous. From the point of view of citizens, they may be
liberating. From the point of view of the subjects of photography, they may be
both liberating and oppressive. The critical function of images of people exposed
to maltreatment by authorities, for example, is hard to separate from the oppres-
sive function of the same images once they have been made available on the
Internet, where they contribute to the visual exploitation of those depicted. For
example, whatever subject positions Neda Agha-Soltan inhabited during her
short life, she is now reduced to a dying student and thus necessarily misrepre-
sented.

3 Photography and the Approximate

The introduction of digital photography and especially camera phones suggests

differentiating between ad hoc, spontaneous photography and chronic photogra-
phy.7 The former is the domain of the amateur photographer (and selected photo-
journalists who happen to be at the right place at the right time), and the latter is
the domain of the professional documentary photographer (for example, the
photojournalist who is embedded with armed forces in war, the documentary
photographer on a long-term assignment or the police photographer who moni-
tors citizens on a regular basis) and the dedicated amateur. Another way to frame

5
See “How Neda Soltani became the face of Iran’s struggle,” Guardian, (22/06/2009).
Available online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/22/neda-soltani-death-iran [June
24, 2009]. For the mix-up of names and people, see “Mistaken as an Iranian Martyr, Then
Hounded,” The New York Times, (31/07/2010). Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/
2010/08/01/world/middleeast/01neda.html?_r= 1&th&emc=th [October 7, 2010].
6
“Scotland Yard warns police officers over photography concerns,” Guardian, (15/12/2009).
Available online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/15/yates-police-terrorism-powers-
photography [December 15, 2009].
7
See also Azoulay’s distinction between disasters and chronic disasters (2008, p. 51).
62 Frank Möller

this difference is to distinguish between “the instant” and “the reflective”,8 as has
been done in the journalistic discourse on photography (although the instant can
also be a result of reflection and reflection can result in instant images). Camera
phones seem primarily to be vehicles for ad hoc, spontaneous, instant photogra-
phy.
Whether ad hoc or chronic, photographs are approximations. As representa-
tions, they are never identical with that which they represent. Rather than simply
reflecting reality, they construct reality, or better: realities. They carry with them
what King (2003, p. 180) has called a “surplus of meaning”, that is to say, a
plurality of meanings that can be suppressed by means of language but not
erased altogether. Is the irreducibility of photographs a merit or a liability? If it is
primarily seen as a liability, then the difficulty of authenticating digital imagery
by verbal or other means would seem to be especially problematic. However,
Foucault (1994, p. 9) has argued that “it is in vain that we say what we see; what
we see never resides in what we say” and MacDougall (1998, p. 246) has shown
that “[p]ictures and writing produce two quite different accounts of human exis-
tence”. Thus, writing or talking about images is always problematic because we
do not have appropriate language to transform the seeable into the sayable. Try-
ing to do so means approaching images in terms other than their own and limit-
ing them and the knowledge they produce to that which can be said in (a given)
language.
Indeed, uneasiness about the approximate, that is to say, uneasiness that we
necessarily fail to say accurately what we see, is widespread. Many people seem
to find it difficult or politically undesirable to accept that there is something
inherently elusive in images that we cannot grasp by means of language no mat-
ter how hard we try. For example, Benjamin (1963b, p. 64), writing in the inter-
war period, suggested elevating the inscription to the most essential ingredient of
a photograph; otherwise, photographic construction is bound to “get stuck in the
approximate”.9 According to Benjamin (1963a, p. 21), captions give directives to
those looking at pictures. Perhaps surprisingly, whether these directives are right
or wrong is not important. Regardless of their content, such directives seem to
enhance both the readability of photography (they tell the readers what they are
supposed to see) and its applicability to political struggle. The distinction be-
tween “right” and “wrong” directives is difficult to verify and ultimately irrele-
vant as long as the directives serve their political purpose. The work of art in the

8
See “The mafia and me: Mimi Mollica’s portraits of Sicilian society,” Guardian, (14/12/2009).
Available online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/dec/14/mafia-mimi-mollica-
photographs [December 14, 2009].
9
“[Ohne Beschriftung] (muß) alle photographische Konstruktion im Ungefähren stecken
bleiben.”
Celebration and Concern 63

age of technological reproducibility thus becomes the work of art in the age of
political reducibility. This is perfectly understandable of course in the light of
Benjamin’s (1963a, p. 44) suggestion to politicize the arts to counter the aestheti-
cization of politics in Fascism (see also Reichel, 1991). Here, the approximate is
seen as a liability and not as an asset. The interpretive strategy is to reduce the
approximate and not to accept it and build upon it.
This understanding is also at the core of photojournalism and documentary
photography (the occasional photo essay being the exception confirming the
rule): text seems to explain what we see; the image seems to support the text; and
together, text and image create what Gilgen (2003, p. 55) has called a mutually
supportive “intellectual stereoscopic effect” that strengthens the overall message
or makes the message possible in the first place. This effect seems to work even
though many people are aware of the mismatch between verbal and visual con-
structions of reality. There is no reason to assume a priori that it would not work
in connection with digital constructions of reality. The lack of an original renders
verification difficult, which seems to make digital photography less authentic
and easier to manipulate than analog photography. However, the average viewer
does not normally compare a published analog photograph with the contact
prints to verify and contextualize the published print. Further, given the volume
of digital photographs nowadays normally taken of any major or even minor
event, digital photographers and digital photographs mutually control one an-
other to some extent. The technically skilled computer user can be both a mani-
pulator and a watchdog.
Thus, there will always be a residue of uncertainty in connection with digi-
tal photography, but this may not be entirely negative. If we understand the ap-
proximate as an asset that can teach us to live with, appreciate and capitalize on
difference, then the potentialities of the irreducibility of digital photography
would seem to be obvious. As Couldry (2000, p. 21-22) has noted, working with
difference instead of reducing difference is at the core of the intellectual and
political commitment of globalized cultural studies.10 Words, however, limit
images to that which can be said in a given language in a given situation. Such
limitations cannot be politically neutral. Indeed, Benjamin’s “directives” are
essentially political. The social processes through which an image’s various
meanings are reduced to one binding and non-negotiable meaning, to the mean-
ing of an image, are eminently political processes that cannot be separated from
the power relations operating within a given society. Such processes normally
confirm rather than challenge the established discursive patterns and power rela-

10
Of course, not all forms of difference are appreciated here. For example, the elimination of
differences in economic performance, health levels, life expectancy or gender roles may very
well be appreciated by those who otherwise appreciate difference.
64 Frank Möller

tions that generate, regulate and benefit from these very patterns. Ultimately,
they destroy images as a potential source of alternative knowledge production;
images become invisible. If we are interested in alternative knowledge produc-
tion, in the diversification of worldviews, in new perspectives and in what
Shapiro (2009, p. 33) calls visual “counter-spaces” that are beyond and unaffec-
ted by governmental control, then the approximate would appear to be an asset
rather than a liability. It would offer space to resist established representational
strategies and would challenge these strategies by presenting alternatives. If we
manage to live with the approximate rather than to reduce it, then our obsession
with the credibility and authenticity of photography and our uneasiness about
digital photography may be replaced by an approach that appreciates the potenti-
alities of digitization to, among other things, help transform common spectator-
ship into global spectatorship.

4 From Common Spectatorship to a Global Visual Community

In their work on photojournalistic images, Hariman and Lucaites (2007) analyze

among other things the social processes through which selected photographs
came to be regarded as icons in the national public culture of the United States of
America. They are interested in the question of how these images influence the
construction of political space. They conclude that the “daily stream of photo-
journalistic images […] defines the public through an act of common spectator-
ship” (ibid., p. 42). The individual viewer can respond politically to an image not
as an individual but only as a member of the discursively organized public parti-
cipating in collective action in response to the image. We live in what Mitchell
(1994, p. 2) called a culture that is “dominated by pictures, visual simulations,
stereotypes, illusions, copies, reproductions, imitations, and fantasies”. In such a
culture, the public would not be a public, and the individual, who is powerful
only as a part of discursive-collective action, could not exert much political in-
fluence without simultaneously viewing images individually and collectively, as
a member of the public. The act of viewing constitutes the public, and it is only
as a part of the public that the individual can exert political power. By ignoring
images, people would position themselves outside the realm of the political and
be deprived of the possibility to act politically.
Hariman and Lucaites apply a Habermasian discursive action approach to
images combined with an Arendtian understanding of power where power can
only be exerted in cooperation with other people. As such, their approach is an
important contribution to both the literature on the discursive construction of
political space and the literature on political participation. Three things may be
Celebration and Concern 65

added. First, there is no reason to limit the discussion to photojournalistic icons

such as Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” or Nick Ut’s “Accidental Napalm”.
Such icons are increasingly supplemented with and, perhaps, replaced by con-
temporary digitally produced images, both ad hoc and chronic, including images
produced by means of camera phones. For example, Borenstein (2009) has
shown how the camera phone images taken during the 2005 London bombings
shaped the ways news is produced (see Figure 1 below), and the BBC regularly
invites viewers to submit their own images, many of which are taken by means
of camera phones. The limitation to photojournalistic icons is indicative of the
historical, almost nostalgic, approach to photography in certain strands of the
literature that often laments what is lost in the process of digitization and fails to
grasp what is gained. Second, there is no need to limit the discussion to common
spectatorship: the visual construction of political space requires producers, sub-
jects and spectators of images. The relationship between these different subject
positions is of utmost importance because it is through this relationship that the
various possible meanings of a given image are negotiated. Third, there is no
reason to limit the debate to the national culture of the United States: common
spectatorship increasingly means global spectatorship, and common visual space
increasingly means global visual space. The images produced in lower Manhat-
tan on September 11, 2001 exemplify this in that they transformed a local event
into a global event.11 The speed with which images travel from one place to an-
other has increased tremendously in the digital age; the frequent use of camera
phones for the production and dissemination of images has contributed a great
deal to the acceleration and the limitlessness of images.
Indeed, within certain limits, the digital age is a global age where indivi-
duals can connect with other producers, spectators and subjects of photography
on a global scale. The question of who gets heard has been an essential compo-
nent of cultural research for quite some time. The obvious follow-up question
would be the question of who gets seen. The absence of visual representation
contributes to the marginalization and exclusion from the political of groups of
people who literally become invisible. Every process of marginalization reflects
unequal power relations. Visual representations of other people also reflect
power relations between the photographer and his or her subject, and the prioriti-
zation of visual culture marginalizes those groups of people who do not share the
Western interest in images and subscribe to different sensory hierarchies. Images
tend to exploit human beings visually, to freeze subjects (for example, as vic-
tims; see above) and to deny them agency. This is frequently acknowledged in
visual ethnography, visual anthropology, cultural studies, peace research and
11
See, for example, the painted narrative scrolls of the Naya women in India thematizing “Bin
Laden” and “September 11” (Fruzzetti and Östör, 2007, pp. 88–94).
66 Frank Möller

elsewhere. Couldry (2000, p. 58) has noted that we live “in societies and cultures
where individuals are spoken for, much more than they speak in their own
name”, but we also live in societies and cultures where individuals are frequently
visually represented by others rather than representing themselves. In both cases,
they are not necessarily represented “accurately” (ibid., p. 58), that is, in accord-
ance with their own self-image and the way they would want to be represented.
If we agree that the act of viewing constitutes the public, through which the
individual has potential political power, then it would seem to be mandatory to
produce images of other people including images of marginalized people and
even images of people in pain. Otherwise, human suffering would be positioned
outside the realm of the political and it would not be possible to respond to it
politically. Thus, regardless of the feelings of the victims, human suffering must
be captured visually so that it is not depoliticized. The construction of political
space through images implies both the compulsion to look and the compulsion to
depict. However, the acts of looking and depicting are likely to conflict with the
feelings and interests of the victims when the victims do not represent them-
selves.
Digital photography and especially camera phones offer many relatively in-
expensive possibilities for marginalized groups to exert agency by becoming
photographers, thus representing themselves and disseminating their images on a
wider scale than ever before. Thus, digital photography may allow marginalized
groups to correct the image that viewers have of them. However, this also de-
pends on the viewers’ willingness to correct their image of other people. Cor-
recting one’s image of other people implies correcting one’s image of oneself
because the self and the other are inseparably connected and interdependent.
Still, photographic self-representations of marginalized people can contribute to
the diversification of perspectives on their and our worlds. For example, Ritchin
(2009) has observed a marked discrepancy between Western perceptions of post-
genocide Rwanda and the self-representations of children at the Imbabazi or-
phanage in Gisenyi made using first disposable and later digital cameras. These
photographs “are much more lively [than official reports], responding to color
and light and their neighbors with considerable wonder. They refuse to be the
symbol of their people’s tragic history” (ibid., p. 127). By representing them-
selves, marginalized people contribute to the discursive construction of global
political space and they do so not as objects of another’s photography but as
agents of their own image.
Celebration and Concern 67

5 Photojournalism in the Pixellated Age

Representations of wars, famines, accidents, terrorist attacks and other forms of

human suffering that aestheticize their subject are often accused of depoliticiza-
tion. They are alleged to divert the viewer’s attention from the conditions
depicted in the image to the beauty and design of the image. However, as Strauss
(2003) and Bal (2007) have noted, representation necessarily aestheticizes; it
cannot avoid doing so. It stylizes; it transforms. It is a representation, after all.
The underlying supposition is that less aestheticized, less elaborated photography
would help avoid the viewers’ depoliticization and increase their degree of em-
pathy.
The one thing most instant, ad hoc photographs taken by means of camera
phones are not is elaborate. Their basis is spontaneity and their purpose is the
communication of spontaneity. Frequently, their lack of elaboration and reflec-
tion is more than compensated for by the degree of authenticity and urgency they
manage to communicate to the viewer: nothing is staged and nothing is fabri-
cated; everything is real and authentic – or so it seems; indeed, it seems that what
is represented is what really happened. For example, the notorious Abu Ghraib
photographs were, as Simpson (2006, p. 104) noted, “accepted as the real thing”
because they were immediately recognizable “as the products of amateurs”
(ibid., p. 106). Indeed, even the fiercest apologists of what happened at Abu
Ghraib have not called into question the authenticity of these images.12 Robert
Capa’s famous photographs of the D-day landings in 1944 are powerful precise-
ly because of their technical imperfection (a result of printing errors at the lab in
London), which helped communicate “sea-drenched authenticity and unprece-
dented immediacy”.13 Viewers may be attracted precisely by the seeming lack of
compositional elaboration (which, in art photography, may be carefully elabora-
ted indeed).
Ad hoc photographs are also often blurred, unfocused and grainy – one
might call them refreshingly unprofessional – but the lack of compositional
elaboration is not carefully constructed. They appeal to the viewer despite or
even because of this lack. Ad hoc photographs communicate with the viewer.
They show the viewer things he or she would not know otherwise; they are new
knowledge. They give the viewer the feeling of being at the place and the exact
point in time where the photographs were taken. Thus, they intimately involve

12
To be sure, the snappers at Abu Ghraib are not citizen photographers as defined above, that is
to say, people who apply their politically educated views to photography to inform and educate
others politically.
13
See “‘I was there,’” Guardian, (18/10/2008). Available online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/
artanddesign/2008/oct/18/war-photography [October 18, 2008].
68 Frank Möller

the viewer, providing him or her with little room to escape. The lack of an origi-
nal does not infringe upon their power. They are regarded as documents or as
evidence. They are authentic even though they cannot be authenticated. They are
credible even though they cannot be verified. They are not art, but they are
“artful” in that they are “skillfully,” if often intuitively, “adapted for a purpose”
(Little, 1973, p. 109). The purpose is to show, to document, and to prove what
happened.
The camera phone photographs taken by Alexander Chadwick at the occa-
sion of the 2005 London bombings, for example, are among the small group of
digitally produced camera phone images that can be considered iconic, at least in
the national cultural context of the United Kingdom. As the Guardian stated in
its gallery celebrating 100 years of press photography, they belong to the “key
images to have remained in people’s consciousness since the 7/7 bombings on
London Underground.” These “image[s] – taken by someone involved in the
disaster – ha[ve] forced a reconsideration of the way in which press images are
both produced and circulated in the 21st century”.14 Of course, they have forced
us to reconsider many other things as well.
This is ad hoc photojournalism in the pixellated age. It is a new form of
photojournalism where the images are captured by someone involved in the
incident who is not a professional photographer but whose photographs never-
theless make it to the front pages. Although it is new, this new form is dedicated
to photojournalism’s traditional principles: to paraphrase Capa’s famous dictum
(that got him killed in Korea), the photographs are good because the photogra-
pher is close enough.15

14
“100 years of great press photographs,” Guardian, (10/10/2009). Available online:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2009/nov/10/100-years-press-photography?
picture=355415227 [November 10, 2009].
15
Capa (as quoted in Ritchin, 2008, p. 150) said that “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you
aren’t close enough.” However, as the recent debate on Capa’s Spanish Civil War photography
shows, even if you are not close enough, your pictures can be very good indeed.
Celebration and Concern 69

Figure 1: Alexander Chadwick’s camera phone photograph of the 2005

bombings on London Underground; copyright Sipa Press, reproduced
with permission.

Closeness is often poignant. It is unnerving to even think about camera phone

photographs taken inside the collapsing World Trade Center on September 11,
2001 and disseminated by people who would not survive the collapse of the
towers. Likewise, it is unsettling to imagine camera phone images taken by
people in an Afghan or Palestinian village and disseminated minutes or even
seconds before being killed by a missile, which is also directed by some form of
photographic device. Such images would be a photographic archive of the soon-
to-be-killed and the soon-to-die, thus creating a virtual/visual community and
adding to existing photographic archives of the disappeared in places such as
Algeria and Argentine, as analyzed by Downey (2009). Is it possible for photo-
graphy to be more authentic, more poignant, more urgent, or more “true” than it
is in such images?
Such scenarios tremendously complicate the subject positions of viewers
who are exposed to images of people in pain. As I have argued elsewhere (Möl-
ler, 2009), when exposed to such images, viewers normally face a dilemma
wherein neither looking at the images nor ignoring them seems to be an option.
On the one hand, ignoring such images would position the individual outside the
visually constituted political public, but it is only as a part of this public that he
or she can exert political power. On the other hand, looking at such images is
believed to prolong the subject’s victimization and exploitation. Because repre-
sentation always comes after the fact, the viewer has little ability to undo that
70 Frank Möller

which is depicted in a given image; as Sliwinski (2004, p. 154) has concluded,

being “witness to suffering brings with it the demand for a response, and yet
one’s response to photographs can do nothing to alleviate the suffering depic-
ted”. This is especially true with respect to images of dead bodies: whatever the
response to such images, the dead cannot be revived.
Commenting on Alexander Gardner’s photograph of Lewis Paine (also
known as Lewis Powell) taken prior to Paine’s execution for the attempted as-
sassination of US Secretary of State William H. Seward in 1865, Barthes (2000,
p. 96) commented that the punctum of this photograph is that “he is going to die.
I read at the same time: This will be and this has been; I observe with horror an
anterior future of which death is the stake”. In this case, the subject of the photo-
graph, Lewis Paine, was still alive when the picture was taken, but he had been
dead for quite some time when Barthes regarded the photo and reflected upon it.
In the scenarios outlined above, however, the soon-to-die are not yet dead when
viewers see their pictures that are disseminated in real time by camera phones,
which greatly complicates the viewers’ position, perhaps unbearably so. In this
case, it appears to the viewer that there is a window of opportunity (that was
absent in Barthes’s case) between the moment when the camera phone images
were taken, disseminated and looked at and the imminent death of the people
depicted: the soon-to-die are not yet dead; they are still alive when we look at
their pictures. Because they are still alive, as viewers, we may get the impression
(which may very well be an illusion) that there is something we can do. It im-
parts viewers with the responsibility to prevent their deaths even though there is
nothing to be done. The subjects will die, and with them, a part of us will die,
too.

6 Irony in the Digital Age

The distinction made by Danchev (2009, pp. 70-73) between seeming and posing
is crucial in connection with political communication, especially concerning self-
representations of those in power. Such self-representations often carry with
them an air of vanity, self-importance and self-aggrandizement that can be and
often has been uncovered by caricatures that use irony and exaggeration. The
painter and sculptor Fernando Botero, for example, has masterfully depicted the
politicians of his native Colombia by, as Ebony (2006, p. 10) notes, “pok[ing]
fun at the trumped-up grandeur of the military leadership then in control” while
celebrating ordinary women and men. Any attempts to challenge, undermine and
reduce to absurdity such self-representations will benefit from taking into con-
sideration the distinction between seeming and posing, which is basically a dis-
Celebration and Concern 71

tinction between the image that a person wants to communicate to others and the
image that he or she actually communicates. As Danchev (2009, p. 71) suc-
cinctly states, posing is “bad acting. Posing is seeming gone wrong”.
Although it may seem old-fashioned, the photographic portrait of political
leaders continues to matter to them in the digital age as much as ever. Success
and satisfaction are not guaranteed, however. Danchev (2009, p. 70) points out
that politics “is a performance” but “[a]uthenticity is an enigma” (ibid., p. 72).
To authenticate one’s image is necessary but difficult. For example, according to
the photographer Nadav Kander, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown
often appeared nervous in pictures not because he was insecure about his poli-
cies, but “because he’s insecure about his appearance”.16 Insecurity about
appearance was communicated and perceived as insecurity about policies, thus
undermining political leadership and trust in it. In contrast, people like former
US president Ronald Reagan do not normally appear nervous in pictures not
because they are confident about their policies but because they are confident
about their appearance. This is good acting: security about appearance is com-
municated and perceived as security about policies. It strengthens political
leadership and trust in it; a strong performance is perceived as strong leadership.
Other politicians, such as the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, are con-
fident of both their policies and their appearance but may ultimately fail to con-
vince the audience, perhaps because they are too convinced of their policies,
perhaps because self-confidence becomes self-indulgence, or perhaps because
self-confidence prevents politicians like Blair from acknowledging the conse-
quences of his or her policies.

16
Nadav Kander, as quoted in “Follow the leaders: the art of the political portrait,” Guardian,
(03/01/2010). Available online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jan/03/political-
portrait-obama-blair-brown [January 3, 2010].
72 Frank Möller

Figure 2: kennardphillipps: “Photo Op, 2005”; reproduced with permission by

Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps.

Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps’s montage of a simpering Tony Blair taking a
picture of himself with what seems to be a camera phone in front of a huge ex-
plosion reminiscent of the war-afflicted devastation in Iraq, Pakistan and Af-
ghanistan, is revealing of Blair’s autism of power, that is to say, his insuscepti-
bility to anything outside his own belief system.
Kennard and Phillipps’ photograph of people on Oxford Street taking, by
means of camera phones, photographs of the above montage of Blair is even
more striking and more indicative of the potentialities of instant communication
in the pixellated age. These photographs can be disseminated almost instanta-
neously throughout the nation and even the world. Their production and dissemi-
nation cannot be controlled or regulated; they cannot be stopped. As such, they
may help stop Tony Blair’s policies by communicating to the viewers that which
Blair himself failed to see.
Celebration and Concern 73

Figure 3: kennardphillipps: “Photo-Op in window Santa’s Ghetto, Oxford St,

London, 2006”; reproduced with permission by Peter Kennard and
Cat Phillipps.

7 Surveillance, Coveillance, Sousveillance

The history of photography can be told as a history of surveillance (cf. Phillips,

2010). As Sontag (1977, p. 5) has noted, photographs were used by “the Paris
police in the murderous roundup of Communards” as early as 1871, and they
later “became a useful tool of modern states in the surveillance and control of
their increasingly mobile populations”. If we understand power as an institution
that must be controlled, checked and balanced, then the digital age is a source for
concern and celebration. On the one hand, it is a source for concern because
contemporary societies have become surveillance societies based on digitized
administration. Such societies are characterized by “purposeful, routine, syste-
matic and focused attention paid to personal details, for the sake of control, enti-
tlement, management, influence or protection” (Ball & Murakami Wood, 2006,
p. 4, § 3.1). As has been observed in journalistic discourse on the surveillance
society, especially after September 11, 2001, public space has been increasingly
redefined as space “over which the police and CCTV systems have exclusive
photographic rights.”17 On the other hand, it is a source for celebration because
potential counter-surveillance technologies such as camera phones give citizen-
photographers ample opportunities to exert visual opposition to the all-seeing

17
“Protecting the media from the police”, see note 3.
74 Frank Möller

eye of the authorities and to undermine and challenge forms of social control.18
Exaggerated surveillance generates and, arguably, necessitates sousveillance – a
term derived from the French words “sous” (below) and “veiller” (to watch). The
term was introduced by Mann, Nolan and Wellman (2003) to describe devices
“offering panoptic technologies to help [individuals] to observe those in authori-
ty” (p. 332). Sousveillance is a source of concern for the authorities because it
cannot easily be brought under control. “Surveillance cameras threaten autono-
my” (Mann et al., 2003, p. 347). Sousveillance cameras threaten authority.
However, sousveillance is also a source for both celebration and concern. It
can be celebrated as a vehicle people can use to exert visual opposition by taking
pictures in situations where it is not formally permitted to take pictures including
pictures of those in authority. Such pictures can be taken fortuitously or on a
planned and regular basis. Mann et al. (2003) argue that sousveillance is a form
of participatory, bottom-up “inquiry-in-performance” (p. 333) that aims to con-
front bureaucratic organizations and their representatives with the very means
these organizations use to observe and control the citizens. At the very least, the
public display of sousveillance devices and their performative use is a symbol of
non-acquiescence to the omnipresence of surveillance techniques in contempo-
rary surveillance societies. Simultaneously, as Koskela (2004) has suggested, the
limited visibility of a camera as a part of a mobile phone and the rotating lens
that some models offer19 limit the visibility of the act of taking a photograph and
thus facilitate image production and protect the photographer in situations where
photography is not permitted (p. 203).
However, sousveillance is also a source of concern. Taking pictures in si-
tuations where it is not permitted to do so can be seen as an act of civil disobe-
dience. Such an act, however, does not automatically or necessarily alter the
power relations underlying the taking of pictures and the visual construction of
the political. Indeed, authorities backed by powerful law enforcement agencies
typically spy on people using CCTV cameras, which are anonymous technologi-
cal apparatuses that hide the people who operate them and assess the collected
data. As Mann et al. (2003) note, sousveillance confronts “individuals using
tools to observe the organizational observer” (p. 333) with organizations repre-
sented by individual observers and thus describes a profoundly asymmetrical

18
The topical exhibition Exposed: Voyeurism, surveillance and the camera (see note 1) does not
differentiate between surveillance and counter-surveillance (see Phillips, 2010, pp. 141–166).
Surveillance photographs are said to have in common “a spirit of distance, abstraction, and a
certain placid ambiguity” (p. 143). This strikingly unpolitical definition totally abstracts from
the politics of both surveillance and opposition.
19
The rotating lens is reminiscent of the technique applied by Paul Strand in 1916 when he
“fitted his camera with a false lens (the real one was pointed to the side; later he would use a
prism)” (Phillips, 2010, p. 20).
Celebration and Concern 75

relationship. Acts of sousveillance give the impression of equality and symmetry

in situations characterized by profoundly unequal and asymmetrical power
relations.
Furthermore, although authorities are unable to control sousveillance, they
can use it for their own purposes by involving citizens in practices of observation
and social control, for example, with respect to border control (cf. Ball &
Murakami Wood, 2006, p. 37, § 10.5.5). Indeed, in addition to spying on au-
thorities, sousveillance techniques can also be used to spy on other individuals.
In part reflecting a combination of what Andrejevic (2005, p. 482) calls neo-
liberal “strategies for offloading duties of monitoring onto the populace” and
post-9/11 thinking in terms of omnipresent threats and risks, citizens spy on
fellow citizens, neighbors on neighbors, workers on co-workers, husbands on
wives, wives on husbands, majorities on minorities and so on. Such practices are
termed by Mann et al. (2003, p. 338) “coveillance”. However, this term ignores
Eisenman’s (2007, p. 99) observation that, normally, “the one who watches is
stronger than the one who is watched” even if the one who is watched allows his
or her picture to be taken. Thus, the same techniques that can be used for
sousveillance in one situation can also be used in another situation for what
Andrejevic (2005, p. 489) calls “peer-to-peer surveillance”. As such, sousveil-
lance might pave the way for visual investigation, denunciation and social
control on a large scale and to the establishment of new visual/political hierar-
chies (which conspicuously resemble the established hierarchies). For example,
“if someone with a cameraphone snaps you going to a sensitive business meeting
and then emails it to a competitor, it is hard to imagine what could [be] done
about it”.20 Dennis (2008, pp. 350-352) even reports on cases of “virtual-
vigilantism”. Finally, practices of spying in connection with sousveillance also
include cases of spying on oneself, that is to say, practices of meticulously
documenting one’s own movements using camera phones, webcams, web-blogs
and other such devices. As Dennis (2008, p. 355) notes, there “is a fine line […]
between this being a willing step or one forced upon the individual as an enact-
ment of resistance to hierarchical forms of monitoring and surveillance”.
Similar to other forms of photography in the digital age, one of the main
challenges concerning sousveillance images is neither the production nor the
dissemination of such images but the response to them; the problem is not the
collection of data but the transformation of data into emancipatory politics for
the sake of global justice or social change, for example. Here, it is useful to think
about sousveillance in connection with both the notion of deterritorialized visual/
political space suggested by Azoulay (2008) in her discussion of the citizenry of
20
“The age of sousveillance,” Guardian, (14/07/2005). Available online: from http://www.
guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/jul/14/comment.comment [December 12, 2009].
76 Frank Möller

photography and with the deindividualizing elements underlying Hariman and

Lucaites’s approach to common spectatorship (2007). Sousveillance images have
to be shared with others, both nationally and internationally, and then translated
into an emancipatory and progressive joint political response to the conditions
depicted in these images. Without a doubt, the second step is more difficult than
the first, but without it, a sousveillance image would just be another image. Even
if this translation succeeds, Andrejevic’s (2005, p. 494) statement still applies,
that rather than reflecting a democratization of monitoring, monitoring practices
often copy and strengthen top-down forms of control, which are internalized and
adapted to the private sphere. In this manner, the patterns on which contempo-
rary surveillance societies are based are reproduced and strengthened. Indeed, as
Mann et al. (2003, p. 347) conclude, ultimately “[u]niversal sur/sousveillance
may support the power structures by fostering broad accessibility of monitoring
and ubiquitous data collection”. At the end of the day, then, there seem to be
more reasons for concern than for celebration in connection with modern sur-
veillance societies.

8 Conclusion

To the history of street photography as elaborated by Westerbeck and Meyero-

witz (1994) and Scott (2007), a new chapter must be added – a chapter on the
citizen-photographer. Equipped with digital cameras and camera phones and
producing instant images that can be disseminated without delay, the citizen-
photographer contributes to the diversification of our views on the world, to the
visibility of marginalized groups of people and to the visual construction of po-
litical space beyond and to some extent unaffected by governmental control.
Digital technologies also offer new possibilities for exposing people and their
policies: as the World Press Cartoon exhibitions regularly show, the use of irony
and caricature is a potent political weapon. Sousveillance images can be funny,21
but they also may help to neutralize surveillance images, especially when they
are thought of as deterritorializing and deindividualizing. As Danchev (2009, p.
59) writes, “it is given to artists, not politicians, to make a new world order”. It is
also given to citizen-photographers to make a new world order.22
21
See, for example, http://www.strictlynophotography.com for pictures that were not allowed to
be taken.
22
The author would like to thank Rune Saugmann Andersen and the editors and the referees for
Images in Mobile Communication for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this piece.
Many thanks also to Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps for permission to reproduce their photo-
graphic montage work and to Alex Danchev for inviting me to the Workshop on art, war and
terror, St Anthony’s College, Oxford, November 27, 2009.
Celebration and Concern 77

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Part II

Strategies and Tactics

at the Advent of Mobile Images
Revolution in Journalism?
Mobile Devices as a New Means of Publishing

Cornelia Wolf and Ralf Hohlfeld

Introduction

As a means of interpersonal communication, the mobile phone has experienced

an unbelievable boom and is now an integral part of everyday life (Ahonen &
O’Reilly, 2007; Carey, 2006, p. 116). There are now more than 4 billion mobile
phones worldwide (Bitkom, 2009). In Germany, market coverage stands at more
than 130 percent (Bundesnetzagentur, 2009). The reason the mobile phone has
been embraced to such an extent can mainly be attributed to social change,
which is characterized by the buzzwords “mobility” and “individualization”
(Matsuda, 2009, p. 19). Being reachable anywhere and at any time is concomi-
tant with the increasing levels of mobility in society, on both private and profes-
sional levels. The convergence of mobility and communication has created the
image of an individual who is able to communicate with anyone, anywhere, and
in any situation. This total “reachability” is a state that most people have already
attained (Hanekop & Wittke, 2005, p. 113). This most innate characteristic of the
mobile phone can therefore be considered to be in the personal sphere. All in all,
we can speak of “communicative mobility” (Hepp, 2006, pp. 15-21) in a “mobile
promised land characterized by ubiquity, connectivity and convenience”
(Aguando & Martinez, 2008, p. 69).
Limiting mobile communication to a mere notion of interpersonal, com-
puter-assisted communication would, however, be too much of a simplification.
Although mobile devices are still used primarily for one-to-one communication
(telephony, SMS; cf. Accenture, 2009, p. 8), the birth of the third-generation
mobile device has made available a wide range of new applications that also
enable one-to-many communication (Goggin & Hjorth, 2009, p. 3). Technologi-
cal development is a prerequisite for this transformation of the mobile device
into a mass medium1; According to Ahonen and O`Reilly (2003, p. 3), “[W]e see

1
Within the sense of Maletzke’s classic definition of mass communication, cf. among others
Burkart, 2002, p. 171.

C. Martin, T. von Pape (Eds.), Images in Mobile Communication,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-531-93190-6_5,
© VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2012
82 Cornelia Wolf and Ralf Hohlfeld

convergence of media, web and communications” In principle, a synthesis is

taking place between the simultaneous revolution of two technologies in the field
of communication, as mobile communication and the internet move ever closer
together at a rapid pace (Glotz, Bertschi, & Locke, 2005, p. 12). According to
2009 estimates by the trade association Bitkom, the number of Universal Mobile
Telecommunications System (UMTS) connections in Germany rose by 43 per-
cent to approximately 23 million (Bitkom, 2009). “Mobile internet is developing
into a mega-trend among consumers,” according to Accenture (2009, p. 3). Al-
most one in five (18 percent) German internet users surfs the web on a mobile
phone (ibid., p. 4). As a consequence of digitalization, broadcast-specific, print-
specific and online-specific offers are merging with services from the telecom-
munications field, “resulting in interactive and individualized multimedia offers”
(Eimeren & Frees, 2006, p. 563). Nine percent of users receive TV content, and
12 percent download videos or watch them on portals (Accenture, 2009, p. 12).
The consensus is that editorially created applications that reach beyond the
standard of voice telephony (first generation) and SMS (second generation), and
that create a mass communication medium from an interpersonal communication
medium (third generation), will determine the success of the new mobile broad-
cast generation.
On the other side of the equation stand traditional forms of media (such as
television and, still to a large extent, the internet), which are either spatially fixed
— and, therefore, immobile — or which (in the case of local newspapers) have
always been mobile but are limited to a very constricted coverage area (Kretz-
schmar, 2008). Technological change is now enabling media companies to react
to social changes (Wolf, 2008).
“Made-for-mobile” — this magic formula of journalistic-editorial content
for mobile devices could lead the way to a form of mobile journalism. From a
perspective of diffusion theory, the so-called third generation of mobile phones
will achieve a sufficient level of market penetration only if they are able to re-
ceive a multitude of specially tailored information and entertainment services
(Schweiger, 2002, p. 161). Regarding editorial information services, made-for-
mobile formats that shift away from the 1:1 models of traditional content and
make use of the specifics of mobile broadcasting are more likely to succeed
(Grigoriva, 2007, p. 20f.; Pavlik & McIntosh, 2006, p. 91). Although such appli-
cations already exist to a small extent (Breunig, 2006, pp. 550-562), the aware-
ness of them among potential users is either too low, or their trialability cannot
be warranted. A systematic review of the production and supply strategies of
Revolution in Journalism? 83

established media companies in relation to mobile multimedia services (MMS)2

is not presently available.
Based on two empirical studies from 2007 and 2009, it is possible to esta-
blish whether we may already speak of the emergence of a form of mobile jour-
nalism. On the one hand, the central objective of the first study was to create an
appraisal of the existing and planned activities of media companies, demonstrat-
ing how technological potential is used to transmit journalistic information and
entertainment. The study also aimed to determine whether there is currently a
sufficient level of attractive services and content that enhance the relative use of
mobile multimedia services to the extent that the innovation can “take off” in the
foreseeable future. On the other hand, the objective was to answer the question
of whether and how journalism (in terms of both content and organization) al-
ready matches the specifics of the new medium, i.e., the extent to which non-
localized communication affects the production of mobile editorial content and
the significance that journalistic content has in the field of mobile multimedia
services. For this purpose, the TV broadcasters’ made-for-mobile news formats
were analyzed in the framework of a quantitative content analysis.
Evidence for the institutionalized dispersion of mobile multimedia services
is provided by the results of the editorial survey. The survey period was June 15
to July 16, 2007. Although the influence of mobile publishing on journalism was
being examined, the study did not take the whole field of journalism into ac-
count. Rather, it concentrated on the core area of topical information dissemina-
tion. In the sense of a purposive sample, the population was determined based on
the selected area of news coverage. It mainly encompassed conventional forms
of media that are suited to the publication of mobile information services. For the
area of electronic media, this includes TV and radio. For print media, it includes
daily and weekly newspapers, as well as news magazines. In addition, news and
program suppliers were included in the population for all selected media types;
these encompass both news agencies and production companies, including inde-
pendent third-party suppliers. The Internet was consciously not classed as an
independent medium, because it would usually be integrated within the estab-
lished media companies.3 The findings can, therefore, not be applied to the entire

2
Mobile multimedia services include all applications and services that can be received or
viewed on a mobile device, that serve the information and entertainment needs of the user, and
that are either editorially created by a media company or in its name or distributed under its
brand. This may occur either by means of mobile broadcasting or via traditional broadcasting
standards.
3
Pure online providers are not considered in the study, because the effects on the editorial
organization of conventional media are the main focus. For years, conventional media have
displayed firm structures. On the contrary, online providers – like multimedia services – allow
themselves to be classed in the category of new media. Furthermore, they have been in exist-
84 Cornelia Wolf and Ralf Hohlfeld

field of editorial journalism; at best, they are representative of professionally

disseminated, current information from the field of specialized news journalism
and its editorial departments. Sampling was based on a mixed process of full
sampling and random sampling. A full sample was possible for daily and weekly
newspapers, as well as for public and private television and radio broadcasters,
both national and statewide. A systematic random sample was used only for
private television and radio stations operating locally and regionally. A total of
285 questionnaires were sent out, of which 137 questionnaires were completed
(representing 147 sample units), which constituted a satisfactory return of 48.1
percent.4 In comparing the distribution according to subsamples and returns, it is
clear that there is no distortion due to above-average number of returns in one of
the subsamples. However, newspapers are represented by a somewhat higher
value. Therefore, it can be assumed that the sample validity is high, which allows
the sample to be taken as representative.

Many Media Companies Are Already Using the Mobile Channel

As a result of the increasing technological and organizational convergence, the

mobile channel is being widely used by German media companies. In 2007,
independent multimedia services were being offered by 44 percent of media
companies. A further 39 percent were planning to implement them at the time.
Only one in six editorial departments did not wish to incorporate MMS in the
future.
Accordingly, mobile devices are already being perceived as a new channel
by German broadcast and print editorial departments. The numerically largest
group of the newspaper editorial departments lies approximately in the middle of
the examined sample. Only one in ten newspapers is not considering MMS at
present. Ninety percent of newspapers are, to an equal extent, either already in
the market or planning to be in the future. Categorized by reach, it is apparent,
however, that the proportion of MMS providers among regional newspapers
(37%) is much lower than that of national newspapers (80%). However, more
than half of the regional newspapers are planning to offer mobile services in the
future. Mobile news and entertainment services are even more dispersed in the
case of TV broadcasters. More than half the TV editorial departments are already
offering MMS. A further 29 percent are in the planning stage. Here, the services

ence for only a few years, so one can assume that structures are oriented toward computer-
mediated communication from the outset and that technical know-how is more dispersed than
it is for conventional media.
4
In relation to the sample units, the return stood at 49.3 percent (147/298).
Revolution in Journalism? 85

were provided primarily by the national broadcasters. Whereas 83 percent of the

national TV broadcasters offer mobile multimedia services, the figure for the re-
gional broadcasters stands at less than 29 percent. The content, broadcast mainly
over UMTS, is spread across free-of-charge, complete broadcasts (e.g., Euro-
sport, CNN Mobile, and n-tv), selected pay-per-view highlights from private
broadcasters (e.g., RTL mobile TV, ProSieben mobile, SAT.1 mobile), and free-
to-air, public made-for-mobile formats (e.g., “Tagesschau in 100 Sekunden”,
“Rundschau Handy News”). These are examined in more detail below. Among
the radio editorial departments, only 17 percent claimed not to be considering
MMS. After the introduction of digital radio in Germany, which experienced
only a limited level of success, the broadcasters have evidently realized that
mobile devices offer new opportunities to establish themselves in the digital
market and to fight the audio competition of music downloads and MP3 players
with their own services.

Figure 1: Implementation of mobile multimedia services, N = 137, values in

percentages.

Economic reasons are a particular deterrent for entering the market

The main arguments against market entry, as specified by non-providers, include

low demand (22%) and waiting to see how the market will develop (22%). In
addition, high costs (18%) and the absence of a clearly defined target group
(16%) are also important factors in deciding against the publication of mobile
services. Less common reasons were a lack of technical possibilities (11%) and
insufficient technical know-how (5%). The arguments against the mobile chan-
86 Cornelia Wolf and Ralf Hohlfeld

nel are thus much more related to economic factors than to technological ones.
On the contrary, there are numerous arguments for entering the market. Both
MMS providers and MMS planners primarily aim to address young target
groups. This is promising insofar as studies have shown that young people in
particular display a higher interest in mobile services (Kaumanns & Siegenheim,
2006, p. 502), while at the same time being the group most equipped with the
required devices5 (Medienpädagogischer Forschungsverbund Südwest, 2009, p.
9). The intention to serve customers through all channels within the framework
of a cross-media strategy, and to incorporate MMS as an additional channel into
the service portfolio, is equal among MMS providers and planners. The early
providers of MMS evidently want to adopt a pioneering role in the market; half
of them specified “new technological possibilities” and “image reasons” as moti-
vations for entering the market. To act in a journalistically innovative manner
thus plays an important role. For planned mobile activities, it is also important,
however, to offer fresher content and to reuse it for mobile multimedia services
alongside existing online editing. Among the newspaper editorial departments, it
is noticeable that almost two-thirds of MMS providers and almost 80 percent of
MMS planners would like to acquire young target groups.

The Right Information, at the Right Time, in the Right Place

Two prominent features of mobile communication lie in localization and context

sensitivity. These features potentially combine the location of the mobile recep-
tion with the activities that are possible there, taking into consideration the user’s
preferences. This scenario ensures the right information will always reach the
recipient at the right time and in the right place (Buse & Fiedler, 2008). To this
extent, the future of mobile information services clearly lies in focusing locally.
The surveyed editorial departments mainly take these specific characteristics of
multimedia services into account. However, substantial differences exist between
MMS providers and MMS planners. World news (including Germany) and
sports news are most frequently included under information services that are
already available in the market. Local news comes a distant second, followed by
soccer results and business news. For planned information services, a clear shift
can be seen toward location-based services: Local news and local event tips
belong to the preferred type of content to be introduced to the market in the fu-
ture. As a result, a significant shift away from world news and business news can
be expected, and only a fraction of editorial departments in the planning stage
specified these as content for future mobile information services.

5
For 12- to 19-year-olds, this stands at 100 percent.
Revolution in Journalism? 87

Future providers are thus focusing on information specific to target groups

on at least a local level. In contrast, sports and football news appear to be some-
what change-proof. As expected, the largest activities in the area of mobile in-
formation services are performed by newspapers and news magazines because
this form of mobile service is the most similar to print media. Furthermore, 57
percent of newspapers are already offering local information services, in contrast
to only 8 percent of the TV editorial departments that were surveyed. Nine out of
ten newspapers, as opposed to only one-third of TV broadcasters, would even
like to give the information service a local orientation in the future. The reason
for this is presumably the strong national orientation of the TV broadcasters in
the sample. This, however, is counterbalanced by the services in the area of mo-
bile TV, because the described tendency toward a local and regional character is
also present here. Although news programs are still being offered most fre-
quently in conventional formats (22%), these programs will become less impor-
tant in the future (15%). In comparison with the services available today (7%),
the regional character of services will develop further in the future (15%), en-
abling regional mobile TV services to eventually establish themselves equally.
Primarily, the described trend will thereby be led naturally by TV providers.
However, one in five newspaper editorial departments that are planning MMS
indicated that they would also like to set up regional mobile TV. Alongside in-
formation services and mobile TV, media companies are also offering mobile
entertainment as part of their mobile publications. Economically, mobile multi-
media services aimed at entertainment have so far been one of the most success-
ful areas of mobile applications.

Made-for-Mobile Formats are Still a Scarce Commodity

Successful providers of information-oriented online services are known to place

emphasis on the exclusivity of content and its media-specific design and prepa-
ration. In the field of mobile communication, it can also be assumed that offers
for which the specifics of the usage situation have been addressed during their
preparation and composition will have a greater chance for success. Sophisti-
cated formats of conventional media, set up as simulcasts, have only limited
suitability due to the specific characteristics of mobile devices. The main reasons
for this handicap are the small display size of the devices and the application
scenarios, which are usually set against a mobile backdrop, during non-occupied
time, and often in public places. Across all services (i.e., information services,
entertainment services and mobile TV), 39 percent of providers claim to produce
contributions or programs specifically for mobile devices. In relation to the pos-
sible emergence of a form of mobile journalism, the study shows that only 22
88 Cornelia Wolf and Ralf Hohlfeld

percent of MMS providers claim to produce journalistic content exclusively for

MMS. These mobile-specific information services include sports news and re-
gional announcements.
Likewise, the fact that two-thirds of the surveyed editorial departments con-
sider the importance of using mobile content to be low also speaks against the
establishment of a form of mobile journalism. Three-quarters indicated that they
consider the importance of research for mobile publishing to be low. It is mainly
newspaper publishers and TV broadcasters that produce specific made-for-mo-
bile formats. Despite the comparatively high value for mobile-specific formats
— based on the information provided by the editorial departments — a rear-
rangement of the content and forms of conventional media should be the most
widely adopted practice at present. Selecting, summarizing and composing exist-
ing content and/or its highlights into new topic bundles are clearly the main
editorial process (Breunig, 2006, p. 561), whereas the smallest proportion uses
content that is identical to that of the mother medium.

News Desk Concepts Benefit Cross-Media Work

Alongside mobile-specific content, an alignment with the appropriate forms of

editorial organization and mobile-specific restructuring measures in the media
companies would support the development of a form of mobile journalism. The
development of news desk concepts that facilitate media-neutral information
management, and that also favor the separation of editor and reporter (Meier,
2007 p. 4), can in principle provide good foundations for cross-media — and
thus also for mobile — publishing. Editors plan and design, and reporters re-
search and write — across different media. German media companies have al-
ready been using this model for several years. The fundamental difference is
that, whereas editors previously contested all issues as lone warriors — from
identification of topics, to research, implementation and final proofing — the
news desk places more emphasis on teamwork beyond departmental boundaries
(Meier, 2006; Meier, 2009). Among the surveyed media companies, this form of
editorial organization currently stands in second place, and it is practiced by one
in three editorial departments.
Overall, almost two-thirds of media companies indicated that an online edi-
torial department exists in-house. Among MMS providers, this is the case in
more than four out of five instances, whereas the figure among non-providers of
MMS is much lower (one-third). The distribution for planned mobile services
corresponds approximately to the overall distribution. Thus, publishing of mo-
bile services at present is closely related to cross-media activities online. If one
considers that no online editorial departments were included in the research
Revolution in Journalism? 89

sample, then there is much to suggest that mobile services are already widely
integrated in online cross-media environments (inline), rather than existing only
as isolated applications (stand-alone) in connection with conventional media.
Thus, the question as to whether the associated online editorial department
functions only as a sub-department within the surveyed media companies — or
whether it has a separate status with autonomous editorial management — also
has an influence on the provision of mobile multimedia services. This is the case
for 35 percent of the online editorial departments surveyed. In 54 percent of
cases, the online department plays a subordinate role. In the case of the editorial
departments that have not yet entered the market with MMS, the number of
subordinate online editorial departments lies as high as 66 percent. Only 21
percent are managed autonomously. In comparison, MMS providers are defined
by a higher proportion (47 percent) of autonomous online editorial departments;
the online editorial department is integrated for only 43 percent of MMS provid-
ers. This also suggests a positive connection between established online structure
and mobile publishing. To a large extent, the responsibility for executing mobile
multimedia services lies with online editors. In 40 percent of cases, mobile
publishing is performed by editors from the main editorial department. However,
32 percent of the mobile content is created by online editors, and a further 11
percent is automatically pulled from the internet by editorial systems and content
management systems (CMS). If an online editorial department exists at the MMS
provider, then the content is primarily generated by the editors in this depart-
ment.
It would appear that the dispersion of mobile multimedia services is linked
to the establishment of online solutions. This finding suggests that the online
landscape is becoming the central hub of multimedia channels, to which the
mobile channel will also belong in the future. Whether the online-accelerated
execution of mobile services will result in a separate form of mobile journalism
remains to be seen. From the perspective of journalistic personnel, one would
have to say that this is not the case at present: Only five editorial departments
currently have editors who are exclusively concerned with preparing mobile
multimedia services. These editorial departments, however, do demonstrate some
innovation potential, four of them having already taken the leap into the mobile
market before 2005.

Conventional Editorial Organization will be Replaced in the Future

Structural changes in the editorial departments can be observed on three levels:

Fundamental editorial organization, editorial procedures and editorial personnel.
Regarding the procedures, it is proven that the news desk model is assuming
90 Cornelia Wolf and Ralf Hohlfeld

increasing importance. Sixty percent of the editorial departments that are willing
to restructure are planning to convert to the principle of central information man-
agement.
Almost half of the MMS providers have already done so. In the future, this
form will thus advance to the preferred model of editorial organization and, in
times of the multi-channel strategy, will replace conventional editorial organiza-
tion. Furthermore, there will be significant changes in general production pro-
cesses and technology. Around a third of the restructured editorial departments
have implemented new editorial and content management systems in the course
of pursuing a stronger mobile orientation.
On the contrary, a different picture exists in relation to the fundamental re-
structuring of the organizational units. When the main question of what makes
editorial departments mobile is asked, what is perhaps the decisive factor in the
organization is revealed: Almost half of the respective MMS providers have
already made radical changes in the form of new departments and editorial de-
partments, as well as creating cross-departmental teams. Around a quarter have
formed new departments. The MMS planners who envisage restructuring are
significantly more reserved in this regard. Fewer than one in ten editorial de-
partments is planning new divisions or departments. One in three is trying cross-
departmental teams. Regarding personnel changes, the tendencies of both groups
are the same. Existing employees are trained and educated in mobile publishing
to enable them to operate the new distribution channel. As a whole, restructuring
by future providers will occur more in the area of procedures, whereas — on a
visible level — existing mobile multimedia services were more likely to lead to
organizational changes in the editorial departments.

Future Prospects: Journalism 2012

In German newsrooms, there is 96 percent certainty that mobile publishing will

become an integral part of journalism. However, the scope and quality of this
mobile element of journalism is debatable at present. Alongside computer-medi-
ated communication via stationary and portable computers, it is highly likely that
the mobile device is now also responsible for the deep-seated changes in mass
communication processes. These changes now not only occur unilaterally, but
also are intermittently interactive, enabling constant, direct feedback. According
to many of the respondents, one of the most likely editorial consequences of
individualization is that news in the future will be researched for target groups
and, as a result of possible identification and localization, will even be positioned
in the relevant medium in a manner specific to the target group. Within the scope
of an open question regarding journalism in the future, the trend was reiterated
Revolution in Journalism? 91

that every topic will be produced for several channels, namely in the form of a
media-specific topicality and relevance chain. The current scenarios for the mo-
bile channel and the internet will be the beginning. The daily newspaper will be
seen as the last link in the exploitation chain — but as having the highest quality
content. Two effects of the multi-channel journalism related to these scenarios
could fundamentally change the editorial organization of German news journa-
lism. First, a greater distinction is expected between pure producers and/or news
managers and researching and writing reporters, as is traditional in Anglo-Saxon
journalism. Topic specialists will research and write, irrespective of the medium,
and channel specialists will prepare the content in a medium-specific manner.
Second, cross-media and multimedia processes could soon also result in compa-
ratively fewer, but more specialized and better-paid, editors taking over the
production of content and topics, which will be supplied to them by many lower-
paid freelance workers for TV, radio, print, online and mobile platforms. This
journalistic infantry then will no longer work for the (type of) media, but, rather,
for cross-media brands and all their permutations.

The Scope and Quality of a Form of Mobile Journalism Are Still Unclear

The independence of mobile services — and thus the potential for autonomous
mobile journalism — should not be overestimated. Mobile multimedia services
will in all cases presumably be a complementary, additional channel in the port-
folio of media companies operating across different media, which at best will
form and strengthen brands. It is likely that mobile multimedia services in
online-dominated cross-media environments will profile themselves as “online,
small and portable”. Positioned in such a way, the eventual best-case scenario is
that a niche use is created in this channel for its multimedia services, which
should particularly flourish in situations in which people are waiting or traveling.
According to this version of future scenarios, mobile services will contribute
toward consolidation of multi-channel journalism. Regarding the design of these
services, which will soon be offered by a significant majority of German media
companies, the future undoubtedly lies in the made-for-mobile principle. Much
potential still exists to optimize services for mobile use. In the face of flagging
demand, many providers are keeping expensively developed mobile phone–TV
formats — i.e., interactive “mobisodes” — under wraps.

Made-for-Mobile Is Put to the Test

For the reasons cited above, mobile TV news formats (which, according to the
TV broadcasters, had been developed especially for mobile reception) were spe-
92 Cornelia Wolf and Ralf Hohlfeld

cifically examined in a further study in 2009 and compared with their counter-
parts in conventional television. It was assumed that the mobile information
services of current news broadcasts would differ from TV news broadcasts in
terms of content and design.
Due to the mobile usage situation (filling short periods of unoccupied time
in public places), one can expect a reduction in length, a multitude of design
elements and different styles of camera work in the case of made-for-mobile
formats. Due to the relatively small display screen of the mobile phone, the
presentation type and length of overlays and lower thirds were also examined.
For this study, we examined whether the topics and content of TV news are tai-
lored to the usage context of mobile formats, i.e., whether they have a small
variety that meets the user’s requirement for fast and concise information. In
addition to the design and content aspects of mobile information services, we
also examined to what extent the current providers produce images specifically
for mobile devices — or if, as expected, they merely perform an editorial selec-
tion and summarization of existing image material from conventional media.
The examined broadcasts were recorded on July 8, 2009, and analyzed by
means of a quantitative content analysis. In total, ten broadcasts were examined
for a total of 182 analysis units (contributions). The objects of the analysis were
the main news broadcasts, the mobile news formats of the two national public
TV broadcasters (ARD and ZDF), and a regional public broadcaster (BR), as
well as a private full-content broadcaster (RTL) and a private special-interest
broadcaster (N24). Individually, these are “Tagesschau” for ARD compared with
“Tagesschau in 100 Sekunden” for mobile TV. For ZDF, the TV program
“heute” was compared with “heute in 100 Sekunden”, for Bayerischen Rundfunk
“BR Rundschau” was compared with the mobile “Rundschau news”, for RTL
“RTL aktuell” was compared with “RTL kompakt”, and for N24 “N24 Na-
chrichten” was compared with “N24 kompakt”. In an additional module, the
mobile news formats were studied over the course of the day. These broadcasts
were recorded on July 8, 2009, at 10.00, 13.00 and 16.00, respectively and, fi-
nally, at the time of the main news broadcast on TV. These broadcasts, too, were
analyzed according to the rules of quantitative content analysis.

Formal Differences Exist Between TV and Mobile News

As far as the design of mobile and TV news, it is clear that the portable version
is different on both a program and a contribution level. A comparison of the
lengths of the analysis units shows clear differences: At 11 seconds, the contri-
butions of the mobile news are significantly shorter than those of the TV broad-
casts (37 seconds). At the same time, the number of contributions, as well as the
Revolution in Journalism? 93

spectrum of presentation formats used, is lower. Whereas TV news exhibits

between 14 and 36 contributions, the figure for mobile broadcasts stands at be-
tween 7 and 13. Presentation elements6 are thereby used less frequently in the
mobile broadcasts. In all forms, these amount to 33 percent for TV programs and
only 21 percent for mobile formats. The greeting makes up the largest proportion
(8%) of the presentation for mobile broadcasts. Further evidence of the low rele-
vance of packaging and presentation in mobile broadcasts is demonstrated by the
total number of analysis units lacking these two categories. Here, the total num-
ber is only slightly different in the case of mobile broadcasts. It is somewhat
different in the case of TV formats, for which the number of analysis units is
significantly lower. Due to the shorter program duration, linking and comple-
mentary presentation elements such as introductory and closing presentation,
transitional presentation and presenter discussions are consciously not used in
the case of mobile news. In addition to the differences in how presentation ele-
ments are used, it is also evident that the diversity is limited for the broadcasts
that were examined. Of 23 possible categories, 16 are used in the mobile for-
mats. For TV news, a total of 20 are used. In addition, there are mobile-exclusive
design elements such as “read-out news with speaker and theme overlay,” “read-
out news with graphics in the foreground” and “news in film with theme over-
lay”.
After determining that presentation elements play only a secondary role, the
question arises as to whether topics in mobile broadcasts are more likely to be
announced by written overlays that offer the recipient some orientation. When
considering the percentage proportions of theme overlays in all broadcasts, it
becomes apparent, however, that the mobile news broadcasts make only slightly
more use of these overlays (37%) than do their TV counterparts (34%). Con-
versely, this means that more than half of the contributions are sent without
lower thirds, i.e., the topic is transported only via the available images and/or
voiceover. In general, public broadcasters use theme overlays more frequently
than do private broadcasters. As a whole, however, one can say that the oppor-
tunity to provide the recipient with written orientation is not used sufficiently.
Furthermore, the format “read-out news with background” (presenter before an
overlaid image), which is not suitable for mobile usage, is not used. Split screen
is also not used.

6
Presentation elements include introductory presentation, closing presentation, transitional
presentation, greeting and exit.
94 Cornelia Wolf and Ralf Hohlfeld

Camera Movement is Restricted

When program and contribution length, as well as the design elements of mobile
news, are aligned with the mobile usage situation, how the individual analysis
units are arranged in relation to editing technique and camera work becomes
interesting. If one now takes the individual analysis units as a basis, the study
shows that the number of shots used is significantly lower. Whereas a maximum
value of up to 30 shots is reached for the main TV news broadcasts, which last
an average of 12 seconds, the number for mobile news formats stands at a maxi-
mum of seven shots. On average, the individual contributions consist of around
three-and-a-half shots, lasting an average of 7 seconds.
Furthermore, the number of pan shots and camera movements is lower for
mobile news than for the TV formats that were studied. In 71 percent of cases,
the broadcasters do not use any camera movements within the individual shots
for mobile formats. For TV news, the figure stands at 65 percent. Only the num-
ber of camera zooms is practically identical for both formats. This finding sug-
gests that the mobile broadcasts, even if only to a small extent, are tailored to the
mobile usage situation regarding camera movement. Accordingly, mobile news
(with 2 percent) uses more fixed images (photos, diagrams, graphics) in its news
than do its corresponding TV formats. In relation to the camera shots, it can be
concluded that semi close-up and extreme close-up shots are used more fre-
quently in mobile broadcasts, but that TV formats contain a higher percentage of
close-up shots.

Range of Topics in TV and Mobile TV News

Whereas in conventional TV broadcasts, topics from all 11 categories are cov-

ered7, only 4.5 topic areas are covered in the mobile version.

Updating the Programs

How important the currency of the news is for mobile broadcasts is demonstrated
by the samples mentioned above spread over a day. Accordingly, one broadcast
from all mobile news providers was examined at 10:00, 13:00, 16:00 and 19:00
or 20:00 regarding its coverage. Here it is not only the topic of the report that is
important but also where the individual contributions are positioned in the
broadcasts. In the majority of mobile formats, the opening topic of the 10:00
7
The topics were organized in the following categories: National Affairs, Foreign Affairs,
Business, Science and Research, Private Lives of Celebrities, Accidents, Human Interest, Envi-
ronmental Disasters, Sports, Culture, and Weather.
Revolution in Journalism? 95

broadcast thus loses importance throughout the day and is completely omitted
from the news format in the last time slot. Although this is not the case for every
topic in every broadcast, all the broadcasts that were examined demonstrated
differences throughout the day, both in the choice of topic and in the positioning
of the topic in the schedule. This finding suggests that each broadcast is newly
formulated in light of current events.
Regarding the visual material that is used, we found that contributions in which
the visual material of the mobile broadcast is completely identical to that of the
TV broadcast made up almost half (46%) of all studied analysis units. Twenty
percent of the visual material was only partially identical to that used in the TV
news version, and 11 percent of the contributions showed visual material that
was completely different from that used in the conventional TV format. Around
23 percent of the mobile contributions were not seen in the TV broadcasts (i.e.,
no visual material was used). Moreover, the differences between public and
private TV broadcasters were notable: Whereas the former used more visual
material that was not used in the TV broadcasts, the private broadcasters demon-
strated a visual material adoption rate of almost 90 percent (i.e., “visual material
is completely identical”). Whether “completely different” visual material is pro-
duced specifically for use in mobile news, or whether available visual material
that has not yet been used for TV is primarily selected and/or composed for mo-
bile formats, cannot be determined from the data. However, it can be expected
— especially regarding the low alignment of the design elements — that the pro-
duction of mobile-specific visual material has not been adopted at this point, and
that existing visual material is therefore primarily used.

First Alignments Can Be Seen, But Are Not Yet Sufficient

The main findings of the study support the hypothesis that mobile news formats
differ from conventional TV news in their design. As a rule, therefore, the mo-
bile broadcasts are significantly shorter, both on a program and a contribution
level, and contain less presentation and linking elements between the individual
contributions. In particular, linking and complementary presentation elements
such as introductory presentations, transitions and closing presentations are sig-
nificantly fewer. Furthermore, the presentation elements that occur are shorter in
relation to the TV formats. Long presentation formats are avoided, and text-pic-
ture combinations are preferred. As far as the shots, there were fewer changes,
and the shots did not differ much in length from those of their TV counterparts.
An alignment of content with the mobile usage situation takes place only to a
limited extent. Individual broadcasters reduce their topic range significantly,
however. Based on the study results, it can generally be observed that the poten-
96 Cornelia Wolf and Ralf Hohlfeld

tials for the design of mobile news have not yet been fully recognized or ex-
ploited by providers.
In summary, it can thus be said that providers of mobile news broadcasts
address only the specific usage situation and the particular technical characteris-
tics of mobile devices, and only to a limited extent. This is reflected in the results
of the editorial survey. According to these results, 39 percent of providers claim
to produce contributions or programs specifically for mobile devices, but only 22
percent of providers produce specific journalistic content exclusively for mobile
devices. This finding corresponds with the research results of the TV study. Until
now, the production of mobile formats has been mainly restricted to the rear-
rangement of content and forms from conventional TV formats. This is attributa-
ble to the low rank that the researching and processing functions for mobile
content occupy in editorial departments. Due to the lagging demand for mobile
phone–TV formats thus far, conventional providers do not yet appear to be ready
to invest sufficient time and funds into optimizing their mobile services in line
with their specific characteristics related to reception and technical requirements.
The success of mobile news programs, however, depends on alignment with the
new format. If the user is unable to recognize any added value in consuming
mobile news, media companies will not be able to attain a sufficient level of
usage to be profitable. The mobile productions by public broadcasters should be
seen as the initial benchmarks. In particular, the format used in the program
“heute in 100 Sekunden” by ZDF should be noted. Although the program still
has shortcomings as far as overlays and camera shots, and in terms of length,
presentation and tapering of design elements, it is associated with mobile usage
to the greatest degree. As far as content, we need to accept that, even in the fu-
ture, there will be limited room for depth in the mobile mass medium.
To achieve sufficient added value for the user, it is necessary for mobile
news providers to supply content that clearly goes beyond being simply a more
compact version of regular TV news; in this way, the exclusivity of mobile news
will be ensured. Because the constantly changing geographic location of the user
is one of the characteristics specific to the mobile device, it would make sense
for the mobile content provider to start with regional information. Thus, we can
assume that the trend for the future will “move more towards tailored, context-
sensitive local information for mobile recipients” (Hohlfeld & Wolf, 2008, p.
213).
The observation that potentials for the design of mobile news have not yet
been fully recognized or exploited by the providers needs to be specified.
Overall, adjustments to mobile specifications in the visual field of mobile
news are obviously more pronounced than in the text-based dimension. This
result is obvious because the miniaturization of the online channel naturally has a
Revolution in Journalism? 97

greater effect on the visual design. At the same time, it should be noted that it is
harder to adapt visual content to different contexts than it is to adapt textual
content.
Consequently, the noted changes in the visual material used for mobile
communication are the result of pure reduction. Neither the waiver on the pro-
duction of mobile-specific visual material nor the more economical use of
camera angles and camera movements suggest changes in how visual material is
applied in mobile communication.

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Which Place for Mobile Television in Everyday Life?
Evidence from a Panel Study

Thilo von Pape and Veronika Karnowski

1 Introduction

Television and mobile telephone constitute two media technologies that are
strongly anchored in most consumers’ everyday life. Hence, combining those
two seems a promising bet. Not surprisingly, early expectations on the success of
mobile TV were extremely confident (European Commission 2008, Abiniak,
2008, Cugnini, 2008). While no reliable data for a realistic evaluation of the
global market for mobile TV can be found today, there is a general agreement
that the early expectations were far too optimistic. As Goggin sums up in 2010 ,
“consumers have been slow to turn to mobile television” (Goggin, 2010, p. 83).
This situation may partly be attributed to the limits of today’s technology –
in general the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS). Based on
point-to-point-technology, it suffers from instability and a loss in image quality
once an important number of people use the technology simultaneously in the
same area (Gaunt, 2007). The hopes thus draw upon new broadcast-based
technologies permitting an unlimited number of users to receive mobile tele-
vision without any lack in quality. The most widely used standard is Digital
Video Broadcasting – Handheld (DVB-H), which is namely used in Europe
(Breunig, 2006). An alternative, which is already well established in South Ko-
rea, is the Digital Terrestrial Multimedia Diffusion which works on the base of
digital radio, but provides a limited offer of approximately six channels (Lee &
Kwak, 2005), whereas the DVB-H allows access to more than 30 channels. In
the US, Qualcom’s MediaFLO is a comparable service competing with DVB-H
and the DTV-standard, propagated by the Open mobile Video coalition
(OMVC), an alliance of U.S. commercial and public broadcasters formed to
accelerate the development and rollout of mobile DTV products and services.
Nevertheless, the experience made with other promising innovations shows
that a sophisticated technology does not guarantee a successful social appropria-
tion and success among the users. Thus, the multimedia messages (MMS) have
never achieved the same success as text messages (Delanay 2008), and the Wire-

C. Martin, T. von Pape (Eds.), Images in Mobile Communication,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-531-93190-6_6,
© VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2012
102 Thilo von Pape and Veronika Karnowski

less Application Protocol (WAP), providing an Internet connection via mobile

phone, has mostly failed (Hung, Ku & Chan 2003). As for visual phoning –
which had first been launched in the 1920s and put into serial production in the
1960s –, it still remains a marginal technology (Kraut & Fish 1995; Noll 1992),
only slowly gaining ground in the context of voice over IP and messaging ser-
vices. The drawbacks hindering these innovations’ success had often been
overseen, partially because the economical or political will to see the innovation
in question as a success had distracted the actors from a realistic perspective,
replacing it either with purely normative arguments or with questionnable
empirical research, which was often not uninterested. As an example for the
former, Richard Goggin refers to EU Commissioner Viviane Reding’s numerous
assertions on the future of mobile TV (European Commission, 2007), paraphras-
ing them as follows: “Mobile television needs to be a success for the econobene-
fit of Europe, thus consumers need to be made aware – in effect, taught – about
its virtues.” As for the empirical research on the potential of mobile TV,
Schuurman and colleagues (2009, p. 304) already cautioned in 2009 that “much
of the existing literature on mobile television is dominated by surveys conducted
or financed by telecom, mobile or media players with strategic interests in the
results.”
These experiences remind of the importance of accompanying the techno-
logical progress with an impartial research, starting out from a users’ perspec-
tive. Analyzing the appropriation of existing offers allows for better evaluating
what an innovation may mean for the user.
First, we will present a theoretical framework which permits to identify the
appropriation process of mobile telephones on the level of pragmatic use, sym-
bolic signification and communication about the technology, referred to as
“meta-communication” (Wirth, von Pape, & Karnowski, 2008). Subsequently,
we will show how the questions coming to the fore in this perspective are trans-
lated into a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. In the results
section, our findings from both empirical approaches are presented. In conclu-
sion, we will draw some advices for the future development of mobile television.

2 A Circular Model of Mobile Phone Appropriation

Most of the studies on the appropriation of mobile communication services draw

upon one of the two following strategies.

Either they identify and evaluate psychological as well as sociological fac-

tors determining the acceptance, adoption and diffusion of the technologies
Which Place for Mobile Television in Everyday Life? 103

on the basis of models like the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1985;
cf. Bouwman, Carlsson, Molina-Castillo & Walden, 2007; Shin, 2007), the
Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989; cf. Pedersen & Nysveen,
2003; Wang, Lo & Fang, 2008), diffusion research (Rogers, 2003; cf. Hsu,
Lu & Hsu, 2006) or combinations of these models (Venkatesh, Morris, Da-
vis & Davis, 2003; cf. Wu, Tao, & Yang, 2007; De Marez, Vyncke, Berte,
Schuurman & De Moor, 2007).

Or they aim to understand the interplay of development factors in the every-
day life of specific users or user groups in a more qualitative sense, which
goes beyond the dichotomy of adoption vs. rejection. This is generally done
by studies based on qualitative methods, often including ethno-methodology
(O'Hara, Mitchell & Vorbau, 2003; cf. Taylor & Harper, 2003; Höflich &
Hartmann, 2006; Hjorth, 2008; Ling, 2004). With the uses-and-
gratifications approach, there is also one approach with quantitative meth-
odology dedicated to a more differentiated perspective on new ICT use
(Ruggiero, 2000; cf. Leung & Wei, 2000; Peters & Ben Allouch, 2005).
Seldom do the studies integrate elements of both perspectives, for instance
by considering the evolution of usage in the course of time (Carlsson, Carls-
son, Puhakainen, & Walden, 2006).

The approach applied in the presented study integrates elements of both perspec-
tives, by combining four elements (Wirth, Karnowski & von Pape, 2007; Wirth
et al., 2008):

Usage and handling of the technology: This question comprises the deci-
sion of adopting a new technology (Davis, 1989; Ajzen, 1985; Venkatesh et
al., 2003) and the social process of its diffusion (Rogers, 2003), but also its
integration into the spatial and temporal context of the users’ everyday life,
which is particularly analyzed with the aid of the domestication approach in
Cultural Studies (Silverstone & Haddon, 1996; Haddon, 2006; Berker, Hart-
mann, Punie & Ward, 2006).

The symbolic dimension of prestige and social identity: The question of
how the users use the technology in the capacity of a prestige object in or-
der to define their social identity is mentioned by the domestication ap-
proach (Silverstone & Haddon, 1996; Haddon, 2006), but also by the Uses-
and-Gratifications approach in communication studies (Leung & Wei, 2000;
Peters & Ben Allouch, 2005; Wei, 2008).

The meta-communication about mobile communication, i.e. the way users
negotiate among each other the norms of usage as well as its social signifi-
cations (Wirth et al. 2008). This question is particularly treated by the ap-
104 Thilo von Pape and Veronika Karnowski

proaches about the social construction of technologies (Bijker, Hughes &

Pinch, 1987; Flichy, 1995; Latour, 2005; Williams & Edge, 1996), but also
by frame analysis (Goffman, 1974; Ling, 2004).
y The time that goes by in the course of the appropriation process. Several of
the mentioned approaches have developed concepts to describe this process,
namely domestication (Silverstone & Haddon, 1996; Haddon, 2006; Lehto-
nen, 2003), social construction of technology (Bijker et al., 1987; Flichy,
1995; Latour, 2005; Williams & Edge, 1996), Uses-and-Gratifications (Pe-
ters & Ben Allouch, 2005) and diffusion research (Rogers, 2003).

The continuous evolution of pragmatic usages and their symbolic signification

under the influence of meta-communication is described in a circular model: The
appropriation is ne-gotiated and renegotiated by the users in a constant process
(Wirth et al., 2007) (figure 1):

Figure 1: Circular model of mobile phone appropriation (Wirth et al., 2007)

During the process of appropriation, usage and handling as well as prestige and
social identity are constantly developing and changing. In time, habitual usage
forms emerge and stabilize as well as social evaluations of the symbolic value of
certain usage forms, namely their appropriateness or style.

2.1 Research Questions

With the above introduced theoretical model, we can decline the overall research
question on the place of mobile television in user’s everyday life to four specific
questions:
Which Place for Mobile Television in Everyday Life? 105

1. Usage: In which situations and for which motives do participants use mo-
bile television?
2. Prestige: Which symbolic value do they associate with it? How does watch-
ing mobile television affect their personal and social identity?
3. Meta-communication: How do the participants communicate about mobile
television among each other and with non-users? How does their environ-
ment react?
4. The evolution of appropriation: How do these factors evolve over time?

2.2 Method

The longitudinal study was realized between September and December 2006.
During this period of time, 44 persons received a third generation (3G) phone
(model Nokia 6280, figure 2) with a SIM card of the access provider Vodafone.
In order to analyze all the elements of appropriation that had been evoked
by the circular model of appropriation, two complementary methods were ap-
plied:

The usage was observed by means of the Experience Sampling Method.

This method had been developed in sociological research about the every-
day life (Larson & Csikszentmihalyi, 1983). It has hardly been applied to
analyze the appropriation of the mobile telephone (Palen, Salzmann &
Youngs, 2000), but it constitutes the foundation of the presented study.

Information about the symbolic value and meta-communication was col-
lected in the guided interviews realized by telephone.

2.3 Sample

In order to imitate a future in which mobile television will be more widespread,

five networks of friends were chosen as participants. By recruiting entire groups
of friends, we permitted our participants to exchange their experiences with the
technology with each other, as would be the case in a situation of advanced dif-
fusion. The choice of networks targeted innovators, who are, according to the
theories of diffusion, rather technophile and wealthy (Rogers, 2003) – the latter
criterion also being demanded by our partner Vodafone in order to come close to
their principal target group.
The first network comprises ten pupils of a high school in the suburb of the
city of Munich, Germany, who were at the average age of 18.5 years. The second
106 Thilo von Pape and Veronika Karnowski

network consisted of ten students from the city of Jena, with the average age of
22.8 years. The three other networks comprise employees of a high socio-
professional level (net revenues of more than 2,500 Euros [corresponding to
about 3.200,- US Dollars in the end of 2006]. They are colleagues who work in
the same company and see each other frequently in their leisure time. Overall,
these groups consist of 22 men and 2 women at the average age of 36.0 years.

Proceeding

All participants had free access to the complete offer proposed by Vodafone live!
for their 3G clients. This offer comprises seven basic channels including Euro-
sport, CNN and the German news channel n-tv as well as diverse entertainment
channels that are normally part of a superior flat rate – such as MTV mobile3,
Bundesliga live (live Premier League soccer games), Pro Sieben mobile (televi-
sion series) and Nick (program for children). In order to best anticipate the future
technological context of mobile television, the participants also had free access
to the Internet, MP3 downloading and visual phoning.

3 waves of guided interviews

Ɣ 1st Interview Ɣ 2nd Interview Ɣ 3rd Interview

12 weeks of experience sampling

weeks of study

Figure 2: Proceeding of data gathering in the course of the study

The findings were collected on the occasion of three guided interview waves by
telephone (around one, six and twelve weeks after the beginning of the survey)
and during twelve weeks by means of a daily sampling of experiences (figure 2).
Which Place for Mobile Television in Everyday Life? 107

Data Gathering

In order to collect a representative sample of experiences, every participant was

contacted every day by a text message at a contingent moment between 8.00 am
and 10.00 pm. The text message comprised the link to an online questionnaire,
which was accessible via the Wireless Application Protocol and was opened in
the web navigator integrated in the telephone. The questionnaire had to be com-
pleted within two hours – after this time it was not accessible anymore.
Thus, the users were interrogated about the services they had been using
during the last two hours. If they had used mobile television, they were asked for
how long and in what kind of situation they did so (for instance, at home, on
public transport, etc.). Likewise, questions about the used programs and their
satisfaction with the offer were asked.

Figure 3: Structure of mobile phone-based survey

The interviews were realized by telephone and comprised approximately ten

open questions: how did the participants feel when they used the devices in pre-
sence of their families and friends as well as in public? How did they talk about
the technology among themselves and with others? etc.
108 Thilo von Pape and Veronika Karnowski

Methodological Caveats

Women are underrepresented in the sample. This is partially due to our difficulty
of finding women earning more than 2,500 Euro net and willing to participate in
the study with the obligations given by our methodology (interviews, daily sur-
veys).
Another limit consists in the realization of the interviews by telephone,
which often makes the respondents express themselves more restrained than they
would do in a face-to-face situation.
The decision to offer all the 3G telephone services free of charge to the par-
ticipants might seem unrealistic taking into account that the providers will even-
tually want to refinance their services. However, excluding the economic factor
allowed us to focus entirely on the often neglected social factors of usage. As for
the very advantageous economic conditions of our study, we took them into
account in our interpretation of the results.

3 Results

First of all, the findings about the practical use – gained by applying the Experi-
ence Sampling Method - will be presented. These results will then be completed
by a partial analysis of the interviews, namely about the symbolic dimension and
the meta-communication concerning mobile TV.

Use of the Mobile Telephone and of Mobile TV

The online questionnaire has been completed 2444 times in total. Hence, we
dispose of information about 2444 utilization periods of two hours length each.
Calling and sending text messages are the most frequently used functionalities,
whereas mobile television does not show more than 155 utilizations, which cor-
responds to 6.3 % (see figure 4).
Which Place for Mobile Television in Everyday Life? 109

Proportion of utilizations in % (N=2444)

50

39,0
40

30

20 16,5

10 6,3 6,3 5,3 5,0 4,0

2,0
0
Telephony Text Mobile Camera AgendaOther services Games Visual
messaging television by telephony
Vodafone live!

Figure 4: “Which functionality did you use during the last two hours?”

Almost three quarters of the 155 utilization sessions of mobile television took
less than 15 minutes. Hence, its usage is rather seldom and quick (figure 5).

Proportion of utilizations in % (N=155)

50

40 38,1
33,5
30

20 16,8
11,0
10

0
0-5 min. 5-15 min. 15-30 min. over 30 min.

Figure 5: “During how much time did you use mobile television in the course
of the last two hours?”
110 Thilo von Pape and Veronika Karnowski

In the course of the day, the main period of utilization is between 6 pm and mid-
night (more than 50 % of sessions). This finding corresponds with the place of
utilization because – in half of the cases – the spatial setting is at home and not in
public (figure 6).

Proportion of utilizations in % (N=155)

50 47,7

40

30 25,8

20 18,1

10 7,7

0
Public transport At home Other
(at work, in car, ...)

Figure 6: “In which situation did you make use of mobile television?”

It remains to examine how the number of mobile television utilizations develop-

ed. After a first period of playful exploration (phase I), it diminishes and stabi-
lizes at a low level from the fourth week forward (phase II, cf. figure 7).

This stabilization of usage is crucial for the success of a service. Therefore,

we will study the second period of the survey (when the total of used functionali-
ties diminishes) in detail. A first look on the overall uses of the different mobile
phone applications provided shows an overall decline. This decline can partially
be explained by the fact that the participants had received a new device for free
use and were thus naturally incited to explore and test all services and functiona-
lities available at the beginning. Hence, one could have expected an overall de-
cline in use. However, this decline is particularly rigorous for the mobile televi-
sion, which passes from 10.7 % of the utilizations in the first period to 3.3 % in
the second period. Thus, it did not at all succeed in establishing its position in the
everyday life of the participants – even though they could use it for free (cf.
figure 8).
Which Place for Mobile Television in Everyday Life? 111

35
Number of reported mobile TV sessions

32
30
Phase I Phase II
25
20
20

15 16
11 10
10
9 7
5 7
5
0
41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

week

Figure 7: Mobile Television: number of sessions per week (N=155; beginning

and end of the survey vary between the groups; we only present the
nine weeks when everyone participated simultaneously)

Proportion of utilization in %
50
43,3
40
36,1

30

18,6
20
15,1
10,7 9,4
10 5,8 6,2
3,3 4,2 4,9 3,8 5,1 4,8 4,0
3,2 3,0
0,6
0
Telephony Text Mobile Camera Agenda Other ser- Games Visual Others
messaging television vices by telephony (alarm,
Vodafone etc.)
live!

Phase I (n=979) Phase II (n=1465)

Figure 8: “Which functionality did you use during the last two hours?”
112 Thilo von Pape and Veronika Karnowski

Despite the disappointing findings, it may at least be pointed out that the single
utilization periods are longer during the second phase than in the course of the
first phase. This shows explicitly that the utilization is not anymore a matter of
playful exploration of the service, but a real watching of the programs (cf. figure
9).

Proportion of utilization in %
50
42,9
40
35,2
28,6 30,6
30
22,4
20 18,4
14,3
10 7,6

0
0-5 min. 5-15 min. 15-30 min. over 30 min.

Phase I (n=105) Phase II (n=49)

Figure 9: “During how much time did you use mobile television in the course
of the last two hours?”

The domestic usage still prevails in the second period (cf. figure 10). Hence, mo-
bile television remains a service competing with classic television at home and
does not succeed in filling any usage niches in moments of transition and mobil-
ity (waiting time, on public transport, etc.).
Which Place for Mobile Television in Everyday Life? 113

Proportion of utilization in %
70
61,2
60

50
41,9
40
29,5
30
21,9
20 18,4
10,2 10,2
10 6,7

0
Waiting Public transport At home Other
(bus station, public (at work, in car, ...)
place)

Phase I (n=105) Phase II (n=49)

Figure 10: “In which situations have you been using mobile television?”

This conclusion was confirmed by the statements of the participants in the course
of the interviews:

“The thing is, that, let’s say, the occasions for usage were not really given.” (Peter,
33, employee from Heidelberg, interview 3)

The only single usage pattern which could clearly be identified both on the basis
of quantitative and qualitative findings was that a considerable number of partici-
pants watched the Premier League soccer matches, which were offered live
namely on early Saturday evenings. These uses were mainly at home.
An analysis of the qualitative interviews will finally give an idea of the evo-
lution on the symbolic dimension as well as on the level of meta-communication.
114 Thilo von Pape and Veronika Karnowski

Symbolic Dimensions

At the beginning, the participants’ curiosity was aroused by the new service, and
they showed an open and interested attitude. This positive attitude is accompa-
nied, as aforementioned, by an exploratory and playful usage of the service and
the entirety of the telephone. However, this enthusiasm about the novelty gets
lost by and by, as evinced by the participants in the second and third wave of
interviews:

“I think the main reason is that somehow the interest got lost, the ‘newness’.” (Her-
bert, 28, employee from Heidelberg, interview 3)

Hence, mobile television does not succeed in finding a legitimization and a

proper signification that goes beyond the fact of being something new. This
characteristic rapidly loses its pertinence, accelerating the downfall of the appeal.
These two phenomena are capable of provoking the decrease of utilization in the
second period of the survey.

Meta-Communication

The communication about the new technology presents itself in a quite analo-
gous manner to what has been stated about the symbolic value: At first, the par-
ticipants often talk about it with their friends and acquaintances – who are
equally interested in the technology and its usages. People benefit from showing
the functioning to their personal environment.

[I talk about it] with friends, but also with the family, and with acquaintances, that is
to say the neighbors etc. – and of course with the colleagues that have the same de-
vice. There, we talk a lot about this subject. After all, with everyone that is around
oneself.” (Michael, 42, employee from Munich, interview 3).

However, this initial enthusiasm calms down quickly.

“It was not during the last four weeks, it was at the beginning that we talked about
it.” (Herbert, 28, employee from Heidelberg, interview 2)

In meta-communication, it can also be observed that mobile television does not

keep its positive image. In the course of the discussions, it is more and more
regarded as a superfluous gadget:
Which Place for Mobile Television in Everyday Life? 115

“It is generally considered a gadget. Like nothing of importance.” (Oliver, 43, em-
ployee from Munich, interview 2)

In the second period, the – very limited – meta-communication deals mainly with
the technical deficiencies of the services. Thus, the participants criticize the
heavy electricity consumption and the limited run-time of the batteries. Further-
more, the long connection delays, the frequent interruptions of the connection as
well as the complex navigation necessary for watching a mobile television pro-
gram are points of criticism.
Except for these remarks, the participants rarely speak about the programs
provided via mobile television. It thus fails to integrate into the participants’
daily communication.

4 Conclusion

The presented study aims to stimulate a discussion about the uses of mobile
television at the moment where – thanks to the technical progress – the break-
through of this technology is expected.
While the technical characteristics of the new technology – and of the latest
evolutions – are well-known, the social factors are much more difficult to antici-
pate because they arise in the course of the process of diffusion and appropria-
tion of the innovation. Hence, the theoretical and methodological challenge is to
anticipate the social evolution of this technology.
The circular appropriation model served as a framework to analyze this evo-
lution and to integrate approaches from different traditions. Methodologically,
we relied on a longitudinal design, to combine qualitative interviews and experi-
ence sampling and to establish our sample on the basis of small groups of friends
instead of isolated individuals.
Despite the ideal economic conditions – free of charge services for all the
participants – mobile television did not succeed in getting established in their
everyday life. The interest in the technology got lost after a short period of
exploration, presentation and exchange, which was provoked by the attractive-
ness of the novelty and possibly enhanced by the thrill participants in any field
study feel when asked to evaluate a novelty (“Hawthorne effect”, Parsons, 1974).
The use decreases, indicating that the technology does not find its place in the
everyday life of the users. The only niche identified was for watching free first
League Soccer matches live, in the early evening and at home. At the same time,
the prestige value diminishes and the technology is finally considered a simple
gadget, which is rather ignored in the daily communication.
116 Thilo von Pape and Veronika Karnowski

So, where in the users’ everyday life does the potential of mobile television
lie?
Probably, this potential does not reside in the usage forms as they exist to-
day: even a mobile phone that works much better could not prevail at the place
where and at the time when participants used the technology the most often, that
is to say at home in the evening. In this context, the technology competes with
domestic television, which already provides impressive technical advances like
huge screens and Dolby surround sound systems. The only true advantage of
mobile TV to these alternatives in the domestic environment is that it permits to
be mobile at home, and hence to move within and between the socially and
technologically defined “mediatopes” of the domestic space (Quandt & von
Pape, 2010). If anything, then tablet computers may be the ideal compromise for
this context, combining a limited mobility sufficient for the home with a limited
quality of usage sufficient for some content.
However, this does not answer the question how mobile TV could be used
on mobile phones. Additional ideas and efforts are needed to turn this promising
technology into an actual success. On the basis of our findings, we see two
directions, towards which the evolution of mobile television could be directed:

y Presenting a mobile television of sufficient quality, which can be used on

the move and in public spaces, as, for instance, on public transport. First
and foremost, this needs excessive labor on the transmission standards, the
devices and contents. The arrival of new broadcast standards with improved
quality is evidently a first important step in this effort, but it will need to be
accompanied by other technological progresses (namely longer-lasting bat-
teries), as well as efforts on ergonomics and contents.
y Giving to mobile television a completely different social signification than
just the one of ‘traditional television on the move’. One strategy to attain
this goal could be to position mobile television in the tradition of an mp3
player. This solution corresponds somewhat to the evolution of Apple’s
iPod, which turned from a highly prestigious mp3-player into a player of
audiovisual material and into a mobile telephone, and which could soon al-
so integrate reception of programs broadcast via DVB-H or other formats.
An alternative strategy could be to inscribe mobile TV into the tradition of a
creative exchange of videos, which is very common among adolescents
nowadays. This idea complies, for example, with the concept of ’grab and
share‘ of audiovisual material on mobile devices, which has been developed
and promoted by Microsoft (Harper, Regan, Rouncefield, Rubens & Al Mo-
sawi, 2007): according to this idea, audiovisual content should be presented
to consumers as a resource, permitting them to pick out elements, to tag and
Which Place for Mobile Television in Everyday Life? 117

potentially modify them, and to share them via networking technology with
their peers. In terms of the presented appropriation model, these measures
would ask for allocating a signification and a place in the daily communica-
tion to mobile television – which goes beyond the simple fact that the inno-
vation is new. There is not only a need for rethinking the uses, but also the
symbolic perception, that is to say its value and prestige, and the meta-
communication about the service. This is a task that implies the design and
the marketing just as the technology itself.

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The Appropriation of Mobile TV through Television
Preferences and Communication Networks

Julien Figeac

1 Introduction

Six years after the marketing of Mobile television (TV), few French people fre-
quently use multimedia cell phones to watch the fifty-channel broadcast. Some
users associate this service with their daily media practices. This choice can be
explained by two factors. First, when the television at home is unavailable, teen-
agers can watch television programs by using mobile phone in their bedrooms.
This factor explains the use of this service in residences. Second, many users
adopt this service because they use public transportation systems to commute to
their workplaces. In addition to listening to music or reading, these users want to
be entertained by watching television when travelling. Television viewing is
favored over the other forms of media consumption, and the users want to try
this new entertainment tool to view their preferred media during their daily
commutes.
In this article, we are interested in this second case because users must ne-
gotiate two important constraints to watch Mobile TV when commuting. First,
their television programming must be adapted to mobile phone screens. For ex-
ample, can a TV series fan watch the latest episodes by using his telephone? Will
the size of the screen, lifespan of the battery and telephone network connection
enable him to follow an episode under good conditions? Will these technical
constraints encourage him to use Mobile TV less often, choosing shorter pro-
grams, such as news shows? Second, the television preferences must be adapted
to travel constraints. The user must evaluate whether the duration of an episode
corresponds to their trip time. Also, trips between two subway stations and trans-
fers in public transportation are problems for telephone network connections that
are linked to underground transport.
Several studies have dealt with these questions. These studies have shown
that numerous constraints prevent users from viewing their preferred television
programs on mobile phones and while travelling. The small screen size of mobile
phones (Chipchase, Yanqing, & Yung, 2007), the short time slots in which they

C. Martin, T. von Pape (Eds.), Images in Mobile Communication,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-531-93190-6_7,
© VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2012
122 Julien Figeac

are used and the noise of urban environments (Södergard, 2003) prompt users to
select programs that are not their main television preference. These constraints,
linked to Mobile TV, contribute to polarizing this televisual consumption to-
wards the news because these programs can be watched over a short period of
time (Knoche & Mc Carthy, 2005; Oksman, Noppari, Tammela, Mäkinen, &
Ollikainen, 2007). This factor explains why television programs that are not
based on a structure of intrigue are at the center of this televisual consumption
(Figeac, 2007). These programs have neither a real beginning nor a real ending.
They do not tell a story, and a user can watch the shows even if the beginning
was missed. The viewer can stop watching the news whenever necessary without
being frustrated in not knowing the end. Consequently, users tend to favor televi-
sion content without a structure of intrigue because they can watch them for
short moments during their trip. We conclude that the viewers choose their fa-
vorite television programs based on a narrative structure that is adapted to the
utilization constraints related to daily commuting.
In this report, we describe how users show reflexivity in adopting Mobile
TV and adapt their choice of television consumption to mobility constraints. We
cannot be satisfied in saying that the viewers use this service to avoid being
bored, from a desire to relax or out of simple curiosity or habit without any par-
ticular preference (O' Hara, Mitchell, & Vorbau, 2007). The users show reflexi-
vity in selecting a TV program that can be watched on the small screens of their
mobile phone over very short periods while commuting. The users denote a “fo-
cus, a suspension, a pause on what is happening” (Hennion, 2004) to select a
specific television genre (Corner, 1991) and to evaluate the selected TV pro-
gram. Through this reflexivity, they evaluate which program is practical to watch
in the current circumstances. They evaluate which television preferences are
adapted to this new screen and which ones correspond to the mobility con-
straints. Thus, they review and renew their television preferences based on these
evaluations.
Contrary to a structuralist vision of media practices, we will show in this ar-
ticle how users assume control of the renewal of their media practices and how
the practical circumstances and the ecological dimension of daily activities inter-
vene in this dynamic of media consumption. We will show how technical medi-
ations also play an active role in the daily renewal of media practices. Indeed, the
principal constraint of use encountered when travelling is phone network availa-
bility. We will show how users negotiate this constraint as opportunists by trans-
forming it into a resource that enables them to explore new content and new
forms of entertainment.
Appropriation of Mobile TV through TV Preferences and Communication Networks 123

1.1 The Structuring Effects of an Invisible Technical Mediation

In this article, we study a specific usage constraint/resource: the availability of a

phone network. The connectivity of the network is constraining because it makes
the use of Mobile TV possible. The unavailability of the phone network can
force users to switch off a program, particularly in underground public transport.
This constraint is specific because it refers to “worked urban environments”
(Licoppe & Levallois-Barth, 2009) that access this mobile service usage.
To observe its effects on the appropriation of Mobile TV, we must refer to
“ubiquitous computing” (Weiser, 1991) because this work preceded, from a
theoretical point of view, the current developments of this service. According to
Weiser, technologies must be invisible: they must be embedded in usage envi-
ronments and must work in the background of the user's awareness. This invisi-
bility of technical mediation can be observed in the use of Mobile TV because
the phone network waves are not perceptible to users. The mobile phone mana-
ges the connection to this invisible technical network. In addition to this invisi-
bilization of technologies, “ambient intelligence” (Dey, Salber, & Abowd, 2001)
proposes to develop technologies that are able to determine by inference what a
user does in a context or tries to do in order to offer the best-adapted service.
Mobile services are not (yet) able to produce such opportunities of usage in pro-
posing the relevant service to use in conjunction with the activity of the user, the
type of phone network available, the force of the signal, the place, the time of
day, etc. These adjustments must be made completely by the users. They must
evaluate the media supports and the services available during their journey to
determine which ones are relevant with regard to the practical circumstances.
This path of research can be explored in the prolongation of ubiquitous
computing by observing how users resort to various opportunities of usage of-
fered to them while commuting. The objective is to locate how the invisible
work of technologies comes to augment urban environments (Harrison & Dour-
ish, 1996; Dourish, 2006). The city can be divided into multiple territories, ac-
cording to their technological equipment and the diversity of usage opportunities
it produces. For example, railway stations form territories that are rich in oppor-
tunities because they are equipped with multiple communication networks: radio,
telephone, GPS and, more recently, Wi-Fi hotspots. It thus becomes interesting
to describe how users demarcate places (Harrison & Dourish, 1996; Dourish,
2006) in urban environments by territorializing their various media activities
around the usage opportunities produced by technology. In this article, we will
show how users demarcate places to use Mobile TV. Users who choose to watch
Mobile TV rather than reading the press will evolve differently in their environ-
ments of mobility. The user who replaces reading the press with watching Mo-
124 Julien Figeac

bile TV will move differently in urban environments. Indeed, he must evaluate

the phone network reception in order to watch a televised program. To do so, the
user will decode the graphic indicators of his mobile phone interface. Even if
these indicators show the availability of Mobile TV at a precise moment, they do
not provide any information on its availability during the trip. This technological
resource does not enable the user to coordinate its use with the itinerary effec-
tively, and the user must extract the indications that provide information on the
(future) availability of Mobile TV from the urban environment. We will show
that the indicators that the user will employ are the same as those that are used to
follow the route (i.e., the name of the stations and place names). It is through the
indicators that he will identify the places where it will be relevant to watch Mo-
bile TV. Our observation point is thus the availability of the phone network to
describe how users proceed to evaluate the connectivity of this technical media-
tion and, consequently, to evaluate the relevance of Mobile TV use in these
practical circumstances. We will show how users demarcate places dedicated to
the use of Mobile TV while describing how they index their television reception
on the availability of this technical mediation. Through this double appropriation
of Mobile TV and its territories of use, we will show how this service comes to
supplement or to replace the media activities that the participants developed
previously in their trajectory of utilization.

1.2 Methodology

The results we will present are extracted from a study in 2007 with a sample of
15 Mobile TV subscribers. This sample is primarily constituted of technophiles;
i.e., 25 to 35-year-old college graduates with a professional occupation in a large
French conglomeration (Paris). To observe their uses in situations of mobility,
we conducted ethnographic observations by using camera glasses (Relieu, 2002).
The users filmed their journeys on public transportation for one week. Our video
database is based on the round trips between their residences and their work-
places. It represents approximately 80 hours of recording.
These video recordings enabled us to describe how travel directs Mobile TV
uses and, reciprocally, how the methods of using this service direct the means of
travel in urban spaces. To show engagement in this form of multi-activity, we
first described the movements of users in public transport: their bust and head
movements, their directed regards and their quick glances (Sudnow, 1972).
While describing how a user stops looking in the direction of his telephone
screen to look at the platform or the name of a station, we will show how his
attention is diverted from the activity of following his route to focus on the
Appropriation of Mobile TV through TV Preferences and Communication Networks 125

activity of television reception. Then, while describing how he once again looks
at the screen, which was kept within glancing range, we recompose the sequen-
tial organization of this form of multi-activity. We show how the distribution of
visual engagements between the uses and the itinerary takes the form of a
succession of logical operations, prefaced by body positioning.
To describe engagement in this form of multi-activity, we then showed the
participants the video recordings of their activities. The objective was to have
them explain their intentions and their tactics in using the method of self-con-
frontation interviews (Theureau, 2004).
This method was developed by ergonomists. It leads the user to discover the
parameters, contained in the situational ecology, orienting his practices. Using
the recordings, he can clarify his activities as he discovers them. The performati-
vity of self-confrontation interviews constitutes a resource in understanding how
media activities and television tastes are positioned. Interviews, questionnaires
and logbooks are not very useful in understanding the ecological setting of media
activities. The ethnographic observations are also too removed from the activities
of the participants to make it possible to observe these settings. With these
observations, it is not possible to understand how users articulate their reading of
a newspaper and evaluating Mobile TV reception based on information from
their mobile phone network indicators. Only the video recordings, coupled with
self-confrontation interviews, show the action of these technological and ecolo-
gical variables in the uses and in the reconfiguration of media activities.

2 The Reconfiguration of Media Activities as a Function of

Communication Network Reception

The members of our sampling chose to watch Mobile TV while commuting, and
they partially reconfigured their old media practices. We see this reconfiguration
in examining the case of Linda, a 42-year-old receptionist. The ways in which
she uses the media seem paradigmatic because the form of entertainment she
chose was reading the newspaper, linked with watching television. To do this,
she reorganized her media activities by alternating her reception of various me-
dia (press, radio and Mobile TV) according to phone and radio network recep-
tivity. Indeed, during the 80 minutes between her residence and her workplace,
she redirected her media activities four times, according to the reception or the
unavailability of the telecommunication networks (see figure 8 at the end of this
article). We now describe the sequential organization of her media practices.
Ever since she has been able to watch television on her mobile phone, Linda
does not perform the same ritual before crossing the threshold (Thibaut, 1994) of
126 Julien Figeac

her residence because she no longer spends her travel time reading. She relies on
her new telephone to replace reading magazines with watching Mobile TV.
Even if she no longer takes magazines with her, she still reads while com-
muting. She now picks up the free daily newspapers that other passengers have
left on the seats of the subway. Consequently, in the morning, she enters the
underground train searching for a seat where there is a free daily newspaper (see
figure 1).

Figure 1: Linda picks up “Matin Plus” before sitting down.

Figure 2: Linda watches “Télématin”.

Appropriation of Mobile TV through TV Preferences and Communication Networks 127

Once she has found a newspaper, she does not read it immediately. She keeps it
on her lap in order to read it later (Figure 2). In other words, she carries out a
preparatory gesture (Datchary & Licoppe, 2007): she keeps this media resource
and thus shows her intention to use it at another time (during this trip or later at
her workplace or at home). It is important to determine when and under what
circumstances the reading of the daily newspaper will occur.
Once seated, she immediately uses her telephone to watch “Télématin” on
TV channel France 2 (Figure 2). During the self-confrontation interview, she
says that she continues watching television, an activity that she had started
during breakfast with her husband and children. Furthermore, she likes to
immediately watch Mobile TV because her favorite television program (the TV
news show “Télématin”) begins at the exact time she takes the subway. In
regularly taking this route, she has learned that she will not be able to watch
Mobile TV beyond fifteen minutes when the train runs beneath Paris. Conse-
quently, she watches Mobile TV as soon as she sits down in the train because she
likes this TV news program, and she knows that it will not be possible for her to
use this mobile service afterwards. Figure 8 (at the end of this article) shows how
this receptionist watched Mobile TV for 13 minutes between the moment she
took the subway (8:00 a.m.) and the moment she no longer had access to the
phone network, just after “Télématin”. We would like to understand how this
user anticipates the unavailability of the phone network to switch off the Mobile
TV before using another media. How is this anticipation deployed in regards to
the practical circumstances of which it takes advantage?
We will answer this question using the video recordings. We will describe
the sequential organization of this transition between these two media activities;
i.e., the end of Mobile TV reception and the beginning of reading the daily
newspaper. We will show which elements of this usage situation the receptionist
perceives as relevant in operating this transition and how this transition is in-
dexed to the availability of the phone network.

2.1 How the Problems of Reception and Media Activities Form a Pragmatic
Test

To answer these questions, we transcribed the video recording of her trip to work
(Figure 8). Once seated in the underground, she watches the televised news
while keeping a free daily newspaper on her lap.
The connection to the program lasts approximately 2 minutes 40 seconds
between the moment she launched it (01:50:07) and the moment the TV news
appears on the screen (04:31:09 ). Then she watches this program for one minute
128 Julien Figeac

before losing the connection (05:27:27). She needs an additional minute to re-
store it (06:34:13). She watches it again for 4 minutes and 44 seconds before
losing the connection with the Mobile TV once again (11:18:17).
This second disconnection occurs 30 seconds after the underground leaves
the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand Station (we will call it “BNF”) (10:49:74).
During the self-confrontation interview, she specifies: “Here, it cannot be picked
up anymore (Mobile TV), so I listen to the radio”. This statement proves that she
had anticipated the unavailability of Mobile TV because she identified this area
as a border area: “after the BNF, nothing can be picked up anymore.” When she
crosses this borderline on her way to the office, she says she stops using Mobile
TV before launching the radio function of her mobile phone that she will listen
to while reading a newspaper.
However, the transcription of this journey shows that she tries to connect
once again to Mobile TV (11:35:06), even if the subway has left station BNF
(10:49:74) for 45 seconds. In other words, she continued to attempt to access
Mobile TV after she crossed this borderline. The launching of the connection
lasts approximately one minute (12:17:10) until the moment she can watch the
televised news again. She succeeds in watching it for seven seconds before the
program is cut off (12:25:91), as she could have predicted. Only after this final
attempt does she decides to listen to the radio with the FM tuner of her mobile
phone (12:55:20). She activates the radio to listen to it while she reads her free
newspaper. She opens the daily newspaper 20 seconds later (13:18:69) when the
train arrives at Austerlitz Station (13:26:12) and the Mobile TV reception has
become impossible. In these practical circumstances, she consequently reacti-
vates the reading activity that she had left on stand-by 13 minutes before
(00:25:08) in a preparatory gesture.
With the transcription of this sequence, we understand better why she was
hesitant during the self-confrontation interview: “It picks up often, in fact. It
picks up until the BNF. From there, after passing the BNF, it does not pick up
near Austerlitz. Nothing can be picked up anymore.” She knows that a connec-
tion with Mobile TV will be difficult at the BNF station, but she is not comple-
tely certain. However, she is certain she cannot launch Mobile TV when she is in
the following station, Austerlitz. Why is it so difficult for her to identify the
exact moment when the phone network is no longer available? Also, why does
she continue to try every day to restore connection to this service in an area
where the phone network reception is difficult?
We will answer this question by showing that she does not try to optimize
these transitions between Mobile TV, the radio and the newspaper, even if she
has identified the border where she will be forced to change media activities. The
imprecision of this border is not a problem for her. On the contrary, this impreci-
Appropriation of Mobile TV through TV Preferences and Communication Networks 129

sion enables her to test the technological mediations that connect her to media
activities: she continues 1) to handle her telephone to test it, 2) to understand
whether the connection problems are related to her telephone or the phone net-
works, 3) to determine whether the telephone operator has deployed the Mobile
TV network in this area, 4) to check if this service is usable in the underground
systems in Paris and 5) to reevaluate the borders between Paris (where Mobile
TV is unavailable in underground systems) and the suburb where she lives (and
where this service can be consulted in overland transport). We now describe how
she tests these technological mediations, which frame her media activities, be-
fore showing in the last part how this test leads her to requalify the locations of
her media practices (de Certeau, 1980; Harrison & Dourish, 1996; Dourish,
2006).

2.2 At Time T of Network Indicators

Users can evaluate the intensity of the phone network with two indicators that
are posted on mobile phone screens. The first indicates the type of phone net-
works to which the telephone is connected (e.g. EDGE, 3G, 3G+). The second
indicates the signal intensity of this phone network.

Figure 3: Loss of reception.

Using the video recordings, we can observe that Linda is connected to Mobile
TV when these indicators show her that this service is available. When she is in
an area where she knows from experience that Mobile TV reception is unavail-
130 Julien Figeac

able, she will try to launch this service if these indicators show her that the phone
network is (temporarily) available. During the self-confrontation interview, she
noted that she had identified that Mobile TV was unavailable between the BNF
and the Austerlitz Stations. The phone network indicators, located at the top left
of the screen (Figure 3), clearly indicated the loss of the signal to her when the
TV news stopped (11:18:17). Just afterwards (11:32:45), these indicators showed
her that the network was available again. Consequently, she tried to connect to
Mobile TV (11:35:36) even if she knew that this service was usually unavailable
at this location. This graphic information made connection to the service relevant
under these circumstances.
When the service stopped after this last connection, the indicators showed
that the phone networks were unavailable (12:25:91; Figure 4). The indicators
contributed to dissuading her from using Mobile TV, and encouraged her to read
a newspaper and use the radio function on her mobile phone.

Figure 4: Loss of reception.

These indicators provide support to evaluate under which circumstances she can
(or cannot) watch Mobile TV. However, they indicate to users that reception is
not possible once the service is blocked, the program is stopped or the image is
immobilized. This information appears too late to allow users to anticipate the
unavailability of Mobile TV. The limit of these indicators is to reveal instanta-
neous information, relating the telephone signal reception to a precise moment
without specifying the degree of receptivity of the signal in the upcoming
minutes. This information would be useful for a user who would like to watch
Mobile TV in the subway. An indicator could provide this information to the
Appropriation of Mobile TV through TV Preferences and Communication Networks 131

user if his trip was traced, the orientation of his journey predictable, his stops in
the stations anticipated and the speed of his movements were calculated to indi-
cate how long he will be in an area where Mobile TV is available. No techno-
logical mediation can fulfill this function (legally).
Consequently, users must seek other resources to anticipate the telephone
signal reception to evaluate whether it is practical to start watching Mobile TV
under particular circumstances. To anticipate the connectivity of this invisible
technical mediation, environmental indicators that provide information on the
telephone signal fluctuations are identified by the users.

2.3 In Light of an Invisible Technical Mediation

In addition to the indications given by network indicators, users seek indicators

in the surrounding environment to help anticipate the availability of the phone
network at moment T + 1. The users attribute the information given by the tele-
phone interface to their location.
A large amount of information can be used to identify a location. Catego-
rizing all of the architectural elements and other indicators that make it possible
for a user to know their location during their daily commute is difficult. It is not
possible for us to identify the various indicators by which Linda identifies station
BNF. However, she can identify the places where she will be able to watch Mo-
bile TV and to define the borders of where she must use another media by using
the indicators. It is possible to isolate one of the parameters that enables her to
identify the places of use for Mobile TV. The person who often takes the same
route can move while watching Mobile TV. She manages her activities using the
perceptible light around the screen of her telephone.
Like all users, Linda thinks that connection to Mobile TV is possible when
public transport runs above ground. On the other hand, she thinks that the con-
nection is interrupted when transport moves underground. Consequently, she
relies on this indication, formed by light variations, in order to direct her media
activities:

J.F.: “And there you are watching TV…”

L.: “Exactly, there the RER is outside, so I start watching TV.”

If we take another look at her last connection to Mobile TV in light of this indi-
cator, it appears that she begins this use (11:35:36) when the underground has
been above ground for more than ten seconds (11:23:22). However, when the
connection with the TV news program is established (12:17:10), the train has
132 Julien Figeac

just entered a tunnel (12:16:22). Consequently, when the reception of this

program stopped seven seconds later, this indicator dissuaded her from attempt-
ing the connection again because the train had moved underground. This exam-
ple illustrates how external light is used as an indicator, which is both relevant
and problematic, regarding phone network availability.
This example shows how variations in luminosity between the light of day
and the semi-obscurity of tunnels can influence the deployment of various uses.
When the user is focused on reception, he can easily locate these variations. In
this example, Linda does not move her eyes from her telephone screen. She does
not need to look outside to find her location because she can identify, through the
rays that light the underground train, her departure from the BNF station. She
sees in these light variations an indicator showing phone network availability.
This supplements information given by network indicators, enabling her to anti-
cipate Mobile TV connectivity at the precise moment T + 1; i.e., when the RER
train heads above ground.
This example also shows how the information that users extract from exter-
nal light is problematic. The fact that the RER moved above ground supple-
mented the information delivered by the network indicators, leading her into
error because she could not watch the program for more than seven seconds. For
this reason, the participants test the phone network availability every day be-
cause no indicator enables them to precisely anticipate these interruptions in
connection. Uncertainty involved in the appropriation of Mobile TV shows us
that the logic behind utilization proceeds from indications extracted from the
situational ecology. However, these indications direct the course of action to-
wards a model that differs from Gibson's theory of perception (Gibson, 1979).
For Gibson, the information given by an affordance directs the single activity of
a person who is moving. Consequently, the light rays of an affordance overlap a
coupling of perception and action without the mediation of reflexivity being
necessary; e.g., when a door handle is grasped.
In this case, variations in luminosity in the underground train direct two ac-
tivities at the same time. The participants make use of these variations to exploit
various uses and choose their itinerary. Luminosity transmits information on the
phone network availability for the person who intends to manage these two acti-
vities simultaneously in an urban environment. This indicator is not useful for a
user who is in a stopped train because the information from telephone network
indicators is sufficient. The relevance of this indicator comes from this mode of
involvement for this form of multi-activity. This indicator gives information to
the participants who manage their journey on a peripheral level of attention
around the Mobile TV screen on which they are focused. The light gives infor-
mation to the user who awaits its appearance because he makes use of it as a
Appropriation of Mobile TV through TV Preferences and Communication Networks 133

reference mark that prefaces the orientation of its uses. Consequently, Mobile
TV reception is embedded as a form of multi-activity because the indicators used
to manage it are also used to manage the journey.

3 The Appropriation of Mobile TV Creates New Forms of Mobility

We described the commuting of a participant between her residence and her

workplace. Because she has started watching Mobile TV, she does not wait for
the underground train in the same station as that where she returns home in the
evening. Before using this service, she waited for the underground train on the
Boulainvilliers station platform. During this wait, she read a newspaper or a
magazine. She let the trains that went in other directions of the underground line
pass and took the one that stopped at her destination.
When she started using Mobile TV, she reconsidered her itinerary because
the telephone network and the radio network were unavailable in this station.
Now she enters the first train that stops at this station, no matter what under-
ground line it serves. Then, she makes an intermediate stop in another station to
take another train that stops at her destination. She selected this intermediate stop
according to Mobile TV availability. Because the phone network is available in
the above ground stations, she chose to change trains at the Champs de Mars
station near the Eiffel Tower. This station offers a beautiful view of Paris, and
she can take advantage of the panorama while watching her favorite television
program (Figure 6).
Consequently, she thought of taking this initiative once she had the opportu-
nity to watch Mobile TV. To use this service, she reconsidered her itinerary by
modifying her habits. She reconfigured her trip around her attachment to televi-
sion programs and phone network availability. This itinerary leads to increased
mobility (Licoppe & Inada, 2006) through the use of new technologies. The jour-
ney is no longer calculated according to a purely strategic logic of connecting
two destinations as quickly as possible. This search for performance is secondary
compared to the pleasure felt watching television because she is entertained
during the time spent in transport. This pleasure is why she now reorganizes her
commuting time around the requirements that must be met in order to watch
Mobile TV.
134 Julien Figeac

Figure 5: Linda stands near the arrival and departure board.

Figure 6: Linda is about to watch Laurent Ruquier's program.

Her engagement in this form of multi-activity made these two communication

networks, the phone network and the transport system, converge at this particular
place. The place where she stops to watch Mobile TV (Figures 5 and 6) is
closely linked to this form of multi-activity. She stands near the arrival and de-
parture board to be able to keep an eye on the arrival of the train (Figure 5).
Through her preoccupation with the activity, which she will soon focus on (en-
tering the train), she defines the temporal horizon of the activity of reception in
this intermediate place. This example shows how the activities of reception and
Appropriation of Mobile TV through TV Preferences and Communication Networks 135

commuting overlap to form a multi-activity because the control of the first activ-
ity interferes with controlling the second and vice versa. As we have seen, the
uses of Mobile TV modify the choice of the intermediate stations and the way in
which these places are used. It is interesting to see how these places will retro-
actively affect the uses of this service:

L. : “There I stop at the Champ-de-Mars station. In fact, I could have continued

to the BNF station, but I preferred to stop. The weather is nice and all. And
what’s more, I could watch TV. […] But it is not only because of that. It is
also because the station is outside, and the weather is nice. So I can watch
TV while soaking up the sun.”
J.F.: “And that is why you turned and faced the landscape?”
L.: “Yes, it is. Here, facing the sun, facing the landscape, the Seine river… In
spite of the noise of cars and the train…”.

She appropriated this place (Harrison & Dourish, 1996; Dourish, 2006) because
it allowed her “to watch TV facing the sun […], facing the landscape, the Seine
river… In spite of the noise of cars and the train…”. Consequently, she did not
choose this place only because the communication networks were accessible but
also for its atmosphere (Thibaud, 1994). She said during the interview that the
perception of the sunshine in this place appears to her, retrospectively, as the
main reason she left the underground to continue watching TV on the platform:
“the weather is nice and all, and what’s more, I could watch TV.” This example
shows that the atmosphere of the places where Mobile TV is used is important in
understanding its appropriation. Light is not only an indicator of phone network
reception. The bright sunlight illuminates this place (Chelkoff & Thibaud, 1992).
The sunlight makes it prominent on a practical level and makes it conspicuous
on a subjective level as a place of exposure, allowing her “to get some sun”.
It is necessary to show how technical mediations converge with the atmos-
phere of the places so that they can be suitable as places to use Mobile TV. If it
is relevant to continue the paradigm of increased mobility while describing how
the uses of information and communication technologies transform urban mo-
bility, it is also necessary to describe how the emotional tonalities (Thibaud,
1994) of urban environments influence the uses of these technologies. These
emotional tonalities do not have a direct impact on the televisual content choices.
However, they enter into forming media tastes because they induce pleasures,
which bind a user to a media practice and affect his value judgments: to appreci-
ate Ruquier’s television program “facing the sun, facing the landscape, the
Seine… In spite of the noise of cars and the train… “.
136 Julien Figeac

4 Conclusion

Throughout these descriptions, we have shown how the uses of Mobile TV are
linked to daily commuting. We have described how a user redefines her itinerary
in public transport to watch Laurent Ruquier’s program. As an opportunist, she
exploits the availability of the phone network in stopping at the stations where
Mobile TV reception is possible. She adapts to this constraint in preserving her
old media practices to be used during the temporal interstices in which Mobile
TV reception is not possible. This technical mediation partially structures her
new itinerary by directing her towards certain stations, defining the phases and
places (Harrison & Dourish, 1996; Dourish, 2006) where the uses of the various
media become relevant. But these mediations fulfill this function if the user gives
them this capacity, i.e., if he exploits them as an opportunist to renew his media
activities during his journeys.
The video recordings show how this opportunist attachment with television
preferences is carried out like a performance. The problems of Mobile TV re-
ception do not form simple constraints. Even if it is considered to be prejudicial,
it pushes the users to refer to their mobile phones and the environments where
they wish to use them. It is through this referral process and the answers ob-
tained that the appropriation of Mobile TV becomes a performance. As part of
the mobile phone network, indicators do not enable them to effectively manage
connections to Mobile TV. The users seek indicators that show the availability of
the phone network in the urban environments. They exploit the name of the
stations and the light variations to delimit and identify the places where Mobile
TV reception is reliable. These ecological supports cannot be reduced to simple
resources, exploited on a procedural level, in the prolongation of the situated ac-
tion approach. The performance aspect is because the light of day is perceived
differently through a new function. In the same way, the places, the distances be-
tween the stations and all this information that can make commuting unpleasant
by their recurrence are exploited as invaluable indicators to direct the use of
Mobile TV. Multi-activity (Datchary & Licoppe, 2007) is used to explain this
embedding of the indications in the joint control of the uses and the activity of
commuting. It is true that our method, based on video recordings, contributes to
involving the participant in this state of concern. The user partly records what he
sees with camera glasses. He is aware that the researcher can see from the re-
cordings what he was looking at. Consequently, this method incites him to focus
his attention on his telephone instead of looking around him and staring at the
passengers. This method can amplify the performance engaged in this form of
multi-activity. It can encourage users to quickly divide their attention between
the media.
Appropriation of Mobile TV through TV Preferences and Communication Networks 137

Through the concept of multi-activity, we have tried to highlight pragmatic

methods of this performance. It seems to be a state of concern (Datchary &
Licoppe, 2007) and a state of continual vigilance. In situations of mobility, the
user never isolates himself from the surrounding world. He is vigilant, according
to the two meanings of Goffman (1971): 1) to preserve his physical integrity in
relation to others and 2) to preserve the normality of his physical appearance. To
manage his engagement in this multi-activity, the user remains in a state of
awareness to perceive the external signals that can lead him in directing his ac-
tivity.
Even if the researcher’s methodology has a real effect on the practices ob-
served, we can still conclude this study with the following idea: this state of
awareness, characteristic of the various forms of multi-activity, shows that the
use of Mobile TV must be referenced to the peripheral activities occurring
around its use. It is interesting to describe this performance, which consists of
carrying out certain activities differently, particularly those that require little
attention, such as media activities or cultural attachments. Through the study of
Mobile TV uses, we can describe this performance of opportunistic attachment
to television programs. This opportunism characterizes a form of attachment in
which practical circumstances and technical mediations prompt users to select
certain media preferences. This form of attachment is specific because there are
not that many people using these services. Today, users have many different
media preferences, which are constantly increasing with the growth of media.
Consequently, to understand the adoption of new media and complementarities
between various media, it is interesting to observe which media preferences they
will select according to the utilization opportunities produced by new technolo-
gies and new services.
138 Julien Figeac

Figure 7: Linda's trip between her residence and her workplace

Appropriation of Mobile TV through TV Preferences and Communication Networks 139

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Part III

Images and Representations

of Mobile Communication
Images and Representations of the Mobile Internet

Corinne Martin

1 Introduction

The success of the mobile phone has no equal in the recent history of ICTs
(Information and Communication Technologies). According to the ARCEP,1 the
equipment rate of the French population grew up to 80% between 1994 and
2005. And it exceeds 90% in 2009. According to the sociology of uses and the
way this sociology developed in France (Jouët, 2000), the mobile phone has been
studied as a means of interpersonal communication and mediation with family,
friends and work acquaintances. Its appropriation by a large majority of the
French population has made it a banal object, perfectly integrated in the routines
of everyday life’s users (de Certeau, 1984). With the advent of images (MMS,
Multimedia Messaging Services, in the beginning of the 2000s and then camera
phones) and the mobile Internet, technological innovation has caused the mobile
phone to evolve into a form of mass media. The first commercial start of the
mobile Internet dates back to 2004, it was composed of optional subscriptions
with pay-per-use (duration of the connection and/or quantity of data downloaed).
At the end of 2007, the first “unlimited mobile Internet” packages arrived on the
market, coincidentally with the first generation of iPhone in Europe. For the
network operators, the goal was to foster the development of the mobile Internet,
which at the time was lagging. In such a context of emerging uses (our study was
carried out in spring 2009), we wanted to understand how representations of this
innovation are constructed among these different social actors. Our project began
as a reflection on resistance against the use of the mobile Internet in a polemical
context concerning its new commercial offering. The representation of the
mobile Internet produced is in a way an instantaneous, historically situated
image of the reception of this innovation and it will ultimately evolve.
The goal of this edited volume is to analyze the advent of images and their
impact on emerging uses of the mobile phone, including personal mobile televi-

1
The French ARCEP (Autorité de régulation des communications électroniques et des postes)
was founded in 1997. It carries out the regulation role on the telecommunications market and
gives the official statistics on the French market. Access: http://www.arcep.fr/.

C. Martin, T. von Pape (Eds.), Images in Mobile Communication,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-531-93190-6_8,
© VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2012
144 Corinne Martin

sion, photos, videos and the mobile Internet. To accomplish this goal in our
chapter, we chose a slightly out-of-line approach; we shifted the focus. We chose
to analyze the images created and produced through emerging mobile Internet
uses. What are the social representations of the mobile Internet, its uses and its
users? And how are they built? We limited this vast question to three main
aspects.
In the first part, we will analyze the image of the mobile Internet user as it is
constructed by various audience measurements. To do so, we relied on media
reception studies that analyze the construction of television audiences (Méadel,
2009; Méadel & Bourdon, 2009; Méadel, 2010). With a critical analysis of the
public discourse and statistics produced by various polling institutes, we will
show how the image (still under construction) of the mobile Internet user is
blurred and embellished in euphoric discourses. However, this image is converg-
ing in a single and consensual image. In the second part, we will study the image
produced in the public space by the network operators and handset manufactu-
rers in marketing new unlimited mobile Internet offerings. Analyzing controver-
sies in the public sphere via the media, we will also show how aggressive these
strategies are and how they rely on a certain level of symbolic violence. Similar-
ly, the strategy of social distinction put into place by Apple and the network
operators for the iPhone will be studied (an advertisement will be analyzed). In
the third part, we will focus on the users; we will try to understand the social
representations that they make of the mobile Internet through their limited use
and their use of the mobile Internet in its early phase. By focusing on the early
adopters of the mobile Internet and the first users of the iPhone (Ling &
Sundsoy, 2009), our approach sheds new light on the issue of the uses. Through
our sample of users (and even irregular users or non-users) of the mobile Inter-
net, we discovered certain motivations and drivers as well as barriers. We lay the
hypothesis that all of these motivations, drivers and barriers in the appropriation
of a device allow us to explain jointly the use and non-use: use and non-use must
not been analyzed separately (von Pape & Martin, 2010). Furthermore, mobile
Internet use still appeared limited and the image of the computer for surfing the
Internet remains dominant for the time being.
The methodology applied is combined. On the one hand, we analyzed the
statistics of connections produced by various polling institutes as well as esti-
mates made by experts. On the other hand, we carried out a study in two parts
during the spring of 2009. The first part comprised a quantitative study using a
questionnaire (N=262) for respondents between 18 and 23 years old: 111
students (1st and 2nd year in college) and 151 students of a professional high
school. The questionnaire employed closed questions aimed at determining the
use of the mobile Internet, including which device is used, which mobile Internet
Images and Representations of the Mobile Internet 145

package is used, how often it is used, description of the uses, if it is not used and
so on. Furthermore, it employed open questions aimed at constructing an inven-
tory of the various obstacles for non-users of the mobile Internet and the possible
motivations that can be drivers for the use of the mobile Internet in the future.
The second part of the study relied on in-depth qualitative interviews with
mobile Internet users for about an hour. The 15 interviewees were students in
their final grade (Terminale) in a professional high school;2 they were between
18 and 20 years old. According to their answers on the questionnaire, they were
selected among the most important users of the mobile Internet in this sample:
their use ranked from a several times a week to an everyday basis (two-third of
the respondents never use the mobile Internet). The study was carried out during
the spring of 2009; the interviews were focused on their experience with the
mobile Internet to compare it with their use of the Internet on a computer.

2 The Mobile Internet User and Audience Ratings

2.1 A Representation Still Under Construction

The sociology of innovation shows how important the image of the user is
throughout the innovation process. It is part of the social imaginary of technolo-
gy that accompanies every innovation (Flichy, 2007a, 2007b; Scardigli, 1992).
At the beginning of the innovation process, this social imaginary linked to the
strategies of the main social actors: the state, the inventors and the producers,
whose discourse is retransmitted by the media. We will be able to consider some
traces of this discourse at the time of the early stages to the mobile Internet
throughout its audience. This measurement reveals an image under construction,
a blurred and not yet clear representation of the mobile Internet user; indeed,
who is the mobile Internet user? The question may seem candid, but the different
measurements that aim at describing this user do not provide the same image.
These measurements by polling institutes, such as Ipsos, TNS Sofrès and
Opinion Way, are completely different, as are the measurements by other

2
The school under study was a professional high school for vocational training preparing
exclusively for a professional baccalauréat degree to have a profession immediately after-
wards, here in the tertiary sector. (The degree is different from the general baccalauréat degree
that allows the pursuit of studies at a university or in a business or engineer school. The bacca-
lauréat degree is taken in the final grade in high school). The students of this school are in
their majority coming from popular classes, some coming from the middle-class, and only a
few of them from the upper classes. The choice of this school allowed us to limit the variable
“high salaries” on the adoption of the mobile Internet. We would like to thank the Deputy
Headmistress of this school for allowing us access to the school.
146 Corinne Martin

institutes that specialize in television audience measurements, such as Média-

métrie, the French specialist in this field. To fully understand discrepancies in
these measurements, a comparison with television audience measurement will be
an instructive approach. In her analysis, Méadel (2009, 2010) reveals the essen-
tial stakes of using television audience measurements as a tool to build an
audience. She shows how the “advertising equation” is defined and set up. This
equation aims, through a series of complex operations, to set the commercial
break price according to the television audience. There are three main opera-
tions: the reduction of data (from very detailed measurements of the viewer’s
behavior), the selection of significant variables (e.g., age, which enables us to
define the target) and the translation of the spots into prices. All these operations
result in a boundary object, the “standard-measurement”, which will enable a
media-planning strategy (the choice and evaluation of spots). However, the
production of this common object of measurement needs an “agreement in
competition” or, in other words, involves every social actor, despite the high
competition, on one hand, between the broadcasters (i.e., television companies)
and, on the other, the users (i.e., advertisers and their clients). This agreement
relies on a necessary consensus, without which everything may become unmana-
geable. This is the reason why these different social actors created Médiamétrie
in 1985, the standards institute of which they are shareholders. The institute’s
task is to produce this “standard-measurement”. Méadel writes that this measure-
ment is a major tool in advertisement because it offers indexes for the terms of
the exchange: the TV viewer with his practices, his behavior, his environment
and the space defined by a duration, a date, a position in the TV listings, a
recurrence and so on (Méadel, 2009). However, she also shows how the system
remains opaque and how the communication conditions of the measurement are
heavily framed by Médiamétrie (Méadel, 2009). Consequently, this agreement
can only be done with veracity; the data must be considered to be reasonably
accurate, which leads to a concern for accuracy (fidelity to the real). On the same
note, the most striking proof of the veracity of these measurements for the social
actors resides unequivocally in the continuity of these measurements (Méadel,
2009). These measurements must be relatively solid. A last key element to keep
in mind is that they are a representation of reality, a common standard.

2.2 A Blurred and Embellished Representation of the Audience

Our goal is to show how far we are from a common definition of this boundary
object with the measurements of the mobile Internet use; no condition aimed at
characterizing this “standard-measurement” has yet been fulfilled. We highlight-
Images and Representations of the Mobile Internet 147

ed some significant variations between the different measurements we studied.

These differences stem from a lack of consensus. To arrive at this result, we
compared the results published during the same period (from January to Novem-
ber 2008) by five polling institutes: Médiamétrie for Mobile Marketing Associa-
tion (survey carried out in March-April 2008); 3 TNS Sofrès (survey carried out
in August 2008);4 Ipsos (survey carried out from September to November
2008);5 Opinion Way for IAB France (Interactive Advertising Bureau) (survey
carried out in January 2008);6 Ipsos Médias for AFMM (French Mobile Multi-
média Association) (survey carried out in the 1st quarter of 2008)7 (see table 1,
p. 148).
It appears that a rigorous comparison of these statistical data is bound to
fail. This is why the image of the mobile Internet user that has been constructed
from this data is a blurred and changing one. First, the time of reference needed
to be considered a mobile Internet user is not the same. A user is a person who
connected to the mobile Internet once (at least), but the connection may have
been made in the last 3 or 6 months, or even in the last month (Médiamétrie).
Further, the population of reference is never the same (the French population,
Internet users and mobile device owners). These variations seem significant. Let
us compare TNS Sofrès’ and Médiamétrie’s measurements.

3
“11,3 millions de mobinautes en France“, 07/16/2008. Available:
http://www05.r7g.com/50071/e/new_2008_07_16_%20CDP%20panel%20mobinautes%20DC
OM%20LOM.pdf [May 15, 2011].
4
“Avenir prometteur pour le M-commerce et en devenir pour le M-marketing”, 11/17/2008.
Available: http://www.tns-sofres.com/espace-presse/news/E00CE85007DA4BD185AF382D21
E5DD8C.aspx [May 15, 2011].
5
“Profiling 2008-V2”, 01/12/2009. Available: http://www.offremedia.com/DocTelech/
Newsletter/DPIpsos12012009.pdf [May 15, 2011].
6
“Internet et la téléphonie mobile”. Available: http://www.opinion-way.com/pdf/opinionway-
iab-internet_&_la_telephonie_mobile-pres.pdf [May 15, 2011].
7
“Internet mobile en 2008: usages et comportements”, 04/11/2008. Available: http://
www.afmm.fr/img/CP%20pdf/2009/CP%20Ipsos%20AFMM%2011avr08.pdf [May 15, 2011].
148 Corinne Martin

Table 1: Comparison of Audience Ratings Between Polling Institutes

Polling Period of the Audience Population Duration of

Institute poll ratings of reference reference

Média- March – April 11.3 million Of the French Last 30 days

métrie/AMM 2008 population
over 11 years
old

TNS Sofrès August 2008 20% Of the French Last 6 months

[it represents population
roughly 7.8 between 16
million] and 60 years
old

Ipsos September – 3.3 million Of a subgroup Last 30 days

November [it represents of 32.1 million
2008 roughly 10.3% Internet users
of Internet
users]

Opinion January 2008 33% Of all Internet Not provided

Way/IAB users

Ipsos medi- 1st quarter 25% Of mobile Last 6 months

as/AFMM 2008 device owners
aged 15-50

By extrapolating from the population data of the INSEE (Institut national de la

statistique et des études économiques, official French Institute for Statistics), we
find that there are 7.8 million mobile Internet users over the last six months
according to TNS Sofrès, whereas Médiamétrie finds 11.3 million over the last
month. Which is the fidelity to the real (Méadel, 2009) with such variations,
which is the most accurate measurement? The contradictions are clear and we
can only formulate hypotheses to try to explain these differences. For now, we
are only able to see the tip of the iceberg. The details of these audience ratings
and the complete results are still a jealously kept secret, as noticed by Méadel
regarding the television audience (2009, 2010), whereas a consensus between all
Images and Representations of the Mobile Internet 149

the involved social actors on the measurement has been found. In the case of the
mobile Internet audience, the lack of communication of the detailed results and
the lack of a methodology for measurement can be easily explained by the fact
that there is no consensus on the measurement. We could say that the impossibi-
lity of comparison is a good thing for these polling institutes. Why? First, we are
still facing an uncertain phenomenon because the mobile Internet remains at the
early stages and users are not yet accustomed to it. The second reason, which is
related to the first one, is that we have to face the fact that the number of users
did not grow significantly until the beginning of 2009: the yearly study of the
CRÉDOC (Bigot & Croutte, 2009) shows for the first time that the mobile
Internet is “finally taking off”, the 10% users’ mark have been reached, although
the figure have remained the same since 2004. Actually, the number of users did
not grow fast enough for the network operators and figures representing these
data in 2008 are not always welcome.
Moreover, we even found a discrepancy between two measurements by the
same polling institute, Médiamétrie. There are 11.3 million mobile Internet users
in March/April 2008 (see note 3) and 11.4 million at the end of 2009, whereas
the mobile connections represented 0.2% of all Internet connections in June/July
2008 and had soared to 2% by the end of 2009.8 How is this possible? What is
taken into account for the measurement? The black box of the audience measure-
ment revealed by Méadel and Bourdon (2009) for television seems the same for
the mobile Internet.
Minges (2005) also noticed the same phenomena in Japan, where there is a
lack of official data, especially for mobile Internet subscribers: “One reason is
that some operators do not distinguish between mobile voice calls and calls to
the Internet. In other cases, the number is probably considered too low and thus
potentially embarrassing” (Minges 2005, p. 117). Indeed, the stakes are strategic.
Why?
The reasons lie in the advertising equation studied by Méadel (2009, 2010).
The ultimate goal is to determine the price of the advertisement that will come
on the screen of the mobile phone. For the time being, the priority is to attract
advertising companies so that they are willing to invest in this new media. The
mission that inspires the AFMM, the French mobile multimedia association, is
“to promote the Gallery offer to companies, administrations and authorities; to
develop the notoriety and the usage of the Gallery services by the general
public”,9 with Gallery being the mobile Internet portal provided by the three

8
Médiamétrie, “Année internet 2009”, 03/10/2010; no more available on Médiamétrie’s
Website.
9
AFMM Website: http://www.afmm.fr/ All these quotations were available on the Website at
July 15, 2009. No more available.
150 Corinne Martin

mobile network operators. The mission is clear: take part in the development of
mobile Internet usage and make users and brands meet each other. The founding
members of the AFMM are the three main mobile network operators (they share
95% of the French mobile market in 2008, according to the ARCEP, see note 1)
and two associations promoting the digital economy and, more specifically, the
digital edition, of content (Acsel, an association of the digital economy and
Geste, a group of online services editors). Other members, such as the AMM, the
French mobile marketing association and some MVNOs (mobile virtual network
operators), have followed suit. Aiming to develop the mobile Internet, the
AFMM logically ordered one of the audience ratings we analyzed. It appears that
the aim is to show potential advertisers an embellished image of the audience.
For instance, the rate of mobile Internet users (25%) is, methodologically
speaking, biased and incresased because of the choice of the population of
reference. Only mobile owners aged 15 to 50 are taken into account. By includ-
ing younger users (with less money) and older (less interested) users, this rate
could be lower. However, such variations are bound to disappear because we are
reaching a unique measurement of the audience for a consensual image.

2.3 Toward a Consensual Image of the Audience?

The same AFMM is at the origin of the launch of a call for tender to select a
supplier that will take responsibility for producing the unique measurement
based on the same model of the “agreement in competition” that Méadel (2009)
studied for the television audience. This measurement will concern all the social
actors of the market: advertising clients, media and advertising agencies, adverti-
sing production departments and mobile websites’ publishers. Médiamétrie won
this market (against the German Gfk) in June 2009. A first remark could be read
on the AFMM website: “this measurement will strongly help the development of
the mobile communication channel as a full media.” This is clearly a sort of
official recognition, which establishes and participates in the construction of
another image of the media. It is not only an impersonal means of communica-
tion, but can be, just like the Internet, put into the specific category of individual
mass media. The AFMM asserts that this medium aims to be a “communication
channel” for the advertising message.
Second, it is important to know that exhaustiveness is a characteristic of this
measurement; it is developed both by census and by a panel (according to the
recommendations of the GSMA, for a ‘coherent’ audience measurement
throughout Europe; the Global System for Mobile Communications Association
gathers all the actors of the communication at an international level). Develop-
Images and Representations of the Mobile Internet 151

ment by census means that the whole population of mobile Internet users is the
basis of the measurement and the data collected by the network operators (after
having been made anonymous) will then be analyzed. These data include
information on factors such as which website is visited as well as when, where
and how often sites are visited. It gives a glimpse of an incommensurable
quantity of information to manage by the polling institute Médiamétrie. The first
task, which is colossal, is to reduce the data (Méadel, 2009; Méadel & Bourdon,
2009). In any case, we can conclude that this sole audience measurement, the
result of an “agreement in competition”, will give a solution to the advertising
equation by defining the prices of the advertising market on mobile phones. The
actors expect great things; the mobile marketing and m-commerce make all the
brands (related to mass consumption) dream of advertising on the tiny screen of
the mobile phone. The network operators are ready; they have already developed
advertising production departments, without any real achievements thus far. Uses
are not developed and the brands are very cautious about investing in this new
media. There are also some deontological questions that have been raised.10
Having analyzed the very first steps of the construction of the mobile Internet
user, as defined by Internet audience measurement apparatuses, we will now
concentrate on another image, the one produced and transmitted by network
operators and handset manufacturers through their marketing strategies for
commercial offerings on the mobile Internet.

3 The Image Constructed by the Marketing Strategies of Network

Operators/ Handset Manufacturers

3.1 Aggressive Strategies and Symbolic Violence?

First, we will see how symbolically violent these strategies are. The following
section will be dedicated to the analysis of the distinction used by Apple for its
iPhone. First of all, we have to keep in mind that on the economic level, mobile
communication is a highly strategic market with enormous stakes. In 2008, a
business volume of 18.6 billion Euros was reached for all the market of the fixed

10
See Licoppe and Levallois-Barth (2009), who write about the mobile marketing project in the
Parisian Metro, where multimedia content could be sent to anonymous passers-by through a
Bluetooth device. Reaching far beyond SMS marketing, we can easily imagine the interest that
advertisers have in mobile marketing, but this particular project is currently suspended by a
deontological problem: personal data protection, defended by the CNIL (Commission nationale
de l’informatique et des libertés, the National Counsel for Informatics), and the conformity to
the LEN, the French law on digital economy of 2004 (as an application of an European Di-
rective).
152 Corinne Martin

phone, the mobile phone and the internet, according to the ARCEP (see note 1).
This market is thus qualified as oligopolistic by the French consumers’ associa-
tion UFC-QUE CHOISIR, as three network operators share 95% of this huge
market (UFC-QUE CHOISIR is one of the most influential among the French
consumers’ associations). We will show how an image of domination created by
the aggressive marketing strategies of the network operators and the handset
manufacturers can be seen. The starting point of the analysis is the amount of
investments in advertising made by the network operators in order to sell their
offerings (the offerings are not limited to the mobile Internet). Orange and SFR,
the two main network operators, are among the first 10 companies within the ads
market in France for 2007 and 2008, including all media (press, TV, radio,
Internet and so on). 11 In 2008, Telecommunications sector was ranked 3rd just
behind the leaders in delivery/mass distribution and automobile industries; this
shows an important presence of advertisement for mobile phones on the entire
French media panel. The means for commercial communication built by the
three mobile communication providers have such an impact that it seems hard
for the average citizen to escape such messages, except by boycotting the mass
media. The second observation aims specifically at the unlimited offerings of
mobile Internet services as they were launched in 2007 by the operating compa-
nies. Previously, the users had paid on demand (by the time they spent online or
by the downloaded data). From a marketing point of view, these commercial
offerings aim to foster the use of the mobile Internet.
Therefore, a flat rate for mobile Internet access was released, accompanied
by controversy. Users quickly realized that this unlimited offer was actually
restricted (limit of downloads). Most interestingly, SFR justified itself with the
argument that the restrictions were a question of network sharing: “The 3G-
network being mutualized between all users, SFR keeps the possibility of
restricting the access of its users downloading more than 500MB of data month-
ly, in order to give access with optimal conditions to other users. The download-
ing of more than 500MB is not considered a reasonable use, as it is damaging the
quality of the network for other users”. (Excerpt of the general sales conditions
of SFR, quoted in L’ordinateur individuel).12 Why is it possible to speak of
symbolic violence? For Pierre Bourdieu, symbolic violence relies on the imposi-
tion of perception categories on the social world. The dominated class takes part
in domination as soon as there is a lack of knowledge. This violence applies
itself precisely when it is ignored as violence (Bonnewitz, 2007). It appears

11
Media poche from Havas Media France. Available: http://www.media-poche.com/ [February
16, 2010].
12
“Internet mobile, c’est ‘enfin’ parti!”, L’ordinateur individuel (02/01/08). The French daily
press is available on the international database Factiva.
Images and Representations of the Mobile Internet 153

clearly that the network operator tries to impose its perception categories.
Whereas the Internet is supposed to be unlimited, it is the user who is accused
and sanctioned by the restriction of use. The accusation is explicit with the “use
considered as unreasonable”. Then, after recognizing the user as guilty because
he is “damaging the quality of the network”, the discourse shifts to an appeal to
moral values. Users paying for an individual subscription are supposed to show
solidarity by mutualizing the network. The image created by the dominant shows
the intensity of the gap between the two present social actors: on the one hand,
network operators that economically capture their subscribers13 and on the other
hand, users who must behave and respect moral values. In the case of economic
versus moral values, the adopted scheme verges on caricature. It is also impor-
tant to see that the two other network operators mimicked the same practices, but
that all of them will soon be compelled to unbridle their Internet offerings by
state intervention, following the counter-powers used by some consumers’
associations. The AFUTT (The French association of telecommunication users)
noted that the amount of user complaints related to mobile bills increased by
more than 32% between 2007 and 2008.14 In its study, the INC (Institut national
de la consommation, the National Institute for Consumption is a public organiza-
tion) also noticed bills going up to hundreds or thousands of Euros.15 Finally, the
French Secretary of State for Industry had to intervene by instructing network
operators to set up alerts to be sent to customers after they reach a certain
threshold of use.16 It appears now that there is a need for the State to regulate and
limit the power the network operators have over the consumers. Perfecting this
image of almighty network operators restraining their users, some of them have
recently prohibited the use of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) software
throughout Europe – the free use of voice on the Internet – on their 3G networks.
How can these marketing strategies be considered anything other than war-like
steps using, by their very strength, symbolic violence? The image of domination
or almightiness is evident, facing a user who is reduced to a passive consumer,
who cannot be considered a social actor or citizen, except when his moral sense
is called for in mutualizing the network. The power struggle is obvious. But the
controversy at the launch of the mobile Internet also reveals a paradox: the
network operators limited uses whereas they wanted to foster them. We will now

13
“Vendre par forfaits, ou ceux qui capturent leurs abonnés”, Libération (04/17/09). Available
on Factiva.
14
“Les factures des mobiles passent mal”, La Tribune (03/26/09). Available on Factiva.
15
“Multimédia mobile: gare aux factures!”, Le Figaro (02/24/09). Available on Factiva.
16
“Les plaintes se multiplient contre le montant des factures liées à l’internet mobile”, Le Monde
(04/05/09). Available on Factiva.
154 Corinne Martin

analyze the iPhone as a case study to show how another image can be built, the
image of social distinction.

3.2 The iPhone: Brand and Distinction Strategy

We will demonstrate how Apple’s strategy is based on distinction, which

pervades their economic and technological strategy (business model, technologi-
cal systems, industrial design and so on). West and Mace (2010) explain the
success of the iPhone by analyzing Apple’s strategy, which was very different
from other players in the telecommunications market. For these authors, there
were two keys to this success. First, “rather than trying to recreate the Internet,
Apple focused on re-creating the mobile phone to make it a good client to the
already-mature ecosystems of the wired web” (West & Mace, 2010, p. 1-2).
(Indeed, the efforts to create a second Internet for mobiles were doomed to fail,
as the failure of the WAP, the Wireless Application Protocol, has shown).
Second, Apple leveraged its system capability – especially its iTunes content
ecosystem and other elements of its system’s integration competencies – to
establish a permanent position of value capture in the mobile phone industry
(West & Mace, 2010). Furthermore, Apple always tried to distinguish itself from
other competitors, even when it was a computer manufacturer. Finally, two
elements are fundamental: ease of use and industrial design, both of which Apple
used as sources of advantage (West & Mace, 2010).
As Kapferer (2008) pointed out, the brand is not the product; it is the mean-
ing and it defines identity in time and space. The brand provides different
functions, such as personalization and it is important for the individual to see that
he is comforted in his self-concept, which Kapferer (2008) described as the
image that someone gives to other people. As such, the people owning Apple
products develop a real rhetoric underlying their adherence to the brand. We are
in a value system, which almost amounts to being part of a community. That is
for the distinction image that the brand always seeks to have via its owners. The
distinction strategy also relies on two points. First, Apple launched a new
business model with an exclusive agreement with network operators; Apple
brings them new customers and new revenues in exchange for its control of
downloaded content (West & Mace, 2010). In France, the network operator was
Orange. However, this exclusive agreement has been revoked by the National
Competition Council (Conseil National de la Concurrence) in December 2008;
the court ruling was confirmed by the French Court of Appeal in February 2009
and the iPhone can now also be sold by the other network operators. Second, the
iPhone is a closed system, which allows it to both create and capture value. By
encouraging the supply of third-party applications, Apple bypasses the network
Images and Representations of the Mobile Internet 155

operators (West & Mace, 2010); we can say it makes a real achievement by
operating disintermediation with its interference de facto or by force in the loop
network operator/customer relation.
Consequently, the App Store represents this direct link with the user17 and
its success is interesting to watch. Apple says there are more than 100,000 appli-
cations (as of the end of 2009) and it is easily understandable that this has
become the core of the iPhone’s advertising rhetoric. Let us analyze the message
that appeared in one of the advertisements:18 “If you need to find a cab in an
unknown town, there is an app for that… or to look at your budget this month,
there’s an app for that… or to repair a rickety shelf, there’s even an app for
that… In fact, there’s an app for just about anything… only on the iPhone.”
Music is played with a voice-over and the image focuses on the finger playing
with the touch-screen and the apps – the colored buttons that characterize the
iPhone. Calling a cab seems to be a self-evident use of a mobile phone; manag-
ing their budget comes from a computer, but controlling the uprightness of a
shelf comes as a surprise. One can think about a simple gadget, with the screen
becoming a waterlevel to be put on said shelf. However, it also refers to the idea
of the Swiss Army knife that emerged as a social imaginary during the beginning
of the mobile Internet in 2004 (Martin, 2007). This universalism makes the
object powerful and almost magical: “there’s an app for about anything”.19
Apple’s rhetoric also refers to the real Internet that Steve Jobs promised (in
opposition to the portal sites of the network operators). The iPhone is not only
smart, but it can do anything and it is easy to understand how the desire of
possession can be satisfied by the personalization it gives (Kapferer, 2008). To
reinforce his self-concept, the individual will not stop desiring to possess –
through appropriation, we might say – the qualities of this object in order to
become almighty in the management of his everyday life. Finally, “only on the
iPhone” attests that only the iPhone is capable of doing such things. Here, the
distinction strategy is fulfilled; it is this object alone that one must possess. At
the same time unique and universal, it arrives as a supreme privilege bound to
distinction. Pierre Bourdieu (1984) showed how the consumption of cultural
goods is enshrined in an aspiration for social distinction and results from the
dominant/dominated struggle and the will of these dominant groups who accu-

17
It is important to note that P2P is impossible on the iPhone, as you have to go through iTunes,
the paying platform of Apple. That is the reason why some interviewees in our survey (cf. 3rd
section) explained that they still used their computers to download free music or had to use
cracked software.
18
Broadcast on French television during the year 2009. Available: http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=XoPZnz9vxwk [ May 15, 2011].
19
An article of Libération “L’iPhone, joindre l’inutile à l’agréable” (11/23/09) denounces the
“stupidity of the phone apps” while acknowledging that it “doesn’t harm their success”.
156 Corinne Martin

mulate symbolic capital. From the most legitimate and distinguished practices to
the illegitimate and the vulgar ones, the consumption of cultural goods is a
classifying consumption. It seems that the iPhone is currently appealing to this
sense of legitimacy. This seems to be the impact that Apple’s marketing strategy
has desired from the start. But how long will this last? If the iPhone is to become
a mass product (the iPhone represents 17% of the smartphones for the Idate,
quoted by JRC, Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and the
Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, 2010), it will lose its distinction
power and simply become ordinary, like the mobile phone. Will we find the
iPhone in the popular classes? Will we find it in emerging countries?20
This hegemonic image suggested by the advertisement quoted above can al-
so be applied on the manufacturers’ side, as they seem to be reduced to imitating
Apple’s new products. As the image of perfection that must be imitated, the
iPhone was voted Invention of the Year in 2007 by Time Magazine.21 All of these
elements participate in the creation of the euphoric discourse that produces a
better image and leads to what we can call “iPhone-mania”. This discourse is
part of the social imaginary accompanying the innovations (Flichy, 2007a,
2007b) and aiming to build and confirm this success story.
If we now focus on the uses, the iPhone is recognized as having changed the
conception of the mobile Internet. West and Mace (2010) describe the Apple’s
browser as the “killer app” because it provides a browsing experience closer to
that provided by personal computer than any previous mobile phone. Ling and
Sundsoy (2009) showed how the iPhone was the device that most encouraged
surfing on the Internet, compared to other devices in Norway in 2008 (even if it
is not the only one). iPhone users use the Internet more than other users do and,
furthermore, they have different patterns of use. The authors put forward several
explanations, among which the socio-demographics of the iPhone users, the
nature of the device and the nature of the subscriptions. However, they also
evoke a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy; within the context of the marketing of
such a “mobile Web terminal”, the iPhone users have to justify their purchase.
Indeed, it works like a virtuous circle. To conclude with an iPhone case study,
the iPhone represents two thirds of the mobile connections of a panel of websites
in France in 2009 (Médiamétrie, see note 8). However, we have to keep in mind
that mobile connections represent only 2% of all the Internet connections in 2009
(Médiamétrie, see note 8).

20
For a qualitative study on mobile Internet use (but not the iPhone) in low-income communities
in urban South Africa, see J. Donner & S. Gitau (2009).
21
Available: http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1677329_1678542,00.html
[May 15, 2009].
Images and Representations of the Mobile Internet 157

After studying the image transmitted by the network operators and the
handset manufacturers to the audience through their marketing strategies –
aggressive or distinction strategy – we will now turn to the image the user has of
the mobile Internet. Whether he is using it or not, what social representation does
he construct of this technological innovation?

4 Users’ Social Representations of the Mobile Internet

The goal of this final section is to understand which mental and social images are
given to the different uses of the mobile Internet. The French-speaking sociology
of uses (Perriault, 1989; Breton & Proulx, 2002; Jouët, 2000; Mallein & Tous-
saint, 1994) showed how the appropriation of an artifact requires not only the
instantiation of a physical, corporal relationship with the technical object, but
also a mental relationship allowing the representation of the object as such.
Through this appropriation process, the user constructs the standards, social
meanings and legitimations of his practice. To understand how these standards
are built socially and mentally as an integral part of the image of the mobile
Internet for users, we will use the concept of social representation as defined by
social psychology (Moscovici, 2001; Jodelet, 1991; Moliner & Tafani, 1997). A
social representation presents itself as an ensemble of cognitive elements (opi-
nions, information and creeds) related to a social object. A social representation
is a socio-cognitive construction; it is depicted both as the process and as the
result of social construction. It has a sociological texture and is a subject’s
individual production submitted to the rules of the cognitive processes. It is a
social representation because it is collectively generated through social interac-
tions and consequently it is shared by the members of a social group. This
representation is socially useful because it takes part in the construction of
reality. We will then try to discover users’ social representations of the mobile
Internet through a qualitative study in the form of in-depth semi-directive
interviews. We will also use some results of our questionnaire to complete the
image of mobile Internet by non-users and to discover some barriers to the use
(cf. supra). First, the image of the use of the mobile Internet is an image of
limited use; second, the image of the computer associated to the Internet is still
predominant.
158 Corinne Martin

4.1 A Limited Use

As a result of the convergence boosted by the providers, the image of a unique

object for all use should have appeared, but, in fact, many existing objects are
supposed to do everything. The user then finds himself paradoxically in front of
an excessive commercial offering. Additionally, his answer to this variety of
available devices is a diversity of uses. The extreme personalization of these new
uses is remarkable. Having the choice between various competing devices and
applications, users develop a complex logic of how to choose between and
combine them in their everyday life. This logic of uses (Perriault, 1989; Mallein
& Toussaint, 1994) can be described as a rationality of uses (Caradec, 2001). As
we will show, this rationality is based on the personal analysis of many criteria:
technical, ergonomic aspects, material, economical, affective constraints, or con-
straints linked to the personal history of the user. This arbitration is neither
absolute nor definitive; on the contrary, it is a relative one because it is conti-
nuously realized in that it evolves in time with the different devices that are
available, which leads to a reorganization of the criteria.
Lena (19 years old, her father is a foreman, not a smartphone, only MSN
option) says she often takes photos and videos and sends them to her friends:
“The function of a mobile phone changes with the other device you have.” Let us
take another example. Thomas (19 years old, his father has a restaurant, 12th
grade, professional high school, smartphone Nokia, no mobile Internet plan but
Wi-Fi connection) is a fan of video games and therefore has chosen his latest
mobile phone according to this aspect: his choice was a Nokia designed for video
games, specifically adapted for this new use. It is clear that the “reasons” are
adding up and are affective and economical. Thomas can engage in his passion
and play at any time (during a break, while sitting in public transportation, in his
bed, etc.) and he avoids buying the latest video game console in order to have the
state of the art material (he’d rather buy a new mobile phone, which he would
have done anyway). He can then download free video games through the Wi-Fi
connection of his mobile phone. His use of the mobile Internet is limited almost
solely to downloading video games (he does not even have an Internet subscrip-
tion; he connects only at home through Wi-Fi connection). This limited use is the
second most striking point of these emergent uses of the mobile Internet; indeed,
usage is often limited. That is what the respondents using the mobile Internet
expressed in the survey. Let us listen to Benjamin (20 years old, his father is an
ex-cameraman retired, he lives with his girlfriend, 12th grade, professional high
school, iPhone with flat rate mobile Internet): “When I am in a remote location
and there is no computer, I can still surf on the Internet.” His mobile phone
simply and temporarily compensates the lack of a computer, with the idea of
Images and Representations of the Mobile Internet 159

being stranded in a remote place. A similar case is Katia (19 years old, her father
is a blue-collar worker, her mother died, she lives alone with her sister, 12th
grade, professional high school, iPhone, flat rate mobile Internet for iPhone).
Katia is very proud of her iPhone because she likes being the “first one” to have
something: “My mobile phone is my computer”, she says, but she adds later on “I
know I only have this, so I content myself with it.” The expression “contenting
oneself with” is revealing; Katia indeed does not own a computer, as she is living
alone with her sister. The image of the mobile Internet is built in a sort of
hierarchical organization with the computer, the primary use of which is always
Internet access. Thomas (19 years old, his father has a restaurant, 12th grade,
professional high school, smartphone Nokia, no mobile Internet plan but Wi-Fi
connection) explains: “So let’s say I’m at a gas station, I’m on holidays, there is
a Wi-Fi access, I turn the Wi-Fi on, I turn MSN on, ok, but when I’m home, the
computer is on, that’s it.” The computer is on at home. It then appears that the
use of the mobile Internet is ‘limited’, being used to offset the lack of the
computer; likewise, it is used to have real-time access to information (news,
sports) at school and it is also used to kill time, as the playful dimension is
important. Then, perpetual contact (Katz & Aakhus, 2002), the same use as in
voice telephony, reappears when it is important to keep in touch (Ling & Yttri,
2002) with one’s network (Facebook, MSN, etc.), but it is still an irregular use,
an emerging complementary use of the use of the computer and it is far from
being able to be qualified as a “mobile-centric internet use” (Donner & Gitau,
2009).
We can complete this image with the respondents of our questionnaire who
do not use the mobile Internet at all. Their discourse reveals an image that can be
qualified as stereotypical because it is slightly disconnected from the reality of
practice (they did not try or test the mobile Internet for a long enough time). This
image is built with several dimensions linked to different categories of “rea-
sons”: it is too expensive; “it will use up all my credit”. This is the typical
answer of young people who do not have flat rate Internet. When their mobile
phones are not smarphones with a touch screen, its ergonomics seems to them to
be completely unsuitable for these uses. A European study that focused on
mobile search noticed that cost and usability issues are among the main barriers
for adoption of these services (JRC, 2010). Furthermore, the image of their
phone is still linked to the interpersonal communication for the respondents to
our questionnaire: “I’m using my phone to give a phone call or send text messa-
ges” is a typical answer. Moreover, they do not have any desire to use the mobile
Internet because the absence of “need” is obvious for them: “In any case, I got a
computer at home!” This discourse became a leitmotif throughout our ques-
160 Corinne Martin

tionnaire in 2009. We will now try to understand what it means through the in-
depth interviews of our qualitative survey.

4.2 The Image of the Computer

Put simply, habits are difficult to overcome, the weight of habits is a hard one
and the computer is still the primary access point to the Internet. Accessing the
Internet through a computer represented close to 98% of all connections in 2009
and accessing it through a mobile phone represented only a 2% share (Média-
métrie, see note 8). In our study conducted in spring 2009, everyone – mobile
Internet users and non-users alike (some of them tried the mobile Internet and
then gave up) – pointed out this computer habit. All evoked this primary use of
the computer when they are at home, including Thomas (19 years old, his father
has a restaurant, 12th grade, professional high school, smartphone Nokia, no flat
rate mobile Internet but Wi-Fi connection), who said “When I’m home, the
computer is on, that’s it.” How can this be explained? During the appropriation
process of a technical device, the physical relationship to the object (i.e., holding
it) allows us to discover it, get used to it and domesticate it in order to make it
ours. Conjointly to this process, the mental and social representation of this
incorporated relation builds itself. We think that the physical appropriation of the
artifact for the mobile Internet remains a problem. The ergonomic dimension of
the mobile phone plays an important role in the creation of the image of the
mobile Internet. Almost everyone, even moderate users, expressed the problems
related to factors such as the little size of the screen, pages too large to scroll
across and the lack of comfort of the keyboard. This explains why even its users
deviate from the prescribed use; they are adapting by setting up alternative and
creative tactics which allows subversive uses (de Certeau, 1984): Thomas, for
instance, has a Nokia specifically designed for video games so that he can play
them anywhere at any time, but he nevertheless criticizes the ergonomics of the
phone because “regarding handiness, it’s not a video game console, you know,
because the keys of the mobile are too small”. This makes us think that an
adaptation process is at work. As Thomas explains, “Anyways, when one likes it,
ones has to adapt”, which is the case when he is outside, although he admits
linking it to the television as soon as he gets home “and then I’m actually
playing with the TV”. There is also the case of William (19 years old, his stepfa-
ther is a mason, he lives alone in youth residence, 12th grade, professional high
school, smartphone Samsung, flat rate mobile Internet), who is very proud of his
Samsung touch screen. He explains that as soon as he gets home (at the youth
residence actually, where he does not have Wi-Fi in his room), he uses his
Images and Representations of the Mobile Internet 161

mobile phone as a modem by linking it to his laptop, which he uses comfortably

with its keyboard and larger screen. We can qualify these two types of uses set
up by Thomas and William as a typical form of bypassing the usage prescribed
by the producers. It is a kind of tactics that the users set up to deal with the
producers’ strategies (de Certeau, 1984).
A paradigmatic example is that of MSN. The instant messaging service
does not show any technical failure, but, even with the mobile version used in
2009, all of the interviewees who had tried MSN had given it up at the time of
the study, essentially for ergonomic or technical reasons. MSN is, by definition,
linked to an instant messaging image and this image is being challenged on the
cell phone. One has to scroll up into the conversation to see what the other has
written and, furthermore, “it is really slow, by the time we type in an answer,
another question has already been asked” explains Lila (18 years old, her father
is a truck stoker, 12th grade, professional high school, iPod Touch, no flat rate
mobile Internet, Wi-Fi Connection). Let us listen to what they think about their
experience. For Mona (20 years old, her father manages a small business, she
lives with her boy-friend, 12th grade, professional high school, not a smartphone
and only has the MSN) “the constraints are the inconvenience”. Likewise, Lila
explains: “I don’t like it that much […] it’s not practical”. Benjamin (20 years
old, his father is an ex-cameraman retired, he lives with his girlfriend, 12th
grade, professional high school, iPhone with flat rate mobile Internet) says, “It’s
not convenient […] we can’t see the contacts, we can’t see who we are talking
to”. Nevertheless, he is very proud of his iPhone and describes the pleasurable
experience he lives when surfing on the Internet: “it is comfortable to surf on the
Internet with the large screen of my iPhone”. However, this screen becomes
“tiny” when Benjamin evokes his MSN uses. It clearly appears that the evalua-
tion of the screen is not absolute; on the contrary, it is relative and the mobile
phone is compared to the personal computer for MSN use. Benjamin can be
described as an early adopter and a real opinion leader because he became very
enthusiastic about his iPhone and tried to convince us to adopt a new iPhone. To
sum up, the image of MSN on a mobile phone is slow, not practical, constraining
and inconvenient (this refers to the 2009 version of MSN). Furthermore, aside
from these technical and ergonomic elements, it seems that there is also a lack of
a more psychological dimension linked to the conversation itself, that is, to the
communication. William (male, 19 years old, his stepfather is a mason, he lives
alone in a youth residence, 12th grade, professional high school, smartphone
Samsung, flat rate mobile Internet) told us he does not use MSN on his mobile
phone: “it’s just plain useless, when you connect to MSN, it’s for more than just
two minutes.” He would rather send a text message and then be online on MSN
in the evening. William explains that he must feel comfortable during the
162 Corinne Martin

conversation. More generally, we could add that some interviewees told us that
the image they have of the Internet is still completely linked to the computer. For
them, accessing “directly22 the Internet” must be through a computer. This is
consistent with the remark that the mobile Internet developed more rapidly in
countries where personal computers are not as established as in Western coun-
tries. The European study that focused on mobile search (JRC, 2010) also
noticed this point: “Though users generally continue to take computers as a
reference point, respondents to our questionnaire indicated that they would
consider mobile search as an alternative at home when the search experience
becomes similar” (JRC, 2010, p. 11).23 However, the issue of the alternative was
still not mentioned by the non-user respondents to our questionnaire. Finally, the
physical appropriation of the artifact and the social representation are mutually
imbricated because they feed each other reciprocally.

5 Conclusion

We chose to focus on the image and the social representations of the mobile
Internet to understand its emerging uses. The representation of the mobile
Internet user was studied. This representation is in its construction, built by the
apparatus of audience measurement and evolving into a consensual image. We
are witnessing the constitution and construction of an audience, as defined by
media reception studies and the mobile phone is actually becoming a mass
medium due to the mobile Internet. We then analyzed the image built and
produced in the public space by the marketing strategies that the network
operators use to sell their mobile Internet offerings; the image is almost war-like,
with aggressive marketing strategies and a certain symbolic violence. Then, we
analyzed the social representation of this new media by both users and non-users.
It initially appeared that the use of the mobile Internet remained limited among
our sample. Second, the image of the computer still dominates access to the
Internet for all the interviewees. It is not unheard of to think that the problems
and barriers demonstrated by the irregular users of our sample are tactics and
ways of using or ways of operating [“manières de faire”] (de Certeau, 1984)

22
The success of the iPhone is in part explained by the access to the “real” Internet it allows. It
was the core of Steve Jobs’s strategy (West & Mace, 2010). On the contrary, the operators’
portals sites or the WAP model are maybe not completely foreign to this representation be-
cause they constituted walled gardens (Jaokar & Fish, 2006). This access restriction, complete-
ly opposed to the “spirit” of the image of the Web, could explain the failure of WAP in 2000.
As a result, the walled gardens collapsed very rapidly (Mary Meeker, 2009).
23
Mary Meeker, Stanley Morgan’s expert, forecasts that more users will likely connect to the
Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within 5 years (Mary Meeker, 2009).
Images and Representations of the Mobile Internet 163

that, in the end, will allow the appropriation of this new media. It is important to
be cautious about the images associated with infrequent use because they have to
be replaced in their time and social context; they emerged in the social space at
the time of our study (spring 2009) and this constitutes an ongoing and still-
evolving process. It can be seen that the use of the mobile Internet is developing.
The last quantitative study of the CRÉDOC (Bigot & Croutte 2009), carried out
in June 2009, shows a certain increase in the use of the mobile Internet, the first
since 2004: “The Internet on the mobile phone is finally taking off” (Bigot &
Croutte, 2009, p. 43). However, if providers and economic experts have been
eager to predict its uses since the start of the mobile Internet in 2004, sociolo-
gists are here to assert that the duration of the social formation of uses is a long
one (Scardigli, 1992; Mallein & Toussaint, 1994; Perriault, 1989). We could also
add that extreme personalization of uses is appearing. The discovery of the
mobile Internet is often made through hybridization, or through a real combina-
tory of uses between personal computer, television and mobile phone. Indeed, in
the study of the uses of the camera phone, we noticed how people set up a
rationality of use to choose between the various devices available, e.g., between
the mobile phone or the digital camera (Martin, 2009). The criteria of choice are
composed of technical and economical constraints, as well as constraints related
to the personal history of the subject and their previous cultural practices.
However, we also noticed a discovery of amateur photography practices with the
mobile phone by young people from lower class who had not previously owned
a personal digital camera. This leads to another question: will the mobile Internet
help people from the most unprivileged classes who do not have computers to
access the Internet? The success of the iPhone must be more deeply analyzed
because it does not concern only upper-class professionals; indeed, beyond its
high price, one must also take into account the price of the monthly plan, which
renders the annual cost substantial (Comparatively, it is interesting to notice that
Apple computers are still limited to a certain well-off part of the population).
What then will happen to the social distinction-based image that initiated its
success? Other questions will appear, related to the permanent connectivity that
the individual will have to face; checking emails all the time – also text messages
sent from brands by mobile marketing – reading Facebook messages or produ-
cing personal content that can be spread on the Internet takes ineluctably part in
the acceleration and the rise of urgency that the ICTs favored in our contempo-
rary societies (Jauréguiberry, 2007). Will the hyper-connected individual devel-
op tactics to manage all this, just as he learned to manage his reachability?
(Martin, 2007; Licoppe & Levallois-Barth, 2009).
164 Corinne Martin

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Symbolic Models of Mobile Phone Appropriation
A Content Analysis of TV Serials

Veronika Karnowski

1 Introduction

Unintentionally overhearing a phone call while on a train, being advised to turn

off one’s cell phone in a cinema, or watching on the TV serials “Gilmore Girls”
Lorelai Gilmore calling her daughter Rory on her mobile phone—these examples
highlight the way in which mobile communication has become a part of our
everyday lives. The mobile phone, originally designed solely as a telephone, is a
cluster of innovations today. Consequently, to only analyze the adoption or re-
jection of these innovations is no longer sufficient: it is necessary to examine the
process in which these innovations are integrated into the user’s everyday life.
Images are involved in this process on two levels: First, a growing number
of the services proposed for mobile phones are visual services, such as mobile
television and the exchange of photographs. These services and their uses are
considered in other articles within this volume. The present article focuses on a
second level: as the innovation evolves, the way in which it is seen and repre-
sented (i.e., through audiovisual media) also changes. More precisely, this article
traces the representation of the mobile phone within American and German TV
serials between 1996 and 2006, during the first ten years of the widespread diffu-
sion of the device.
These more symbolical aspects of an innovation’s evolution are commonly
neglected in empirical research on media innovation (i.e., in quantitative re-
search), as such studies on media innovations tend to focus on their adoption and
diffusion. A quantitative approach which is broad enough to consider symbolical
questions is the “mobile phone appropriation model” (MPA-model) proposed by
Wirth, von Pape and Karnowski (2008).
The central aspect of this model is meta-communication: i.e., communica-
tion about the innovation in question. The present study examines this meta-
communication by integrating aspects from Social Learning Theory (Bandura,
1977) to identify the potential influence of mass media content on the individual
appropriation process.

C. Martin, T. von Pape (Eds.), Images in Mobile Communication,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-531-93190-6_9,
© VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2012
168 Veronika Karnowski

2 MPA-Model

The MPA-Model (cf. Wirth et al., 2008) deals with the question of how mobile
phones are integrated in the user’s daily routine. The model was developed on
the basis of both adoption research (e.g., diffusion research, Theory of Planned
Behavior (TPB), Technology Acceptance Model (TAM); see Ajzen, 2005;
Davis, 1986; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975; Rogers, 2003) and appropriation research
(e.g., frame analysis, domestication, Uses-and-Gratifications approach; see
Goffman, 1974; Katz, Blumler & Gurevitch, 1974; Silverstone & Haddon,
1996). Historically, it can be considered as an extension of the Theory of
Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 2005) with the following four main characteristics (see
figure 1):

1. The model considers appropriation to be a creative and active process, end-

ing with patterns of individual usage and meaning. Thus, behavior is diffe-
rentiated to its object-related and functional aspects. The object-related as-
pects include fashion aspects (e.g., ring tones and accessories), handling as-
pects and the general usage frequency of different functionalities such as te-
lephony, text messaging or online services. The functional aspects represent
the large variety of uses of the mobile telephone known from appropriation
research and Uses-and-Gratifications studies (e.g., the management of eve-
ryday life, maintaining relations; see Höflich & Rössler, 2001; Leung &
Wei, 2000), with an emphasis on the symbolic dimension (e.g., status; see
Leung & Wei, 2000) of this process.
2. The model takes into account the symbolic value of the object mobile tele-
phone and its usage.
3. The model no longer takes TPB’s independent variables, “behavioral be-
liefs”, “normative beliefs” and “control beliefs” as static, but understands
them as the constantly evolving results of the appropriation process (Jonas
& Doll, 1996; Kendzierski, 1990). Consequently, the model is conceptua-
lized as a cycle, with appropriation being a constantly renewed process.
Pragmatic and symbolic use is not only the result of behavioral, normative
and control beliefs, but also their basis (Oulette & Wood, 1998).
4. The impact of communication on the appropriation process: meta-
communication. Thus, behavioral, normative and control beliefs, as well as
symbolical and practical behavior, are negotiated through communication
among users, with producers and mass media, be it mass communication,
personal influence or the simple demonstration and observation of one’s
mobile phone use.
Symbolic Models of Mobile Phone Appropriation 169

Distraction/Pastime; Management
Telephony, SMS, Mobile TV, MP3, Ringtones, accessories

Maintaining relations; Control

Functional aspects
Object-related aspects

Psychological Dimension of everyday life;

USAGE

Symbolic aspects
Social Dimension
Figure 1: The MPA-Model (Wirth et al., 2008, p. 606)

The concept of meta-communication already implies the influence of mass

communication on the individual appropriation process, without amplifying this
idea. The present paper will show how Bandura’s (1977) Social Learning Theory
can be integrated into this concept of meta-communication.

3 Social Learning Theory

Social Learning Theory is based on the idea of vicarious learning by observing

models supported by different motivational aspects. Bandura (1977, 1986) de-
scribes four sub-processes of observational learning (see figure 2):

1. Attentional processes manage the selection of modeled events. This process

is influenced by salience, affective valence, complexity, prevalence, and the
functional value1 of the modeled event, as well as the observer’s perceptual

1
Salience refers to the degree to which a modeled behavior stands out among other behaviors,
affective valence refers to whether this behavior is seen as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, prevalence refers to
170 Veronika Karnowski

set and capabilities, cognitive capabilities, arousal level, and acquired prefe-
rences.
2. Retention of modeled events is the second precondition for observational
learning. Thus, the observer has to transform the modeled events into cogni-
tive structures by the use of symbols. In this way, the retention is facilitated
by repeated observation of a modeled event.
3. Production processes are about the transfer from cognitive structures to be-
havior. In this context, Bandura highlights that the individual can rearrange
the learned behavioral elements, thereby creating new behavioral patterns:

“When exposed to models who differ in their styles of thinking and behavior,
observers rarely pattern their behavior exclusively after a single source, nor do
they adopt all the attributes even of preferred models. Rather, observers com-
bine various aspects of different models into new amalgams that differ from
the individual sources” (Bandura, 1986, p. 104).

4. Motivational processes determine those observed events which are imitated.

These motivational aspects can be external incentives as well as vicarious
incentives; i.e., observing the modeled behavior being rewarded. In addi-
tion, the individual can reward herself/himself (self-incentives) by antici-
pating positive outcomes of the behavior in question.

According to Bandura (1986), the modeled events may be either observed in the
direct surroundings of an individual or in the mass media, without any funda-
mental difference regarding effects. The latter is called “symbolic modeling”.
Even though Bandura (1986) does not define the term “media”, it can be argued
that he acts on the assumption of mass media, as he defines symbolic models by
their transmission to a large number of recipients:

“[…] it can transmit simultaneously knowledge of wide applicability to vast num-

bers of people through the medium of symbolic models.” (Bandura, 1986, p. 47)

how often the behavior is observed, and functional value describes whether the behavior is use-
ful for the individual.
Symbolic Models of Mobile Phone Appropriation 171

Figure 2: Four sub-processes of observational learning (Bandura, 1986, p. 52)

In addition, Bandura (1986, pp. 55, 70, 145, 166, 318, 511) explicitly and repea-
tedly refers to TV as a mediator of symbolic models. Accordingly, both the
MPA-Model and Social Learning Theory assume fictional characters in the mass
media who use mobile phones to influence the individual appropriation process
of mobile phone users in real life. To examine this influence, it is necessary to
undertake empirical research firsthand on these symbolic models of mobile
phone appropriation displayed in the mass media. Consequently, the aim of the
present study is to identify and describe fictional symbolic models of mobile
phone appropriation displayed on TV. The analysis is restricted to symbolic
models in family TV serials which concentrate on everyday life topics, because
two aspects crucial to the imitation of modeled events are fostered in this type of
TV serial: the modeled events are highly probable to be observable repeatedly
and the behavior displayed is close to that in real life.

4 Symbolic Models of Mobile Phone Appropriation

According to the MPA-Model (Wirth et al., 2008), symbolic models of mobile

phone appropriation (i.e., the use of mobile phones as displayed in the mass
172 Veronika Karnowski

media) are part of meta-communication, as they are part of mass communication.

At the same time, this modeled behavior represents (fictional) appropriation
processes which can by described using the MPA-Model. Consequently, the
MPA-Model is mirrored in the dimension of meta-communication, in order to
describe symbolic models of mobile phone appropriation. Based on this idea,
two levels of the MPA-Model can be identified:

Level 1: Mobile phone appropriation by real-life individuals (MPA I)

Level 2: Mobile phone appropriation by fictional characters (MPA II)

Thus, symbolic models of mobile phone appropriation can be described by the

different elements of the MPA-Model. Theoretically, this is true for all parts of
the MPA-model. As we only observe the behavior of fictional protagonists, and
because we have no insight into their (fictional) cognitive structures, only the
behavioral dimensions of the MPA-model, as well as the aspect of meta-commu-
nication (in meta-communication), are relevant in describing second-level appro-
priation processes.
In addition, symbolic models can be described in terms of motivational as-
pects according to Social Learning Theory. These motivational aspects are an
important influence on the probability of mobile phone users imitating the mod-
eled behavior (see above).

5 Research Questions

The present paper aims to examine the potential influence of mass media content
on the individual appropriation process. Accordingly, it concentrates on the pe-
riod since the end of the 1990s, when mobile phone usage in Western societies
showed a sudden leap in terms of both penetration and total numbers (see Agar,
2003; CTIA, 2007): Which symbolic models of mobile phone appropriation can
be identified in family TV serials? How did they evolve during the period from
1996 to 2006?

6 Methodology

To address the above questions, content analysis was performed for five family
TV serials for which more than 80 episodes were first aired in Germany between
1996 and 2006: Lindenstrasse (produced by Hans W. Geißendörfer, 1985–),
Dawson’s Creek (produced by Gregory Prange, 1998–2003), Sex and the City
Symbolic Models of Mobile Phone Appropriation 173

(produced by Michael P. King, 1998–2004), Gilmore Girls (produced by Gavin

Polone and Amy Sherman, 2000–2007) and O.C. California (produced by Josh
Schwartz, 2003–2007). Lindenstrasse is a German production, whereas all the
other serials are US productions.2
As a first step, all of the episodes of these TV serials (944 episodes in total)
were screened. As a second step, content analysis was performed for all scenes in
which a mobile phone could be seen or heard, or was the subject of a dialogue. A
scene was defined as follows:

The end of a scene is characterized by a simultaneous change of topic and

protagonists or a simple change of topic, when the new topic is covered for
more than 30 seconds consecutively. Short insertions in the dialogue do not
terminate a scene provided they are shorter than 30 seconds. If events jump
from one strand of a plot to another and back, both fragments of a scene are
analyzed altogether as one scene.

A protagonist is any person in a scene who is talking or nonverbally com-
menting on events. The protagonists in a scene do not have to be located in
the same place, and they can be connected by any means of communication.

In addition to formal aspects such as duration, serial title, season and episode, the
behavioral aspects of the modeled behavior were analyzed according to the
MPA-model (see above), including

1. the object-oriented usage aspect: mode of usage (calling, text messaging,

etc.), design (chin-chins, logos, color of mobile device, etc.), ring tone,
handling;
2. the functional usage aspect: distraction/pastime, management of everyday
life (coordination and exchange of information), maintaining relations, con-
trol.

In addition to these MPA-aspects, three motivational aspects were coded based

on Bandura’s (1977) Social Learning Theory:

2
Thirteen TV serials satisfied these criteria. Most were German (seven serials) or US produc-
tions (four serials). A typical German TV serial (Lindenstrasse) was chosen, which was aired
throughout the entire timeframe. As none of the US serials was aired throughout the entire
timeframe, all four US serials were analyzed, resulting in a sample of 521 episodes of a Ger-
man production and 413 episodes of US productions. Clearly, this sample cannot be considered
representative; consequently, it only provides an initial insight into symbolic models of mobile
phone appropriation offered by TV serials.
174 Veronika Karnowski

1. the functional value of a modeled behavior (i.e. the success of a protagonist

in attaining his/her actual goals);
2. the probable similarity between modeled behavior and recipient (gender and
phase of life of the protagonist);
3. vicarious reinforcement (i.e., commendation or criticism in meta-
communication3).

The content analysis was conducted between February and July 2007. The relia-
bility of the variables was between 0.83 and 1.00 (average 0.96).

7 Data Analysis

To identify the outcomes of first-level appropriation processes, Wirth et al.

(2008) suggest using clustering techniques. Consequently, the clustering tech-
nique of latent class analysis (LCA) was employed here, which has the following
advantages over traditional cluster analysis:

1. LCA allows for classifying variables of each level of measurement: even

different levels of measurement can be integrated in the analysis. This is es-
pecially helpful for clustering content-analysis data (see also Matthes,
2007).
2. LCA does not necessarily result in a cluster solution: it can reject clustering
of the data (e.g., Fraley & Raftery, 1998).
3. LCA provides statistical tests with which to identify the exact number of
clusters; consequently, it is less arbitrary than traditional cluster analysis.
4. By virtue of its probabilistic conception, LCA takes into account that the
clustered variables may be neither completely reliable nor completely valid.

8 Results

In total, 1,413 symbolic models of mobile phone appropriation were identified,

including the usage of mobile phones as well as mobile phones simply being
visible in the scene. Although the material analyzed consisted of 521 episodes of
Lindenstrasse and 413 episodes of US serials, symbolic models of mobile phone
appropriation were much more commonly found in the US serials (82% of the
total cases; see table 1).

3
Other aspects of meta-communication have also been coded, but are not analyzed in this paper.
Symbolic Models of Mobile Phone Appropriation 175

Table 1: Symbolic models by serials

Frequency Symbolic models per

(N = 1,413) episode

Lindenstrasse 18% 0.5

US serials 82% 2.8

In episodes from the early part of the study period, few symbolic models of mo-
bile phone appropriation could be observed, with an increase only since 2003,
lagging behind uptake of the device in real life (see figure 3).

400
363 359
350
350

300

250

200 199

150

100
61
50
21
11 7 39
2 1
0
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

Figure 3: Annual number of symbolic models of mobile phone appropriation in

TV serials
176 Veronika Karnowski

400

359
350

307
300
283
250

200

157
150

100
80

50
33 27
11 6 21 42 43
2 1 28
1 12
0
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

Lindenstrasse US-serials

Figure 4: Annual number of symbolic models of mobile phone usage in

Lindenstrasse versus US TV serials

This enormous increase in 2003 is due mainly to the US serials, in which the
number of symbolic models of mobile phone appropriation decupled between
2002 and 2004. In Lindenstrasse, the number of symbolic models of mobile
phone appropriation increased only slowly (see figure 4).

Clustering

Because the clustering of second-level appropriation patterns is based on all the

functional and object-oriented usage aspects, only the 846 symbolic models of
fictional characters using a mobile phone are integrated in the analysis. Since the
two object-oriented usage dimensions of mobile phone accessories (chin-chins
and logos) are nearly constant (they are observed in only 1% of the symbolic
models analyzed), they are not integrated in LCA.
To identify the number of clusters, the one- to ten-cluster solutions were
calculated and compared. All solutions have a non-significant p-value (likeli-
hood-ratio test); thus, the model prediction does not differ significantly from the
observed data. The Cressie–Read test and Pearson’s χ² yield a significant p-value
Symbolic Models of Mobile Phone Appropriation 177

for the one-cluster solution, which can therefore be eliminated. To further test
the validity of the results, the likelihood-ratio test was checked by bootstrapping.
This method demonstrated that the two- and three-cluster solutions differ signifi-
cantly from the observed data.

Table 2: Likelihood ratio (including bootstrapping), Cressie–Read, Pearson’s Ȥ²

and Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) for one- to ten-cluster
solutions

Likelihood Ratio Cressie–Read Pearson’s Ȥ²

BIC
p-value
p-value p-value p-value
(Bootstrap)

1-Cluster 739 0.99 0.00 2038 0.00 7999 0.00 7350

2-Cluster 525 1.00 0.00 563 1.00 686 1.00 7223
3-Cluster 338 1.00 0.00 408 1.00 579 1.00 7124
4-Cluster 266 1.00 0.17 316 1.00 441 1.00 7140
5-Cluster 238 1.00 0.32 286 1.00 405 1.00 7200
6-Cluster 202 1.00 0.68 236 1.00 308 1.00 7251
7-Cluster 175 1.00 0.75 184 1.00 219 1.00 7312
8-Cluster 158 1.00 0.83 184 1.00 235 1.00 7382
9-Cluster 148 1.00 0.58 158 1.00 189 1.00 7460
10- 131 1.00 0.76 138 1.00 166 1.00 7530
Cluster

Thus, only the four- to ten-cluster solutions are considered (see table 2). General-
ly, the most suitable solution is that with the fewest parameters to be estimated,
thereby having the lowest BIC value. In the present case, this corresponds to the
four-cluster solution.

Usage clusters

LCA yields the specific probabilities of different parameter values integrated in

the analysis for each cluster. The different clusters can be described based on
these probabilities (see table 3).
178 Veronika Karnowski

Table 3: Average probabilities of parameter values, explained variance of

classified variables and relative cluster size of the four-cluster solution

Cluster 1 Cluster 2 Cluster 3 Cluster 4 R2

Distraction/ pastime 1% 0% 6% 23% 8%

Functional usage aspects

Management of everyday life:

61%
coordination 52% 99% 1% 18%
Management of everyday life:
81%
information exchange 99% 0% 12% 24%
Maintaining relations 4% 28% 63% 4% 28%

Control 3% 4% 10% 3% 2%

Usage mode: telephony 100% 100% 100% 36% 60%

Usage mode: other 0% 1% 2% 99% 81%

Object-oriented usage aspects

grey, silver,
black 93% 82% 86% 75%
Color of
2%
mobile phone other colors 5% 15% 11% 23%

not visible 1% 3% 3% 3%

visible 14% 16% 19% 21%

not observable 27% 37% 29% 32%

Handling 1%
other 7% 3% 5% 3%

not visible 51% 44% 47% 44%

Relative size 34% 31% 30% 5%

Cluster 1: Management of everyday life by telephone

Rory calls her mum Lorelai using her silver mobile phone. She asks her where to
take her car for a service. Lorelai tells her to ask her grandfather for advice. They
arrange to meet at the grandparents for dinner on Friday night.

This hypothetical scenario is typical of the usage situations in this cluster. The
purpose of mobile phone usage is generally the management of everyday life.
The cell phone is displayed as a discreet object. The color of the device is most
Symbolic Models of Mobile Phone Appropriation 179

likely to be grey, silver or black. The probability that the mobile phone is visible
to others before being used is lowest in this cluster.

Cluster 2: Coordination by telephone

Carrie reaches Miranda on her pink mobile. They agree to have lunch together on
the following day.

The purpose of this conversation is coordination. Although the colors of the

mobile devices in this cluster are mainly grey, silver or black, the probability of
colored devices (15%) is higher than that in clusters 1 and 3.

Cluster 3: Maintaining relations by telephone

Gail calls her son Dawson who lives far away in California. She first wants to know
what he’s doing right now. Then Dawson tells her about a party he went to yester-
day and about a girl he met there.

Here, the mobile is used most likely to maintain relations. The aspect of control
is more likely in this cluster than in the others. As with all the other clusters, the
mobile phones are mainly grey, silver or black, and are carried discreetly and are
not visible to the other fictional characters.

Cluster 4: Usage of other functionalities

Gabi sits at the station waiting for her train. She takes her blue mobile out of her
bag and sends a text message to her husband, telling him that her train is late.

Functionalities other than telephony—especially text messaging—are used. The

most likely purpose of usage is as a pastime or management of everyday life.
The probability of colored mobiles is higher in this cluster than in clusters 1 to 3.
This cluster also comprises the use of visual services on the mobile phone, such
as taking photos or watching videos, which is rarely observed in TV serials.
Such services were used in only 4 of the 846 analyzed usage situations.

Motivational Aspects

We now examine the motivational aspects of the identified usage patterns, which
are crucial for a possible imitation of these behavioral patterns by the recipients.
To this end, each case is attributed to the cluster to which it most likely belongs.
180 Veronika Karnowski

The classification error (i.e., the proportion of cases which are incorrectly classi-
fied) is 3.6%.

Similarity

Men organize their everyday lives by telephone to a significantly greater degree

than do women, whereas all other usage patterns are more commonly conducted
by female characters. In particular, the usage pattern of other functionalities is
dominated by women. Thus, TV serials clearly show stereotypical differences in
usage patterns for male and female protagonists (see table 4).

Table 4: Gender

Male Female

Management of everyday life by telephone

65% 35%
(n = 267)
Coordination by telephone
45% 55%
(n = 242)
Maintaining relations by telephone
37% 63%
(n = 238)
Use of other functionalities
30% 70%
(n = 33)
Total
49% 51%
(n = 780)

Pearson’s χ² = 46.7 (p < 0.001)

Symbolic Models of Mobile Phone Appropriation 181

Table 5: Phase of life

Teenagers Adults Elderly adults

Management of everyday life by

42% 55% 3%
telephone (n = 267)
Coordination by telephone
48% 50% 2%
(n = 242)
Maintaining relations by tele-
55% 43% 3%
phone (n = 238)
Usage of other functionalities
48% 52% 0%
(n = 33)
Total
48% 50% 3%
(n = 780)

Pearson’s χ² = 10.1 (n.s.)

There are no significant differences in usage patterns with regard to the phase of
life: all usage patterns are accomplished by both teenage and adult protagonists.
Symbolic models of mobile phone appropriation by elderly adults are rarely
observed (see table 5).

Success

Most of the mobile phone usage shown in TV serials is successful. The usage
patterns for management of everyday life by telephone and coordination by tele-
phone are significantly more successful than the other two usage patterns (see
table 6). Thus, imitation of the usage pattern for the management of everyday life
is most probable.
182 Veronika Karnowski

Table 6: Success

Ambi- Not
Successful Unknown
valent successful
Management of everyday life
by telephone 68% 11% 13% 8%
(n = 289)
Coordination by telephone
71% 9% 11% 9%
(n = 265)
Maintaining relations by tele-
phone 52% 10% 19% 19%
(n = 254)
Usage of other functionalities
59% 3% 10% 28%
(n = 39)
Total
64% 10% 14% 12%
(n = 847)
Pearson’s χ² = 43.2 (p < 0.001)

Commendation vs. Criticism of Usage Patterns

Explicit commendation or criticism of usage patterns via the comments of other

fictional characters is rarely observed, although criticism is dominant over com-
mendation. This is especially true for the usage of other functionalities. Coordi-
nation by telephone is most often reinforced, although it is still criticized more
often than commended (see table 7). Considering this motivational aspect, only a
minor influence of the symbolic models of mobile phone appropriation is to be
supposed.

Distribution of Usage Clusters among German and US Serials

While all three telephony usage clusters are equally observable in the US serials,
the management of everyday life dominates in Lindenstrasse. Maintaining rela-
tions by telephone occurs significantly less frequently in Lindenstrasse than in
the US serials, whereas the usage of other functions is more common in Lin-
denstrasse (see table 8).
Symbolic Models of Mobile Phone Appropriation 183

Table 7: Commendation vs. criticism of usage patterns

Commen- Ambi- No commenda-

dation valent Criticism tion or criticism

Management of everyday life

0% 3% 28% 70%
by telephone (n = 69)
Coordination by telephone
11% 0% 16% 73%
(n = 44)
Maintaining relations by
4% 4% 25% 67%
telephone (n = 51)
Usage of other functionalities
0% 20% 20% 60%
(n = 10)
Total (n = 174) 4% 3% 24% 69%

The ȋ²-test is not applicable, as 56% of the cells in the table have an estimated frequency of less than
5.

Table 8: Usage clusters by serials

Lindenstrasse US serials Total

(n = 129) (n = 717) (n= 846)

Management of everyday 41% 33% 34%

life by telephone
Coordination by telephone 33% 31% 31%
Maintaining relations by 18% 32% 30%
telephone
Usage of other functionali- 8% 4% 5%
ties

Pearson’s Ȥ² = 14.9 (p < 0.01)

184 Veronika Karnowski

Distribution of Usage Clusters over Time

Because of the low number of cases in the early years of the study period,
temporal trends are only considered for the period since 2000.
Management of everyday life by telephone, maintaining relations by tele-
phone and coordination by telephone each make up approximately one third of
usage patterns since 2000. The rate of maintaining relations by telephone was
largely constant until 2006, whereas the rate of management of everyday life
shows a slight decrease. Usage of other functionalities was only observed since
2003 and shows a low rate in all years (see figure 5).

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%
44% 41% 38% 42%
40%
33% 35% 33%
33%
34% 32% 32%
30%
29% 30% 29% 28%
22% 25% 22%
20%

10% 5%
3% 8%

0%
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Management of everyday life by telephone Coordination by telephone
Maintaining relations by telephone Usage of other functionalities

Figure 5: Usage clusters over time

Because of the small sample size, there exist large up- and downturns in the
occurrence of the different usage clusters in Lindenstrasse. Between 2000 and
2002, management of everyday life was dominant, the contribution of maintain-
ing relations by telephone showed a decline, and coordination by telephone con-
sistently made up around one third of the observed usage clusters. Since 2004,
the situation has changed due to a constant increase in usage of other functions,
Symbolic Models of Mobile Phone Appropriation 185

whereas the management of everyday life by telephone has shown a downward

trend (see figure 6).

100%

90%

80%

70%
61% 60%
60%

50%
44% 40% 40%
40%
35%
33%
30% 29%
28% 30% 25%
22%
20% 21%
11% 12%
10%
9%
0%
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Management of everyday life by telephone Coordination by telephone

Maintaining relations by telephone Usage of other functionalities

Figure 6: Usage clusters over time (Lindenstrasse)

Considering US serials, the situation is slightly different. Taken together, each of

the three telephony-usage clusters makes up approximately one third of the usage
situations. The contribution of maintaining relations by telephone shows a slight
decline, whereas management of everyday life shows a slight increase. Coordi-
nation by telephone remained stable at around one third. Usage of other func-
tionalities first appears in 2003, but does not exceed 10% (see figure 7).
186 Veronika Karnowski

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%
44% 44%
43% 39%
40%
35%
31% 33%
33% 30% 28% 31%
30%
29%
25% 27% 22%
20%
14%
10% 6%
4% 4%
3%
0%
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
Management of everyday life by telephone Coordination by telephone
Maintaining relations by telephone Usage of other functionalities

Figure 7: Usage clusters over time (US serials)

9 Summary

As with the usage patterns which can be identified as outcomes of a first-level

appropriation process (see Wirth et al., 2008), LCA could identify second-level
usage patterns: management of everyday life by telephone, coordination by tele-
phone, maintaining relations by telephone and usage of other functionalities.
Thus, mirroring the MPA-model in the dimension of meta-communication is
suitable and useful in order to describe aspects of meta-communication.
Furthermore, it was shown that the various usage patterns differ mainly in
terms of the functional usage aspects, as well as in the mobile phone services
used. Contrary to the first-level usage patterns identified by Wirth et al. (2008,),
which clearly differ from each other in terms of the object-oriented usage aspect,
handling and design are of little importance to the identified second-level appro-
priation patterns: mobile phones in TV serials are consistently displayed dis-
cretely in terms of handling and design.
All three telephony-usage clusters were observed in both US serials and
Lindenstrasse. While the different clusters make similar contributions in the US
Symbolic Models of Mobile Phone Appropriation 187

serials, the usage cluster of management of everyday life is dominant in Lin-

denstrasse. Usage of other functionalities is first seen in 2003, but makes only a
minor contribution in all subsequent years.
Examining the motivational factors associated with the usage clusters, we
note some interesting differences. First, the assignment of usage clusters to male
and female actors is based mainly on stereotypes. The naturally brief, factor-
oriented phone calls in the management of everyday life are conducted signifi-
cantly more often by male protagonists, whereas female actors dominate the
human relations usage pattern of maintaining relations. Thus, it can be supposed
that the symbolic models displayed in the serials also support the recipients’
stereotypical usage patterns. Second, the usage patterns of management of eve-
ryday life (management of everyday life by telephone and coordination by tele-
phone) are the most successful usage patterns in the TV serials examined. Thus,
imitation of theses usage clusters is most likely.
Taken together, the symbolic models of mobile phone appropriation gene-
rally provide positive behavioral models for the individual appropriation process
in terms of an adequate usage of this innovation. These models represented in
audio-visual media have the potential to influence the uses of mobile communi-
cation themselves, as they literally show the recipients how to use a mobile
phone and which symbolic value to attribute to it.
It must be remembered that the present study could only throw a first glance
at the dimension of meta-communication in the individual appropriation process.
To assure the validity of the present findings, further content analysis is neces-
sary, also covering non-fictional content. Based on such findings, it would be
possible to connect data on meta-communication with findings on individual
appropriation patterns in real life as a second step, in order to analyze the influ-
ence of meta-communication (i.e. interpersonal and mass communication) on the
individual appropriation process.

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The Image of Youth in Mobile Phone Advertising

Miguel Ángel Nicolás Ojeda

1 Introduction

This work analyzes the graphical advertisements of mobile telephone companies

in Spain. More specifically, we study the representation of young people in
advertising. The methodology, following the linguistic tradition, is a social and
semiotic analysis of ads; this includes an analysis of the expression and content
in samples of ads that have been gathered from various newspapers.
The results offer us quantitative information regarding the principal persua-
sive arguments of the sector, the products, the social information of the promi-
nent characters in ads and the profiles or groups of images of young people
associated with mobile telephones.
In this work, we study the creativity and business aims in mobile advertise-
ments and their relationship to the images of young people used in the ads to
determine their roles within the business strategy of the campaign. We focused
on data from 2009 but started with the data collected in our 2006 doctoral thesis,
Publicidad y Juventud: Un análisis sociosemiótico, in which we included a study
that was parallel to this study and comprised six years (2000 to 2005).

2 Context: Consumer Society, Young Consumers and Techno-Culture.

The current coexistence model of capitalist Western societies leads their citizens
to participate in a continuous and blindingly speedy transformation of their
consumerist lifestyles that is influenced by the continuing evolution of industry,
technology and the application of such technology. Our approach accepts a state
of change because not doing so would deny the obvious. However, it is also
equally obvious that the consumer society, from its inception, has always been
constituted by consumers and is always changing its semantic relation to goods
and services. “Consumer capitalism is not automatically born with manufactur-
ing techniques capable of producing standardized goods in large series. It is also
a cultural and social construction that equally requires the education of consu-

C. Martin, T. von Pape (Eds.), Images in Mobile Communication,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-531-93190-6_10,
© VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2012
190 Miguel Ángel Nicolás Ojeda

mers and the visionary spirit of creative entrepreneurs, the invisible hand of
managers” (Lipovetsky, 2007, p. 26, translation by author).
This self-awareness of change is more evident among consumers now than
perhaps it might have been in other phases because change, even though it is
conditioned by technological diversity, emerges from consumers in a conscious
and intentional way. In his book Le Bonheur Paradoxal (The Paradoxical
Happiness), Lipovetsky lists the three ages of consumer capitalism and argues
that society has entered a new phase of “hyper-modernity”, characterized by the
hypermodern individual, and “hyper-consumption”, which absorbs and inte-
grates into an increasing number of spheres of social life and encourages indi-
viduals to consume for their own personal pleasure rather than to enhance their
social status. These three states allow us to address the understanding of con-
sumer society as an evolving state, able to influence and be the main propeller in
the constitution of our daily lives. According to Lipovetsky, we have moved into
a third phase of our consumer society, whose individual consumer was forged in
the previous phase (60s) through household commodities (telephone, television,
a family car). The current phase (III) is conditioned by omnipresent hyper-
consumption. “The society of hyper-consumption can write on their banners,
with triumphant words: ‘To each its objects, to each its use, to each its lifestyle’”
(Lipovetsky, 2007, p. 97). Consumption is hyper-individualized, professiona-
lized and stretches over time. The reflections of Lipovetsky’s essay lead us to
envisage a society of continual use, free from time-space frameworks and, of
course, a cyber-consumer. For Lipovetsky and many marketing strategists, signs
no longer have the same spatial power in commercial relationships, but they now
have a temporal power. “The effort to compress time has been understood as one
of the signs of advent of a new temporary condition of man, characterized by
sacralization of present, for an ‘Absolute present’, self-sufficient and increasing-
ly detached from past and future” (Lipovetsky, 2007, p. 105).
However, according to Lipovetsky, the turbo-consumer reflects a series of
individual strategies. Thus, he participates, as a direct agent, in shaping the
society in which he lives and needs radical shifts in the use of his time to search
for welfare. Our brief approach to Lipovetsky’s work enables us to understand
that the consumer society is changing and is influenced by multiple factors. We
can distinguish the relationships that provide consumers with products and
brands, the motivations that lead to their consumption and the role of advertising
as a mediator for that relationship.
The recent work of Victor Gil and Felipe Romero, Crossumer, offers an en-
riching vision through which to conceptualize and name this new consumer, the
relationships he maintains with advertising, his use of Web 2.0 and mobile
technologies, his location and the ways to research him. According to Gil and
The Image of Youth in Mobile Phone Advertising 191

Romero, the term “Crossumer” describes a new consumer configured by his

distrust of brand communication, who knows the marketing strategies and
intentions and who actively participates in the acceptance and rejection of brand
messages (2008, p. 27). This consumer emerges in a context of technological
development and omnipresent advertising. He is presented as a consumer with
power, able to modify and influence the development of advertising campaigns,
validate their content, act as an intermediary and yet not be influenced (or not
believing to be influenced) by their messages. He uses a social web to build his
own individualized community created from his own tastes, and above all, he
wants to buy at the lowest price. The mobile phone is one of new consumer’s top
players, and young people have been fundamental in its technological evolution
and social use. “Young people are among the major consumers of mobile phone
technology and are often considered to be forerunners in its adoption and
evolution” (Thulin & Vilhelmonson, 2008, p. 138). Understanding the new
consumer necessarily requires awareness of the uses and functions that young
people attach to the mobile phone and how it has become one of their most
attractive technologies. Richard Ling reminds us that “many adults have the
sense that the use of mobile telephones among teens is a whole different world.
They experience teens as (technologically) competent and having a style of use
that distinguishes them” (2004, p. 83). This differentiation makes young people
the contemporary protagonists of the new uses and functions of mobile phones.
Our purpose is to analyze the images of young people in mobile ads in order to
understand the uses, functions and technical characteristics of mobile telephones
associated with their lifestyles in advertising discourse. To study the images of
young people in the advertising context (in other words, to interpret the associat-
ed meanings in the different advertising texts analyzed in this paper), we use the
basic theory of traditional semiotics. The contributions of Saussure (2000,
signifier-signified), Peirce (icon, index and symbol), Umberto Eco (2000, image-
coding information) and Roland Barthes (1994, denotation, connotation, level of
ideology, the role of the image’s anchor and relief) have contributed to the
interpretation of each sign (images and text) in the different advertising texts.
To structure our analysis file with these authors, we have also followed the
theoretical contributions of González Martín (1996), who, from the classification
of the functions of advertising language established by George Péninou (Distinc-
tive function, predicate function and implicated function), divides the semiotic
study of advertising into three areas: syntax, semantics and pragmatics. This
work is a semantic study of the advertising message. Semantics is the study of
the relationship between the sign, the meaning and the reference. It is the study
of the meanings present in the text, analyzing the meanings associated with the
192 Miguel Ángel Nicolás Ojeda

signs derived from productive resources (rhetorical operations), creativity and

the operational rules of the signs within the text.
Finally, our work identifies the signs that act as symbols in the texts. Semi-
otics asserts that symbols are signs that contain a higher semantic category, and
therefore, the correct interpretation will enable us to determine how the image of
young people in the mobile telephone sector is constructed.
In this framework, the questions that guide our objectives and results are as
follows:

What meanings (connotations and denotations) are associated with the

representation of the product (mobile phone) in the analyzed texts?

What meanings (connotations and denotations) are associated with the
brands present in the analyzed texts?

What meanings (connotations and denotations) are most commonly associ-
ated with images of young people in the analyzed advertisements?

Can we identify youth lifestyles in the analyzed texts?

Can a youth lifestyle be detected in the analyzed texts that we can attribute
to the new young consumer defined in the introduction to this work?

3 Methodology, Sample and Variables in the Studio

Our analysis offers results divided into two blocks. The first is to identify the
most common signs, formal relations, and productive and creative resources, and
the second is to study the semantics of the youth images in the ads.
To achieve our goal, we have developed a structured analysis file for twenty
variables and recorded and analyzed it with SPSS software using descriptive
analysis and frequency and contingency tables of two variables.
Our sample consists of 99 advertisements extracted from the two main-
stream newspapers with the largest audiences in Spain: El País and El Mundo.
To validate the audience data, we used the EGM1 (Estudio General de Medios)
data source prepared by the AIMC (Asociación para la Invetigación de Medios
en España), which is the main source for measuring the print media audience in
Spain. According to these data, the four most widely read newspapers in Spain
are as follows:

1
The source of these data is the latest study published by EGM previous to submitting this
work, which corresponds with data collected from February to November 2009.
The Image of Youth in Mobile Phone Advertising 193

1. Marca: 2.800.000 readers per day

2. El País: 2.081.000 readers per day
3. El Mundo: 1.309.000 readers per day
4. As: 1.306.000 readers per day

Although Marca is the newspaper with the largest readership in Spain, we

decided not to analyze it. Both As and Marca are regular sports information
papers, and we decided that this could invalidate the sample. Thus, our study
centers on the analysis of images of young people appearing in mobile ads
placed only in mainstream newspapers, and for this purpose, we used two
national newspapers with wide audiences.
To select the advertisements and validate the representativeness of the sam-
ple, we established the following criteria:

1. Our investigation period includes the period of time from January 2, 2009,
to December 25, 2009.
2. All copies of both newspapers in that period of time were viewed (698
newspapers in total).
3. We selected ads that featured mobile phones, mobile phone services, mobile
phone companies, handset manufacturers or new uses for mobile tele-
phones.
4. The frequency of the occurrence of an ad was not considered.
5. The ads were photographed and recorded, registering their dates and news-
papers in the copies.
6. The final sample contained 99 advertisements.

The analysis file consisted of the following variables (Table 1):

194 Miguel Ángel Nicolás Ojeda

Table 1: Variables

Registration Each ad has been appointed to a four-digit code (0001)

Date Date of paper in which advert is found
Support 1. El País 2. El Mundo
Product Description for advertised product and its characteristics
Brand Advertiser Trademark
Slogan Register slogan
Size Ad Size Format chart
Promise or psychological approach to consumer product
offered. To identify the product promise, we asked the fol-
lowing questions: What tangible or intangible benefit does
Promise or benefit
the consumer obtain if he buys the product or service? E.g.
Discount. Examples: Low Price, Stay connected with friends
all the time at low cost, others.
Idea Creative Idea which describes promise/appeal of product
Manifesto Narrative or artistic expression of ad
Literal Narrative Story the ad tells
Description of target advertising and target group it is ad-
Business Strategy
dressing.
Age of the characters 1. Young People 2. Other. 3. Undetermined.
Social Status High social class, media social class, low social class.
Sex Male / Female
Description of the Are ethnic features an important element in the construction
ethnic characteristics of youth representation?
Description of work / Is work / profession a feature to represent the image of young
professions people?
1. Is the target. 2. Is the spokesperson of the message. 3. Per-
forming an action. 4. Receiving an action. 5. Is a mere spec-
Role of character in tator of the action. 6. It is the target group. 7. Other. When a
the ad person carries out more than one role, we register the main
once.
The Image of Youth in Mobile Phone Advertising 195

Associated values that describe characters’ identity and im-

age: We understand each image of youth as a sign that
contributes to the creation of collective meaning of the mes-
sage. We detected the denotative and connotative meanings
of each image. We have interpreted the relationship between
the meanings of each character's youthful image and the
written text and the other signs present in the ad (brand and
their meanings. With this relationship is an exchange of
Meanings to the meanings is produced. Thus, we can detect the presence of
image of young elements of youth culture (music, fashion, activities, lan-
people guage, values) the image of the young that are associated
with mobile phone. Similarly, we can identify the meanings
(denotative and connotative) present in the mobile phone
image and can determine when these are associated with the
image of young people (technology, wireless, entertainment,
communication). In this exchange, we choose the most
outstanding significance. If this meaning is conditional on
other meanings, then it is also recorded and analyzed to
measure the frequency of individual significance and
frequency of connection with other meanings.

4 Analysis: Results

Now that we have explained the methodology, the following section shows the
quantitative results that structure our analysis based on the relationships among
the study variables: advertiser, brand, product/service, promise and the meanings
associated with the images of the youthful characters in the ads.
In section 4.1, we discuss the advertisers (network operator, manufacturer
and sales point) that occurred most frequently in the analysis. We also provide
the relationship among them, and finally, interpret the most frequent plots or
persuasive strategies.
In section 4.2, we show the analysis of the images of the young people in
the sample and show the relationship of the meanings most often associated with
these images.

4.1 Mobile Telephony: Advertisers, Products and Applications.

According to our descriptive analysis (Figure 1), the advertiser that occurs the
most often in the sample is Movistar, followed by Vodafone, Nokia, Yoigo, and
196 Miguel Ángel Nicolás Ojeda

El Corte Inglés. However, this result should be reinterpreted. To ensure a clear

interpretation of our results, we must recall the criteria for selecting our sample.
We only post (consider) each ad once, and therefore, we do not measure the
frequency of the occurrence of each brand or product. Instead, we consider
different ads where each brand or product is present. That is, each ad will only be
considered once. Another feature to take into account is that different versions of
a single ad can belong to the same advertising campaign. We observe how
Yoigo´s company has a frequency of 11 ads; however, they all belong to the
same campaign, entirely in the month of August. As we shall see, they advertise
the same product under a single business strategy and message but with different
slogans. We must remember that the purpose of this study is to analyze youth
identities proposed by the discourse of advertising in the mobile telephone sector
and the proposed uses for mobile phones in advertising as a selling point. To
measure the pressure or frequency of a brand, we preferred to observe its pre-
sence according its periods of emergence and the number of distinct ads that do
not belong to the same campaign. According to the above criteria, we present the
relationship of the most frequent advertisers in figure 1.
Except for Movistar, the frequency analysis shows that most ads promote or
feature at least two brands: mobile manufacturers (Nokia, Motorola, Samsung,
SonyEricsson), mobile telecommunication network companies (Movistar,
Vodafone, Orange), and department stores or retail outlets (El Corte Inglés,
Carrefour, Hipercor).
The most frequent advertisers are the telecommunications companies. The
most frequent brand is Movistar, which is present in 15 exclusive poster ads, and
in 19, it is present with other brands. Vodafone has only a frequency of 7
appearances as an exclusive advertiser but is present in 23 ads with other brands.
Movistar and Vodafone compose more than 60% of the sample. The most
frequent mobile manufacturers in advertisements are Nokia, Blackberry, Sony
Ericsson, Motorola, LG and Samsung. El Corte Inglés is the department store
with most outlets and ads.
The results of figure 1 show us the variety of products found in the analysis.
We can observe how mobile advertising is not limited to promoting phones. On
the contrary, mobile phone brands prefer to associate with telecommunications
service companies and distributors or outlets to sell their products through
various schemes aimed at different consumers.
The Image of Youth in Mobile Phone Advertising 197

Figure 1: Frequency of advertisers and relationships among advertisers.

Table 2 illustrates the quantitative relationship among the following varia-

bles: “product”, “brand” (manufacturers, sales points, and network operators),
“promise or benefit” and “targets.” This relationship enables us to group promi-
ses, types of arguments and persuasive strategies. This grouping helps us to more
easily understand the “added values/ meanings” associated with mobile phone
use as “advantages” and observe how the images show the presence of juveniles
according to the values and meanings associated with the product. Therefore, we
reduced the 99 advertising promises to 6 types of semantic arguments, which
allows us to more easily analyze the meanings associated with images of the
young people in the type of advertising that we study in section 4.2 of this work.
198 Miguel Ángel Nicolás Ojeda

Table 2: Types of arguments or persuasive strategies.

Name Product / Persuasive Strategy Frequency

Type 1:
Advertising that offers: Fixed price (FLAT RATE)
Flat rate by or Mobile contract: To young people / By time /
service 21
Call from abroad (roaming) / Browse Internet from
mobile phone / To send SMS / Card Pack

Type 2:
Mobile offer in Advertising that offers: Fixed price (FLAT RATE)
“Department or Mobile contract with mobile telephone in a 13
store” department store.

Type 3
Advertising that offers: Fixed price (FLAT RATE)
More flat rate 36
or Mobile contract with mobile telephone.
mobile phone
Type 4
Advertising only of the manufacturers of mobile
Manufacturer 8
telephones.
advertising
Type 5 Advertising or Corporate image and musical
4
Sponsorship sponsorship

Type 6
The mobile telephone is used to watch television or
New support for to read newspapers. Many media outlets offer their 4
media consump- content via mobile
tion

We perceived six ways (Table 2) to offer products or trading strategies in our

analysis. However, there are two main forms of mobile advertising. Thus, some
advertising (Type 1. Flat rate by service) offers a specific contract with a tele-
communications network company under a pricing strategy (“flat rate”, “Pack
card”, “Roaming”). In other cases (Type 2. Mobile offer in “Department store”
and Type 3. More flat rate mobile phone), the pricing strategy is accompanied by
the promotion of a mobile phone. Type 2 determines the recruitment of a service
to a particular retail outlet (Figure 2), while Type 3 is a service offer for a
telecommunications network company and a mobile phone model (Figure 3).
The Image of Youth in Mobile Phone Advertising 199

Figure 2: Slogan “Move to Movistar at Figure 3: Slogan “Talk with every-

El Corte Inglés“ body 24 hours a day per
(January 25, 2009, El Mundo) 1 € /day“
(August 2, 2009, El País)

Services offered by mobile companies (Type 1) focus on the price of a call and
the price of an SMS according to the type of consumer that the ad reaches. In one
example, by advertising “Roaming”, Vodafone offers a special price for young
people who call from Europe to Spain. However, there are also offers for calls by
professionals and the “self-employed”, calls for a certain price at fixed hours in
the day, prices per minute and fixed prices for browsing the Internet on mobile
phones.
Type 3 (Figure 3) is the most common and uses price as a primary strategy
in two ways: the service price and the price of the mobile phone. This marketing
strategy is the most common and used by all of the mobile telecommunications
companies (Movistar, Vodafone, Orange, Yoigo and Zeromóvil).
Type 4 (Figure 4) focuses exclusively on advertising by mobile phone ma-
nufacturers and shows how companies focus on providing the specific qualities
of its products and not on their prices. Its frequency of appearance in this ana-
lysis is just five ads, because the purchase of a mobile phone in Spain is associ-
200 Miguel Ángel Nicolás Ojeda

ated with the recruitment of phone service with a particular telecommunications

network company. This type of advertising serves to generate demand among
consumers for mobile phones but is determined by a call or SMS contract with a
company.

Figure 4: Slogan “Life is Heavy Metal” (March 21, 2009, El Mundo)

A more detailed analysis of the graphic composition of the ads reveals the role of
mobile phone images in the advertisements included in Types 2 and 3 when
constructing the final meaning of the message. The construction of these types of
ads is very simple yet sophisticated, according to the following structure: The
text incorporates the essential information of the consumer promise offered by
the telecommunications company, and the image of the mobile phone and its
additions give a true value to the offer through the type of audience at which they
are aimed and the consumer’s previous knowledge of the product (telephone). In
our view, the texts and the images of these examples pertain to the regime of
denotative meaning. The text describes the characteristics of the advertising
promise (flat rate, mobile gift), and the image complements the promise (the
message). It conditions the meaning of the text. According to Péninou (1976, p.
184), one can speak of “display advertising” where the image emphasizes the
importance of the text by repetition, which insists on showing the flat rate as a
product detail.
If we observe the formats of the Vodafone advertising outlined above, then
we notice that the mobile image is the centerpiece of all of the advertisements,
The Image of Youth in Mobile Phone Advertising 201

and it is the promise of what the consumer will acquire if he accepts the terms of
engagement with the telecommunications network company (first level of
meaning or significance denoted).
Although we have classified the product in Type 3, the mobile phone is the
true promise of the ad, and it is no longer only a product to communicate via
voice at a fixed price.
If we examine the screens of all of the phones, then we can appreciate the
different possibilities or specifications through the small icons that make up their
menus. These become the first level of value denoted (to the price) and condition
the consumers’ perception, creating new signs that comply with the principle of
the economy of language advertising. Therefore, to highlight its value as a
camera, mpx is an abbreviation for “mega pixel camera”, where in others, MG
specifies the phone’s ability to store data. Furthermore, some phones have a map
showing the mobile phone’s capability to function as GPS (Global Positioning
System).
In the next examples, we show a series of advertisements that we think give
new meaning to the mobile phone in the context of their primary or traditional
functions (calling and sending short message service). These meanings are
associated with the appeals of the new functions of cellular telephone services,
such as watching television, playing music and messaging. When these meanings
are associated with the mobile phone images in the ad text and are used to
provide an arbitrary benefit to the consumer, we suggest that the sign serves as a
symbol. “In semiotics, the term symbol is used in a special way to create any
sign raising an arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified” (Hall 2007,
p. 18). For example, if an ad promises that the mobile phone brand “x” is
connected to social networks, this is a promise associated with the mobile
phone’s functions. However, when this same promise is arbitrarily associated
with the appeals of “connectivity” or “friendship”, we consider that the mobile
phone ad text contains these meanings at the connoted level, and it serves as a
symbol in this text. If the use of the mobile phone images as an arbitrary sign of
“connectivity” or “friendship” is repeated with a high frequency, then we could
state that mobile advertising works in certain contexts as a symbol of friendship
or connectivity in discourse advertising in the mobile phone industry.
202 Miguel Ángel Nicolás Ojeda

Figure 5: Slogan: “All you need it Figure 6: Slogan: “At this time we all
is inside” want the same” (December
(January 9, El Mundo) 13, 2009, El País)

Figure 7: Slogan: “Best TV with Figure 8: Slogan: New ways of

Canal+ is in your phone” reading El Mundo
(November 21, 2009, El (January 7, 2009, El
Mundo) Mundo)
The Image of Youth in Mobile Phone Advertising 203

In these ads, mobile phone photography is a symbol of communication and

technology. Its meaning is broad and abstract, and it is no longer only a commu-
nication tool. The meanings of this symbol are, for example, entertainment,
connectivity and mobility (Figure 5). It is the main protagonist of 50% of
advertisements where no image reflects the potential consumer, but the features
that make it the best tool are reflected. For example, it is depicted as the most
desired Christmas gift (Figure 6), a radio, a portable computer, a sign of social
distinction, an instrument of entertainment, a camera, a music player, a tool for
browsing the Internet, a tool to chat, a messenger, a television (Figure 7), a new
support for reading the news or the best tool to connect to social networks
(Figure 8). These examples in figure 5 and figure 6 detail the need to offer the
mobile phone as an object of desire that is necessarily associated with an offer
initiated by telecommunications network company.

4.2 Youth Images and Mobile Phone Advertising.

Table 3 shows the frequency of juvenile characters in advertisements: almost

40% of ads show young people as characters in persuasive messages.

Table 3: Characters

Presence of young characters in the sample Frequency

Ads with juvenile characters/adolescents 38

Ads with adult characters 7
Ads without characters/people 54
Total 99

After cross-checking these data with the “role”2 variable, we note that, in
virtually all mobile telephone ads (27 out of 35) with images of young people,
2
We analyzed the relationship between the text and image of each ad to determine the “role” of
the characters. We also consider the following items: 1. Character or characters name or de-
scribe the product in the first person, act as spokesperson for the product, and confirm or sup-
plements the meaning of the text. Character or character name or describe the product in first
person and identify themselves as consumers of the product. 3. Characters are described or
named in the text as a target audience. 4. Characters act in the third person in the story and
204 Miguel Ángel Nicolás Ojeda

these represent a target group at which the message is directed. In contrast to

these results, the presence of adult characters is lower. Only seven ads in our
sample have adult characters, all of which play the role of the consumer. Thus,
based on our results, we can state that mobile phone advertising often uses
images of young people and very few images of adults. We cannot empirically
state the precise reasons for the use of images of young people in the advertising
following the results of our analysis. However, if we rely on the contributions
from José Luis León (2001), who, through a myth-hermeneutics analysis of
advertising, reflected on the use of the mythological image of youth in advertis-
ing, we agree with his assertion that each representation reflects different
intentions: e.g., to represent the target audience of the brand, to represent the
product or service, to display the meanings and values of the brand through the
image of the young, or to provide the meanings associated with the image of the
young to the brand or the product.
In our study, we found that only one product, the Sony Ericsson Aino mo-
bile phone, can be clearly identified as a product aimed at teenagers. The charac-
ters act as potential consumers in the advertisements, highlighting their prefer-
ences regarding mobile phones. Thus, music, video, sharing content with a PS3
and the camera are represented by youth jumping on large balls as a metaphor
for the fun and excitement that teens prefer to enjoy with their friends. In our
previous study, we agreed to use the term “youth advertising techno-culture” to
signify a new era - a new temporary persuasive context - shaped by a set of
messages aimed at the young, who act as the protagonists of technological
change. One ad (November 2000) for the Sony Ericsson named these individuals
Generation WAP, using term or extension used to denote old digital music files.
The layout of this advertisement used the writing of short SMS messages as an
expressive resource to define it. “You are gnration wap” thus identifies the
generational culture in which they live. However, the mobile phone is a symbol
that is desired for its technical characteristics and the identity and image persona-
lization of the individual. It acts as an extension of individual identity, just like
fashion and individual focal activities. Motorola ads, placed strategically on the
pages of the EP3 weekly entertainment supplement of the newspaper El País,
clearly reflect the intention of developing youth identities through the possession
of a mobile phone. Other advertisements of this kind offer a mobile phone with
camera to a vital personality, display a mobile phone for a conceited personality,
or show a mobile phone with an image for a musical personality.

there is no sign identifying it as a target audience. 5. The role of character in the advertisement
is ambiguous or just clarifies the meaning of the text. 6. The text appeals to the consumer
through the “you”. 7. The image uses signs of youth culture: music, aesthetics, recreation, edu-
cation, standards, friendship, etc.).
The Image of Youth in Mobile Phone Advertising 205

Table 5 shows the results of the variables associated with the young charac-
ters’ meaning, symbolism and age (to review the methodology, see table 1).
These show us how the meaning of “fun” is used to configure the personalities
and lifestyles prevailing in youth mobile advertising in 2009. We believe that
there are nine cases in which fun is the primary meaning associated with youth.
However, in all of these cases, “fun” is also associated with other qualifying
meanings. In line with the theoretical contributions of Carles Feixa, the youth
lifestyle can be understood as the symbolic manifestation of youth culture, “the
set of tangible and intangible assets used by young people to express publicly
their social identity, using bricolage techniques and homology, this is expressed
through language, aesthetics, music, cultural creations and focus activities”
(1998, p. 269). From this perspective, our analysis identifies juvenile images,
and we will consider the cultural manifestations manipulated (by the advertiser)
through the language of advertising. “In order to talk about youth we have to
start asking ourselves: who applies it, to whom and for what?” (Criado, 1998, p.
36).
Thus, friendship, communication, love and music make up the framework
of a fun and vital lifestyle. A techno-cultural lifestyle is centered around mobile
communication and the social need of young individuals to relate to their own
generation in their surrounding social and territorial context. These advertising
characters do not faithfully recreate the ways that the young act. Instead, they use
scenarios and preferences to generate a global advertising discourse in which the
consumer does not literally see “youth” but creates a mental image associated
with consumerism and the specific values of brand and/or product.

Table 4: Meanings associated with the young characters

Meanings associated with the characters Frequency

Enjoyment associated with friendship, communication,

9
love, culture or going out at weekends
Fashion 4
Music 3
Technology 3
Employment 3
Elite sports 2
206 Miguel Ángel Nicolás Ojeda

Vitality 2
Pride 2
Consumption 1
Privacy 1
Solidarity 1
Variety 1
Travel 1

The newest and most prominent stage of this analysis involving young people
has been created by ads that offer mobile social networks as a new value associa-
ted with the use of mobile phones. We say “new” because we clearly noticed in
the second half of the year that social networks are featured as an added value in
the sale of mobile phones. For example, one ad offers an urban and fugacious
world entitled “your universe”. This universe is cold and dehumanized, except
for small images on the screen of a mobile phone and blurred human figures. The
dehumanization reflects a lack of intent on the part of the advertiser to clearly
reflect the consumer, expecting that the consumer will choose the product for its
technological qualities.
Facebook advertising appears on the scene of Spanish mobile telephones
through Nokia advertising by promoting a hyper-individualized identity. The
identity proposed for the consumer is its hyper-specialized and hyper-
individualized universe. The consumer then shapes the social meanings that give
significance to the mobile phone identity, and, thus, mobile advertising uses
hyper-individualization to promote a new style of young consumer.
Hyper-individualization requires that consumers feel that he or she is the
one who creates the product, and not vice versa. Thus, they choose the context
and their friends. Who to contact (and who not to contact) are finally described
to us through the advertising concept used in advertisements, for example by
Vodafone.
Under the headline “Your world and your friends always with you” of an
advertisement by Sony Erisson, we can read the following copy: “A friend wants
to tell his latest adventure. Your old roommate has posted his photos from
Australia and tonight there’s a party at Andrew’s house. All this is happening
while you're on the street. Would you like to connect to Facebook on any website
so as not be left out?” This text can describe the consumer’s lifestyle and the
world (a collective universe of social networks) to which he belongs. A young
and economically independent individual living alone can engage in leisure
The Image of Youth in Mobile Phone Advertising 207

activities (such as travel) without any restrictive family ties. However, these
activities no longer determine an identity because the “world” is no longer out
there but, rather, is within a virtual world created through Facebook. However,
paradoxically, the new “universe” present on a social networking site and offered
from the point of view of a single concept (your world) actually feeds on the
experiences from the outside world to which each individual necessarily belongs.
In the new “virtual world” of advertising, there is a new backdrop in which
young people have a hyper-self-expression with a pressing need to be publicly
exposed and be connected.

5 Conclusions

Mobile advertising in Spain is determined by the investment of two major

telecommunications network companies, Movistar and Vodafone. Therefore,
most mobile advertising campaigns in this country involve using the services
offered by these two companies, usually implying discounts for calls on phone
contracts and discounts on the purchase of mobile phones. We found that mobile
phone manufacturers advertise their new phone models and features (e.g., touch
screen) in this type of advertising. In this context, young people are featured
prominently, and more than 30% of the sample includes images of young people
who act within ads as representatives of the target group to which the message is
geared. Youth identity, styles and proposals are almost always related to con-
cepts of fun and friendship, but the novelty of digital social networks that is
proposed as a novel scenario for fun and friendship. We believe that the context
of mobile advertising has changed. In our analysis, mobile phones and young
people are projected in a semantic context constructed through meanings such as
enjoyment, fashion, communication, friendship, love, music and technology.
This relationship contributes to the idea that the image of the mobile phone in the
ad is no longer only an iconic sign of its function. In the new context of advertis-
ing, the image of the mobile phone acts as a symbol with meanings arbitrarily
associated with the image of young people through the signs of the youth culture
that are projected in advertising. However, this change is not the main one
detected in our analysis. In our opinion, the main change is the projected image
of young people with the emergence of a new added value (functions) for mobile
phones: social networking (e.g., Facebook and Tuenti) via mobile phone. Until
then, the advertising images representing these meanings were signs of a youth
culture located in a “real space”. The advertising images in 2009 represent a
“virtual space” of youth culture inside the mobile phone. Mobile phone techno-
logy has more attributes than ever before. The smart-phone advertising aimed at
208 Miguel Ángel Nicolás Ojeda

young people uses a mixed appeal; it promises new technological features and
new uses attached to the values of youth culture. Now, mobile phone advertising
targeted at young people has changed the message from “your world in your
hand” to “your world within the mobile phone”. The advertising reviewed in
2009 does not use images of young people who use their mobile phones in the
traditional settings of youth culture. The mobile phone is no longer found against
the backdrop of youth culture. Now, the stages of youth culture are “within the
mobile phone”.

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Contributors

JULIEN FIGEAC, Ph.D., is Research Fellow at the Information Processing and

Communication Laboratory, Telecom ParisTech, France. His research and
publications focus on the uses of mobile TV and the forms of sociability gener-
ated by locative social media.

RALF HOHLFELD, Ph.D., is Professor for Communication Science at the Univer-

sity of Passau, Germany. He is Chair of the Department of Media Studies. His
research and publications focus on the field of journalism research, communica-
tion theory, media performance, mobile communication, and media convergence.

ANNE JARRIGEON, Ph.D., is an anthropologist, doctor of communication scienc-

es, and photographer. She is a Lecturer in urbanism at the University of Paris-Est
and a member of the City – Mobility – Transport Laboratory, a shared research
unit of École des Ponts ParisTech, the University of Marne-la-Vallée, and
IFSTTAR, France. She conducts research combining approaches from ethnolo-
gy, visual anthropology, and semiotics, and is particularly interested in the place
of the body and images in urban practices.

VERONIKA KARNOWSKI, Ph.D., is Research Associate at the Institute for Com-

munication Studies and Media Research in Ludwig Maximilians University of
Munich, Germany. Her research and publications focus on diffusion processes,
appropriation, and usage of new communication technologies, mobile communi-
cation, and web navigation and searching.

CORINNE MARTIN, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Research on

Mediations of the Paul Verlaine University of Metz, France. Her research and
publications focus on the usage and appropriation of information and communi-
cation technologies (mobile phone, mobile internet) in their multiple dimensions:
the economical, technical, social, gender, and cultural dimensions.

FRANK MÖLLER, Ph.D., is a Research Fellow at the Tampere Peace Research

Institute, University of Tampere, Finland, a former editor of Cooperation and
Conflict, and a member of the Finnish Center of Excellence in Political Thought
and Conceptual Change, Research team Politics and the Arts. His recent work
has been published in such journals as Alternatives, Security Dialogue, Review of
International Studies, Wissenschaft und Frieden, and Peace Review.

C. Martin, T.0 von Pape (Eds.), Images in Mobile Communication,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-531-93190-6,
© VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2012
210 Contributors

MIGUEL ÈNGEL NICOLÈS OJEDA, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor at the San Anto-
nio Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM), Spain. His research and publica-
tions focus on the study of advertising, young people, and their representation in
the advertisement

THILO VON PAPE, Ph.D., is Research Associate at the Institute for Communica-
tion Studies at the Hohenheim University in Stuttgart, Germany. His main
research interests lie in the fields of mobile communication and diffusion and
appropriation of new information and communication technologies.

IREN SCHULZ, M.A., works as Research Assistant in the coordinating project of

the DFG funded Priority Program “Mediatized Worlds” at the Centre for Media,
Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) at the University of Bre-
men, Germany. In 2011 she was awarded a doctorate (Dr. phil.) with a thesis
about digital media and the change of socialization in adolescence.

CORNELIA WOLF, Dipl. Journ., is Research Assistant at the Chair for Computer
Mediated Communication at the University of Passau, Germany. Her research
and publications focus on the field of new forms of communication and technol-
ogies (namely mobile and crossmedia communication) as well as the research on
media reception and effects.