Mobile phones as cultural tools for identity construction among college students in Oman, Ukraine, and the U.S.

Gordon, Cynthia; Zidjaly, Najma Al; Tovares, Alla V.

doi:10.1016/j.dcm.2017.01.006

Cited by 59 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Ling, 2004, 2008; Arminen 2005; Haddington & Rauniomaa 2011; Laursen 2012; DiDomenico & Boase 2013; DiDomenico, Raclaw & Robles 2018; Brown, McGregor, & McMillan 2014; Rivière, Licoppe, & Morel 2015; Raclaw, Robles, & DiDomenico 2016). This research shows how opinions about technology are not just about individuals, but are social, cultural, political, and linguistic, with users attaching a variety of positions toward NCTs’ expressiveness, utility, and affectivity (Gordon, Al Zidjaly, & Tovares 2017)—not just in the norms they reflect, but also in situated meanings and societal ideologies they construct (Thurlow & Brown 2003; Arminen, Licoppe, & Spagnolli 2016).…”

Section: Attitudes Toward New Communication Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Previous research has shown that opinions about NCTs function to construct identity in various ways. Uses of technological objects, and talk about those uses, connect to individual and cultural identities—both in how people identify or categorize their own identities (Gordon et al 2017) and in how people formulate and assess conduct putatively associated with categories of people (Robles, DiDomenico, & Raclaw 2018). We focus on how stances toward technology accomplish identity-work for participants not just by managing stances toward new technologies, but also managing self-presentation and performing their identities for others.…”

Section: Attitudes Toward New Communication Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Complaints about technology as a resource for identity-work

Robles

Parks

2019

Lang. Soc.

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This article examines how people complain about technology. Using discourse analysis, we inspect sixteen hours of video-recorded focus-group interviews and focused one-on-one discussions where technology was topicalized. We investigate these conversations paying attention to (i) features of language and its situated delivery, including emphasis, word choice, metaphor, and categorizations; and (ii) how these accomplish social actions. We show how interactants use narratives of complaint-like activities about hypothetical categories of people and confessions of their own complainable participation to accomplish a ‘bemoaning’ speech act that manages competing affiliations, demands, and disagreements to construct reasonable moral identities in the situated interaction. By engaging in specific micro-level discursive practices in interaction, participants produce and reproduce what new technologies ‘mean’ to them and for contemporary society. This shows how important it is to examine opinions as situated actions rather than as simple facts about what people believe. (Complaints, accounts, stance, technology, discourse analysis, identity)*

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Section: Attitudes Toward New Communication Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Attitudes Toward New Communication Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Complaints about technology as a resource for identity-work

Robles

Parks

2019

Lang. Soc.

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“…In this manner the al-Quds fieldsite is quite different when compared to other fieldsites in the ASSA project such as Ireland and Japan. It thus indicates how the smartphone is a cultural tool (Gordon, Al Zidjaly & Tovares, 2017) that amplifies the user's lack of digital knowledge and in al-Quds its socio-political gaps.…”

Section: Routine Connectivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…"It lived with dignity It died with dignity Never took a photo of a girl And did not record any embarrassing situations (scandals) And it did not carry music". To summarize, the adoption of smartphones by older people in Dar al-Hawa is multifaceted including factors such as new forms of digital illiteracy which gives rise to expressions of ambivalence and conservatism when thinking of the smartphone situated in users' social, political, linguistic, and cultural contexts (Gordon, Al Zidjaly & Tovares, 2017).…”

Section: Digital and Social Illiteracymentioning

confidence: 99%

Ageing With Smartphones ‘From Below’: Insights From Japan, Uganda, Al-Quds and Ireland

Kedem

Haapio‐Kirk

Hawkins

et al. 2020

SPIR

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AGEING WITH SMARTPHONES ‘FROM BELOW’: INSIGHTS FROM JAPAN, UGANDA, AL-QUDS AND IRELAND This session examines new ways to theorize the smartphone, based on a comparative study of smartphone use amongst older people in four different fieldsites for a period of 16 months ethnographic fieldwork. Along with gender, age is one of the primary parameters by which societies throughout history have structured and governed themselves (Spencer, 1990). Since the 1960s, however, we have lived with an unprecedented modern consciousness that has presented an increasingly powerful challenge to this hegemonic principle by placing a high value on youth culture (Hodkinson, 1999). As a result, there is a new uncertainty about the meaning of age (Degnen, 2007). In addition, age has also extended class discrepancies, as those around the world between the ages of 45–70 have become a class that has settled its children and can now capitalize upon the new choices of consumer culture (Blaikie, 1999). Yet, these ageing populations increasingly face problems of loneliness linked to a loss of authority of seniority (Hazan, 1994), though this may be alleviated by contact through digital devices and networked platforms, mainly smartphones. Focusing on populations in their sixties, seventies and eighties is one of the panel’s major contributions, as mostly up until now smartphones have been associated with the idea of a youth technology and many of their attributes associated with that age group (Jenkins et al., 2016). Hence, we wish to release the smartphone from its earlier connections, allowing us to theorise it more broadly as part of the life of ‘non-digital natives’. The four papers in the panel show how understanding smartphones is more than simply addressing the culture of ‘apps’ or the ‘culture of connectivity’. Rather, the smartphone presents an ecology of digitization tailored to the specific configurations of the individual user which is best understood through the ethnographic method of holistic contextualization. This approach links smartphone usage with all aspects of offline life and creates a role for digital anthropologists who are well placed to tackle fundamental questions about smartphones because they can gain access to this intimate and mainly private configuration and processes of personalization within their social and cultural contexts. Using Pype’s (2019) concept of `smart from below’ we provide illustrations showing how it is the users who actually create smartphones. To follow normative contemporary theory, this would require situating our findings in relation to established theoretical debates about new communications media. The nuance given by comparing four fieldsites with a vast variety of smartphone usage ties us to the initial context of difference and comparison, thus providing novel conceptualizations of the smartphone. These include concepts such as ‘screen ecology’, ‘the transportal home’, ‘beyond anthropomorphism’, ‘social ecology’, ‘perpetual opportunism’, ‘contradiction and ambivalence’, ‘the control hub’, ‘multifaceted connectivity’ and others. Each of these may help us to visualise, understand, and explain what people do with their smartphones and why. But where this subsumes Uganda, al-Quds, alongside Japan and Ireland there is a danger of creating neo-imperial homogenisations based on citing de-contextualised critiques. Our panel strives to describes an alternative path that could allow for theoretical development of the contemporary smartphone, while avoiding these betrayals of either substance or original insight. Three papers provide more extended examples of what we have achieved ‘the transportal home’ through fieldwork in Japan, ‘care transcending distance’ through fieldwork in Uganda, and we explore ‘contradiction, ambivalence and multifaceted connectivity’ though fieldwork in al-Quds. The fourth paper is more theoretical, aiming to link between the presented ethnographies and exemplify the grounding of theory of the smartphone. We hope that our panel will encourage global discussion of the role of the smartphones in the everyday lives of individuals from all age groups, not just the young. Such an expansion would allow for a deeper understanding of this device which, as we demonstrate, is so central to many people’s experience of social life, home, and care. References Blaikie, A. (1999). Ageing and popular culture. Cambridge University Press. Degnen, C. (2007). Minding the gap: The construction of old age and oldness amongst peers. Journal of Aging Studies, 21(1), 69-80.‏ Hazan, H., & Ḥazzān, Ḥ. (1994). Old age: Constructions and deconstructions. Cambridge University Press. Hodkinson, P., & Bennett, A. (Eds.). (2013). Ageing and youth cultures: Music, style and identity. A&C Black.‏ Jenkins, H., Shresthova, S., Gamber-Thompson, L., Kligler-Vilenchik, N., & Zimmerman, A. (2018). By any media necessary: The new youth activism (Vol. 3). NYU Press. Pype, K. (2017). Smartness from below: variations on technology and creativity in contemporary Kinshasa. What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa, 97-115. Spencer, P. (1990). Anthropology and the Riddle of the Sphinx: Paradoxes of Change in the Life Course. Routledge.‏

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“…The unprecedented expansion of wireless technologies and of their roles in people's lives has led to everincreasing interest among researchers. While initially many research projects, including our own [5,6], largely focused on social uses of mobile phones, investigations into the place of mobile phones in educational settings have been gaining momentum (e.g., see [3,[7][8][9][10][11][12]), ranging from students' attitudes toward them in Jordan [7], uses of them in lectures in Australia [8], and ethical concerns about them in Myanmar [9]. The global pandemic of 2020, which continues into 2021, forced many educational establishments out of traditional face-to-face and into online instructional environments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mobile Phones in Classrooms and in Professor-Student Communication: Ukrainian, Omani, and U.S. American College Students’ Perceptions and Practices

Tovares

Gordon

Zidjaly

2021

Int. J. Interact. Mob. Technol.

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<p>The unprecedented expansion of wireless technologies and the global pandemic of 2020-2021, which forced many educational establishments out of traditional face-to-face and into online instructional environments, have created an urgency for achieving a better understanding of the various education-related uses of mobile phones, and students’ attitudes toward them, worldwide. We conducted a questionnaire-based study to explore college undergraduate students’ perceptions and uses of mobile phones, with a focus on instructor-student communication and classroom use, across three diverse cultural contexts: Ukraine, Oman, and the United States. Based on our findings, we suggest that conceptualizing mobile phones as cultural tools and situating their use within cultural discourses illuminates how – and explains why – mobile phones are not “the same” tools for all students. The findings offer insights into students’ (developing) perspectives on uses of mobile phones, and provide grounds from which to formulate productive, and culturally appropriate, means of using them for educational purposes.</p><p> </p>

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Mobile phones as cultural tools for identity construction among college students in Oman, Ukraine, and the U.S.

Cited by 59 publications

References 21 publications

Complaints about technology as a resource for identity-work

Complaints about technology as a resource for identity-work

Ageing With Smartphones ‘From Below’: Insights From Japan, Uganda, Al-Quds and Ireland

Mobile Phones in Classrooms and in Professor-Student Communication: Ukrainian, Omani, and U.S. American College Students’ Perceptions and Practices

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