The mobile phone: An artefact of popular culture and a tool of the public sphere

Convergence

Volumn 8, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 15-26

  Gordon, Janey ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BEDFORDSHIRE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 36048977430     PISSN: 13548565     EISSN: 17487382     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/135485650200800303     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. Andreas Nilsson, Urban Nuldén and Daniel Olsson, 'Mobile Media, The Convergence of Media and Mobile Communications', Convergence, 7, no. 1 (spring 2001), p. 34.
2. www.cellular.co.za/stats/stats-main.htm (accessed 8 June 2002). In February 2002 there were 840 million mobile phone users worldwide. This figure may be higher due to illicit usage.
3. There are 44 million mobile users out of a population of 60 million, www.statsbase.gov.uk (accessed 26 March 2002). These figures and technical information given in this article are correct as at the time of writing, however, the mobile telephony field is so volatile that they will inevitably be out of date very quickly.
4. See Elizabeth Douglass, 'Technology: Location-sensing technology in cell phones worries privacy advocates', Los Angeles Times Syndicate, 22 October 2001, www.nando.net/technology (accessed 26 April 2002),
5. and Ben Charny, 'Guess who's tracking you by cell phone?' ZDNet News, 27 February 2002, http://zdnet/.com.com (accessed 29 April 2002).
6. Ben Charney, 'Could E91 1 have helped in disaster?' 12 September 2001, http://news.com.com (accessed 4 April 2002). This technology was originally due to be introduced by 1 October 2001, but the mobile phone operators had to ask the FCC for a delay as the handsets were not ready and anyway the number of police stations able to do the locating was very small.
7. Sharon Gaudin, 'The terrorist network', Network World, 26 November 2001, www.nwfusion.com/research/2001 (accessed 29 April 2002).
8. See James Katz and Mark Aakhus, Perpetual Contact (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
9. Victoria Harrington and Pat Mayhew, Mobile Phone Theft, Home Office Research Study 235 (London: HMSO, December 2001), p. 58.
10. John Fiske, Reading The Popular (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 27-29.
11. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (USA: Polity, 1989).
12. Paul Kaihla, 'The Philippines' Other Revolution!' at www.business2.com/ articles/web/ (accessed 22 April 2002).
13. For a very interesting account of Filipino phone usage see G. Strom, 'The Telephone Comes to a Filipino Village', in Katz and Aakhus. Unfortunately, despite being a recent publication, Strom has suffered, as I have, with the volatile nature of the subject and his figures are now out of date. However, it does explain why the mobile was taken to so readily by the Filipinos. Strom describes how one mobile is used by many members of the same family or village group.
14. Jennifer E. Bagalawis, 'How IT helped to topple a president', Computer World, 30 January 2001, www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/ (accessed 27 April 2002).
15. Sandra Burton, 'People Power', Time Magazine, 157, no. 4 (29 January 2001), www.time.com/time.asia/magazine/2001/0129 (accessed 22 April 2002).
16. The facts of what happened on 11 September 2001 are well documented. I have used a number of sources, but found the following particularly helpful: Jenny Baxter and Malcolm Downing (eds), The Day That Shook the World (London: BBC Worldwide, 2001);
17. Toby Harnden, 'Wife phoned from hijack airliner as it hit Pentagon', 12 September 2001, Washington, www.telegraph.co.uk (accessed 14 May 2002);
18. Toby Harnden, 'Hijackers reassured pilot while they stabbed stewardesses', 13 September 2001, Washington, www.telegraph.co.uk (accessed 14 May 2002);
19. Ben Fenton, 'Hijacked passengers "go down fighting"', 14 September 2001, Washington, www.telegraph.co.uk (accessed 14 May 2002);
20. Andrew Alderson, Charles Laurence, Bill Langley, Annette Witheridge, David Wastell, Joe Murphy, Charlotte Edwards, Chris Hastings, Jenny Booth, Philip Sherwell, Jenny Jarvie, 'At 8.46am, the world changed in a moment', 16 September 2001, www.telegraph.co.uk (accessed 14 May 2002).
21. Katz and Aarkhus, Perpetual Contact (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
22. Harrington and Mayhew, Mobile Phone Theft, pp. 55-61.
23. Elena Seregina, 'Cell Phone Producers Pushing for Tighter Import Regulations', St Petersburg Times (26 December 2000), www.sptimesrussia.com/ secur/632/news/b_1416.htm (accessed 4 April 2002).
24. Cloning and re-chipping are ways by which a handset is given a false or untraceable signature, which cannot be identified by the network. See also Mark Townsend, 'Blitz on cell phone thieves', The Observer (13 January 2002), http://politics.guardian.co.uk/home/affairs/story (accessed 5 June 2002).
25. See Lana Rakow, 'Women and the Telephone' in Technology and Women's Voices, ed. Cheris Kramarae (London: Routledge, 1988).
26. See the work of Emanuel Schegloff (1967-73), in particular 'On "Opening Sequencing": a framing statement', republished in Katz and Aakhus, pp. 321-385.
27. Chris Newbold, Oliver Boyd-Barrett, and Hilde Van Den Bulck (eds), The Media Handbook (London: Arnold, 2002), pp. 10 and 183.