January CommQuote

Let's ring (hint hint) in the new year with a poem called Cell Phone by Ernesto Cardenal (transl. by John Lyons). It's from his 2011 collection titled The Origin of the Species and Other Poems (Texas Tech University Press).

Cell Phone

You talk on your cell phone

and talk and talk

and laugh into your cell phone

never knowing how it was made

and much less how it works

but what does that matter

trouble is you don’t know

just as I didn’t

that many people die in the Congo

thousands upon thousands

for that cellphone

they die in the Congo

in its mountains there is coltan

(besides gold and diamonds)

used for cell phone

condensers

for the control of the minerals

multinational corporations

wage this unending war

5 million dead in 15 years

and they don’t want it to be known

country of immense wealth

with poverty-stricken population

80% of the world’s coltan

reserves are in the Congo

the coltan has lain there for

three thousand million years

Nokia, Motorola, Compaq, Sony

buy the coltan

the Pentagon too, the New York

Times corporation too

and they don’t want it to be known

nor do they want the war to stop

so as to carry on grabbing the coltan

children of 7 to 10 years extract the coltan

because their tiny bodies

fit into the tiny holes

for 25 cents a day

and loads of children die

due to the coltan powder

or hammering the rock

that collapses on top of them

The New York Times too

that doesn’t want it to be known

and that’s how it remains unknown

this organized crime

of the multinationals

the Bible identifies

truth and justice

and love and the truth

the importance of the truth then

that will set us free

also the truth about coltan

coltan inside your cell phone

on which you talk and talk

and laugh into your cell phone

 

Teens and Technology 2013

Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project and the Berkman Center for Internet and; Technology have jut released their 2013 report on Teens and Technology. Read the whole 19-page report or remain blogbound with the summary here: 

Overview

Smartphone adoption among American teens has increased substantially and mobile access to the internet is pervasive. One in four teens are “cell-mostly” internet users, who say they mostly go online using their phone and not using some other device such as a desktop or laptop computer.
These are among the new findings from a nationally representative Pew Research Center survey that explored technology use among 802 youth ages 12-17 and their parents. Key findings include:

• 78% of teens now have a cell phone, and almost half (47%) of them own smartphones. That translates into 37% of all teens who have smartphones, up from just 23% in 2011.
• 23% of teens have a tablet computer, a level comparable to the general adult population.
• 95% of teens use the internet.
• 93% of teens have a computer or have access to one at home. Seven in ten (71%) teens with home computer access say the laptop or desktop they use most often is one they share with other family members.

“The nature of teens’ internet use has transformed dramatically — from stationary connections tied to shared desktops in the home to always-on connections that move with them throughout the day,” said Mary Madden, Senior Researcher for the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project and co-author of the report. “In many ways, teens represent the leading edge of mobile connectivity, and the patterns of their technology use often signal future changes in the adult population.”

October CommQuote

In an article that explores why young people (defined as 21 to 34- year-olds) are not buying houses and cars the way they used to  (The Cheapest Generation, by Derek Thompson and Jordan Weissmann, The Atlantic, September 2012) I was surprised by this smartphone "theory."

Subaru’s publicist Doug O’Reilly told us, “The Millennial wants to tell people not just ‘I’ve made it,’ but also ‘I’m a tech person.’ ” Smartphones compete against cars for young people’s big-ticket dollars, since the cost of a good phone and data plan can exceed $1,000 a year. But they also provide some of the same psychic benefits—opening new vistas and carrying us far from the physical space in which we reside. “You no longer need to feel connected to your friends with a car when you have this technology that’s so ubiquitous, it transcends time and space,” Connelly said. in other words, mobile technology has empowered more than just car-sharing. It has empowered friendships that can be maintained from a distance. The upshot could be a continuing shift from automobiles to mobile technology, and a big reduction in spending."

Journal issue feature: Frontlines

The latest issue of USAID's Frontlines is their Youth/Mobile Technology edition.  It includes articles on what's possible with mobile technology in the developing world, texting for conservation, mobile gaming, and m-money or, mobile money.

In Apps for Afghanistan, Kathleen McGowan observes how

"[the] explosion of mobile users has created a network that bridges the country’s formidable urban-rural divide while transcending gaps in physical infrastructure, low literacy rates and pervasive insecurity.The near-ubiquity of mobile phone coverage has allowed Afghanistan to join the vanguard of countries experimenting with innovative new uses for the mobile channel, using the networks to extend services and information cheaply to populations lacking access through other means. Among the most promising is mobile money—the ability to safely store and transfer “e-money” via SMS, avoiding the expense and danger associated with moving cash, while extending the reach of basic financial services from the 5 percent of the population with accounts in brick-and-mortar banks to the 65 percent of Afghans who use mobile phones...

The overwhelming response to an app design competition this year among Afghan university students illustrated just how compelling up-and-coming young Afghans find mobile money—more than 5,000 students across the country submitted ideas, many of which focused on how mobile money on how mobile money could improve the Afghan Government’s ability to provide basic services transparently and efficiently."

Frontlines is a publication of USAID, a United States foreign assistance program since 1961 that has been principal in extending assistance to countries recovering from disaster, trying to escape poverty, and engaging in democratic reforms.

Congressional Research Report on Government Cell Phone Tracking

A recent  Congressional Research Report Governmental Tracking of Cell Phones and Vehicles: The Confluence of Privacy, Technology and the Law has just been released.


Summary
This report will briefly survey Fourth Amendment law as it pertains to the government's tracking programs. It will then summarize federal electronic surveillance statutes and the case law surrounding cell phone location tracking. Next, the report will describe the GPS-vehicle tracking cases and review the pending Supreme Court GPS tracking case, United States v. Jones. Finally, the report will summarize the geolocation and electronic surveillance legislation introduced in the 112th Congress.

ASC Library Mobile

Good news for all comm junkies on the go...the Annenberg Library now has its own mobile access page.
Using this site you can check our hours, search Franklin and VCat, use the handy Penn Text article finder, or access Blackboard and RefWorks much more easily from your mobile devices. Just bookmark the site from the link on the Annenberg Library homepage. In addition, there's a mobile friendly app for EBSCOhosts databases which now not only includes Communication & Mass Media Complete, but also Communication Abstracts. Other mobile friendly databases to search on the train or a park bench are Lexis-Nexis Academic, Scopus, and for health communication folks, Medline Plus. The list of mobile friendly databases will no doubt be growing and I'll try to keep up with good ones to add. Notice too, that your favorite library blog, Commpilings, does not go unrepresented on the page, so no excuse for not being up on the latest (5) posts!

Mobile Media Across Europe

The Internet Advertising Bureau Europe has released a white paper on mobile penetration in Europe. From the Introduction and Methodology of Mobile Media: An IAB Europe White Paper:

Mobile internet advertising spend during 2010 – when advertising revenues generally fell - was worth €710 million, more than double its 2009 total of €279 million. This report, covering 19 European countries, presents detailed research findings behind these figures. It springs from IAB Europe’s mission to prove the value of the market through research and education.

This report is based on a variety of sources that are the most legitimate to use in each local market and bring the potential, audience and usage of the mobile internet. The objective of this report is to provide local marketers with the most accurate mobile data on each European market. In countries where several sources are available, we chose the most recognised one from the local players. We used one source in countries where there is no other data available.

Mobile Stats

mobiThinking is a great site for free information on the mobile technology on the global scale. It includes practical guides to mobile agencies, ad networks, top mobile markets, interviews and analysis, showcase sites and case studies, industry events and awards, a comprehensive list of links to mobile resources and a compendium of mobile statistics, which can be found under the "Global Marketing Tools" tab, Global mobile statistics 2011

AdMob Metrics is another good source for tracking this data, although their latest reports are March and May 2010.

NielsenWire has some data on the State of Mobile Apps, as well as other blog posts in their "online + global" section.

Of course, there's the ever reliable Pew Internet & American Life Project's Mobile Access 2010 for a thorough analysis of United States data.

Digital Future Report

The Center for the Digital Future at USC's Annenberg School has just released the ninth report of it's Surveying the Digital Future, The Digital Future Project 2010, "nine years of longitudinal research compris[ing] an absolutely unique data base that completely captures broadband at home, the wireless Internet, on-line media, user-generated content and social networking. As usual, the report continues to track off-line media use, purchasing both off-line and through e-commerce, social and political activity and a wealth of other data."

You can access summary data at the site or avail yourself of the whole 203- page report in the ASC Library. Among the study's findings:

* Americans on the Internet -- For the first time, the Internet is used by more than 80 percent of Americans -- now 82 percent.
* Weekly hours online -- The average time online has now reached 19 hours per week. Although more than two-thirds of Americans have gone online for a decade, the largest year-to-year increases in weekly online use have been reported in the two most recent Digital Future studies.
* Gaps in Internet use in age groups -- Not surprisingly, Internet use continues to increase as age decreases, with 100 percent of those under age 24 going online. However, a surprisingly high percentage of Americans between 36 and 55 are not Internet users: among respondents age 46 to 55, 19 percent are non-users; among those 36 to 45, 15 percent are non-users.
* Low adoption of new media -- Although new media is used by large percentages of Internet users age 24 and under, overall large percentages of Internet users never go online to do instant messaging (50 percent), work on a blog (79 percent), participate in chat rooms (80 percent), or make or receive phone calls (85 percent).
* Does technology make the world a better place -- The percentage of users age 16 and older who said that communication technology makes the world a better place has declined to 56 percent of users from its peak of 66 percent in 2002.
* Internet and Political Campaigns -- although more than 70 percent of users agree that the Internet is important for political campaigns, only 27 percent of users said that by using the Internet public officials will care more about what people think, and 29 percent said that the Internet can give people more of a say in what government does.
* Buying online -- 65 percent of adult Internet users buy online (the same as in 2008), and make an average of 35.2 purchases per year (up from 34.1 per year in 2008).
* Internet impact on traditional retail declines -- 61 percent of Internet users said that online purchasing has reduced their buying in traditional retail stores -- down from 69 percent in 2008.
* Top 10 online purchases -- 59 percent of Internet users said they purchase books or clothes online, followed by gifts (55 percent), travel (53 percent), electronics/appliances (47 percent), videos (46 percent), computers or peripherals (41 percent), software or games (40 percent), CDs (40 percent), and products for hobbies (38 percent).

December CommQuote

David Hockney has a new passion, drawing on his iPhone, as Lawrence Weschler describes in a recent New York Review of Books piece. The application called Brushes, which enables users to digitally draw or fingerpaint on the device's screen, provides a full color wheel spectrum that can be easily lightened or darkened. Hockney has gone wild with this new technology producing thousands of images which he casually sends to friends. So far he's been working in three thematic areas--portraits and self-portraits, still life of plants and flowers, and California dawns. Most iPhone painters use their index finger but Hockney is strictly a thumb-man. He has no problem with his images finding their way into print media but believes it's worth noting that:

"...the images always look better on the screen than on the page. After all, this is a medium of pure light, not ink or pigment, if anything more akin to a stained glass window than an illustration on paper. It's all part of the urge toward figuration. You look out at the world and you're called to make gestures in response. And that's a primordial calling: goes all the way back to the cave painters. May even have preceded language. People are always asking me about my ancestors, and I say, Well there must have been a cave painter back there somewhere. Him scratching away on his cave wall, me dragging my thumb over this iPhone's screen. All part of the same passion." --"David Hockney's iPhone Passion," Lawrence Weschler, The New York Review of Books, October 22

Two articles from Journal of the Medical Library Association

Two articles of interest in the April 2009 issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association:

A bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature on Internet, video games, and cell phone addiction, by Xavier Carbonell, Elena Guardiola, Marta Beranuy, and Ana Bellés.

Web usability testing with a Hispanic medically underserved population, by Mary Moore, Randolph G. Bias, Katherine Prentice, Robin Fletcher, and Terry Vaughn.

Aspen Institute Reports

It's good to keep an eye out for Aspen Institute reports from its Communication & Society Program section. The program convenes leaders in the areas of information and communication for roundtable discussions to explore the political, economic, and societal impact of communications and information infrastructures. It also promotes research and distributes conference reports. Recent (2007) reports include: Next-Generation Media: The Global Shift; The Mobile Generation: Global Transformations at the Cellular Level; The Future of Video: New Approaches to Communications Regulation; Unmassing America: Ethnic Media and the New Advertising Marketplace. These reports are for sale at a reasonable price at the site but I discovered they are actually free on the open web. Just google a chunk of the title and they will come up in a full pdf.

Special Issues Roundup

The Journal of Mass Media Ethics (Volume 22, Numbers 2&3, 2007) is devoted to Moral Philosophy under the editorship of Christopher Meyers. Articles tackle John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism, ethical reasoning, virtue ethics applied to journalists,Immanuel Kant and transparency, and Immanuel Kant on moral education.

Continuum (Voume 21, Number 2, June 2007) features Mobile Phone Cultures. Its issue editor is Gerard Goggin.

A special issue of The Journal of Advertising (Volume 36, Number 2, Summer 2007) is on Social Responsibility in Advertising, guest edited by Michael J. Polonsky and Michael R. Hyman. Included are articles on the effects of warning-label placement in print ads, the use of humor to mask deceptive advertising, and consumer responses to corporate social responsibility initiatives.

The Asian Journal of Communication (Volume 17, Number 2, June 2007) is devoted to Media and politics in Post-handover Hong Kong, guest editors: Joseph M. Chan and Francis L.F. Lee.

But as we approach the dog days of August...the Canadian
Journal of Communication gets the award for running the most summer-sea-breezy piece to cross my desk. Authored by Jaigris Hodson and Phillip Vannini of Royal Roads University, it's titled Island Time: The Media Logic and Ritual of Ferry Commuting on Gabriola Island, BC.

Abstract
Drawing upon ethnographic data collected among residents of Gabriola Island, British Columbia, this article analyzes the meanings associated with the movement of the MV Quinsam—the primary means of transportation onto and off the island—and with the ritual of ferry commuting. By focusing on the logic of the ferry as a medium of communication and on the ritualistic aspects of commuting and by combining a symbolic interactionist perspective with the media theory of Harold Innis, the authors reflect on how the Gabriola Island ferry shapes islanders’ sense of time and thus experiences of lived culture.