The origins of mobile communication research

Abstract

In this piece we will trace the early development of mobile communication research and its institutionalization. We will also sketch out future issues.As one might expect, early research examining the social consequences of mobile communication was a reaction to the diffusion of the technology. According to Bento (2012), mobile communication first appeared in the late 1970s. It began to gain a foothold in Scandinavia in the 1980s and was also adopted in the Global North (e.g., Europe and Japan but not the United States 1 ) in the 1990s. After the millennium shift, diffusion extended to other parts of the world including Asia (particularly China and India) and Africa (International Telecommunications Union [ITU], 2018).This diffusion pattern is mirrored in the growth of mobile communication research. In broad strokes, after some pioneering research, the research community had its nascency in the early 1990s in the work of European scholars. These people were often employed by network operators 2 and the work was developed in European-based projects such as the COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) 248, 269, 298 actions and the Eurescom P903 project that are described below. It was in these projects that several of the early researchers first came together including Leopoldina Fortunati (