Who texts, and with whom do they text? This article examines the use of texting using metered traffic data from a large dataset (nearly 400 million anonymous text messages). We ask: 1) How much do different age groups use mobile phone based texting (SMS)? 2) How wide is the circle of texting partners for different age groups? 3) To what degree are texting relationships characterized by age and gender homophily? We find that texting is hugely popular among teens compared to other age groups. Further, the number of persons with whom people text is quite small. About half of all text messages go to only five other persons. Finally, we find that there is pronounced homophily in terms of age and gender in texting relationships. These findings support previous claims that texting is an important element of teen culture and is an element in the construction of a bounded solidarity.

This article examines the use of smartphones for instrumental information access and use among Danish youth. Based on 31 individual semistructured interviews with Danish high school students and a grounded theory approach, it finds that instrumental use of information on smartphones has become an integrated and relied on part of everyday lives of these young Danes. Near-ubiquitous access to information is found to have consequences at both individual and social levels. Individually, users are able to look up information irrespective of the time and place and respond and adapt to this information in a rapid and flexible manner: a process the article refers to as “flexible alignment.” Further, near-ubiquitous access to information may lead to a more flexible orientation among users, who come to depend on just-in-time (rather than ahead-of-time) access to information in dealing with the contingencies of everyday life. Socially, the article finds that users may become increasingly autonomous vis-à-vis the network of social contacts, as mobile access to information is no longer exclusively available through mediated person-to-person communication but can be accessed individually as well.

This article considers the centrality of short message system (SMS) texting in the communication repertoires of young Danes. Recent years have seen dramatic changes in the mediascape with a multitude of new possibilities for text-based communication; Facebook, in particular, has become popular among young Danes. Some have suggested that the role of SMS texting, a technology that was previously an entrenched part of young people’s communication repertoires, has changed in this diversified media environment. Based on interviews with 31 Danish high school students and drawing on the domestication approach, this article examines the use practices and meanings associated with SMS texting in today’s complex and evolving mediascape. This article argues that SMS texting is becoming re-domesticated, its meanings changing, and the technology finding a new position in the communication repertoires of users.

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Der er i de senere år kommet et øget fokus på værdien af formativ evaluering på universiteterne, men dette til trods evalueres de studerendes præstationer fortsat overvejende summativt gennem eksaminer. Nye online læringssystemer, som bl.a. slår sig op på at kunne styrke feedback til de studerende og spare ressourcer for underviseren, synes lovende i forhold til at understøtte formativ evaluering. Denne artikel undersøger potentialer og begrænsninger ved at anvende et system af denne type, Peergrade, til formativ evaluering i universitetsundervisning. Metodisk er artiklen inspireret af aktionsforskning og baseret på et komparativt casestudie, hvor Peergrade afprøves og evalueres på to humanistiske og samfundsfaglige universitetskurser. På baggrund af afprøvningen konkluderer artiklen, at der er et potentiale knyttet til brugen af Peergrade, der dels kan afhjælpe nogle af de logistiske udfordringer, der kan være forbundet med feedbackprocesser, og dels kan understøtte læring gennem brugen af formativ evaluering under anvendelse af peer-feedback og rubrics. Samtidig peger studiet på, at brugen af systemet kræver en større investering af ressourcer i planlægning, facilitering og koordinering for, at de studerende får udbytte af forløbet.