What Characterizes the Polymodal Media of the Mobile Phone? The Multiple Media within the World’s Most Popular Medium

Abstract

While the mobile phone is the world's most popular media device, it is actually not one single medium, but is effectively used as a different medium by different user groups. The article characterizes polymodal differences in mobile apps usage among different user groups, including gender, education, occupation, screen size, and price. We monitored the complete app usage of 10,725 smartphone users for one month each (56 million sessions, recording almost 1 million hours). Our key contribution consists in developing and analyzing a theoretical framework to classify the over 16,000 apps used into five categories. Exploring nine research questions we provide a broad characterization by asking who, with which characteristics, uses which kinds of apps in what extensity and intensity? For example, it is not the young and high occupational grades that use the mobile phone as a human-to-machine computer (including gaming and artificial intelligence tools). Large screen size is related to extensive long sessions, while a small screen size is related to intensive frequent usage. The results go beyond providing ample empirical evidence for the inherently polymodal nature of the mobile phone, but also proposes a framework on how to deal with it analytically.

RCEA: Real-time, Continuous Emotion Annotation for Collecting Precise Mobile Video Ground Truth Labels

“…To narrow down the design space, we followed three primary design principles as heuristics, however other indirectly related factors (e.g., user body motion) were considered: C1 -Design for small screen displays. Considering the small screen size of mobile devices (typically 3-6" [46,90,111]), the design should be as simple as possible to minimize distraction on video watching. Furthermore, it should account for the fat finger problem [94] so as not to occlude neither the content nor the annotation interface.…”

W(h)ither the device divide? Changing relationships between personal computer or mobile device with online activities

“…While Elliott et al (2020) indicated no effect on reading speed, Hsieh et al (2016) reported that individuals read faster on smaller screens. Hilbert and Aravindakshan (2018) showed that larger screens were associated with more extensive sessions, while smaller screens were associated with more frequent intensive use. Moreover, current mobile web pages and apps have far greater usability than in the past (Kortum & Sorber, 2015).…”

“…Adepu and Adler (2016) and Sundar et al (2018) argue that haptics, specifically touchscreens, and voice input and transcription, allow for many additional benefits for mobile usage and can provide improved accessibility. The integration of a camera, Internet, screen, keyboard, microphone, and Global Positioning System (GPS) allows for many activities, including content creation, promotion, distribution, and consumption, to be done more easily on smartphones than with PCs (Hilbert & Aravindakshan, 2018; Schrock, 2015).…”