Search results

This article examines the use of mobile telephones by teenagers in Norway. The data for this study are based on two sources; first they draw on qualitative interviews with a sample of 12 families with teenagers in the greater Oslo area. In addition, they use a quantitative study of a national sample of 1,000 randomly selected teenagers. The data show that it is boys, most often those who work, that own mobile telephones. The qualitative analysis shows that the motives for owning mobile telephones are accessibility, safety and micro‐coordination. In addition, the mobile telephone serves as a symbol of emancipation. Metaphors surrounding the telephone allow for discussions of status construction and identification.

This article aims to focus attention on users of information technology (IT), especially mobile telephony. It focuses on what people actually say about mobile technology but also aims to pay attention to what they do not talk about, what is found in the silence, especially with new technology when much can be taken for granted. This latter is, according to Foucault, even more important to understand.

The research draws on empirical research through 11 semi‐structured interviews and interviews with five focus groups, comprising between four and eight care assistants in each group. The interviews were with three women and three men between 25‐70 years old, five female public sector middle managers and care assistants from five focus groups at social services departments in the north of Sweden. A Foucauldian approach is adopted to interpret the findings and explore how their locations within the circuits of socio‐technical networks engender uncertainty with mobile technology. The present spread of IT reinforces a belief that people are integrated into the circuits of socio‐technical networks.

The findings suggest, on the one hand, that new technologies like mobile communication can be used to organise our everyday lives, whilst, on the other, there are risks with the new technologies, which can discipline discourses.

These issues are discussed from a sociological and informatics perspective.

This paper aims to examine the long run impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on economic growth in the Sub Saharan African (SSA) region. The direct impact of ICTs use was examined for a 27-year period (1990-2014), before the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) era (1990-1999) and during the MDGs era (2000-2014). Second and third objectives examined the nonlinear effect of ICT in the economic growth and their threshold values, respectively. The main growth enhancing transmission channels of ICT use were also looked at.

The study uses panel method technique of system generalist method of moment. The data period was collected from the years 1990-2014 from 45 SSA countries. The three main proxies of ICT are fixed telephone lines, mobile phone users and internet users per 100 inhabitants.

For the direct impact analysis, mobile phone and internet were found to have triggered economic growth. However, for nonlinear effect analysis, mass penetration of ICT proxies seems to slow economic growth. The threshold analysis showed a penetration rate threshold of 4.5 per cent for both mobile phone and internet, and 5 per cent for fixed telephone line before economic growth gets triggered. Finally, the results indicated that, except for financial development, human capital, institutional quality and domestic investment were the main growth enhancing transmission channels of ICTs use in the economy.

From a policy perspective, results suggest SSA region to open more doors for investment in technology to ensure sustainable development. Such policy has to focus on investment into main transmission channels of ICT, namely, human capital, institutional quality and domestic investment. The policymakers have to ensure that penetration of mobile phone, fixed telephone and internet is met by improvement in human capital, institutional quality and domestic investment. Moreover, to fully use the potential of ICT, improving the financial sector is highly recommended.

In SSA, studies that address the impact of ICT on economic growth was almost non-existent, especially on its nonlinear effect and main transmission channels. While few studies have examined the direct impact of ICT, this study extended the scope by including the main growth enhancing transmission channels and nonlinear effect of ICT on SSA economies using recent data.

The paper aims to analyse bottom of the pyramid (BoP) customers’ (e.g. Bangladeshi farmers) use and appropriation of mobile telephony and to critically identify a suitable research strategy for such investigation.

Concentrated ethnographic immersion was combined with both methodological and investigator triangulation during a four-month period of fieldwork conducted in Bangladeshi villages to obtain more robust findings. Concentrated immersion was required to achieve relatively speedier engagement owing to the difficulty in engaging with respondents on a long-term basis.

The farmers’ use of mobile telephony went beyond the initial adoption, as they appropriated it through social and institutional support, inventive means and/or changes in their own lifestyle. The paper argues that technology appropriation, being a result of the mutual shaping of technology, human skills and abilities and macro-environmental factors, enables users to achieve desired outcomes which may not always be the ones envisaged by the original designers.

The paper contributes to two major areas: first, it identifies technology appropriation as an important and emerging concept in international marketing research; second, it suggests a concentrated form of ethnographic engagement for studying technology appropriation in a developing country context.

A good understanding of the dynamic interplay between users’ skills and abilities, social contexts and technological artefacts/applications is required in order for businesses to serve BoP customers profitably.

The paper presents a dynamic model of technology appropriation based on findings collected through a pragmatic approach by combining concentrated ethnographic immersion with methodological and investigator triangulation.

Focuses on Dancall A/S, a Danish telecommunications equipment manufacturer, which was acquired by Amstrad UK in September 1993 for £6.4 million. As an independent subsidiary of Amstrad UK, Dancall is in a position to develop its marketing strategy to a mass UK market. Suggests that heuristic devices could be the way to proceed in its tactical application of the strategic plan.

The purpose of this chapter is to provoke thinking about the directions in which the travel survey toolkit should move in the near future based on the author's personal experience and as an outcome of the Travel Survey Methods conference. The chapter begins with a brief historical review that attempts to show some of the major elements of change that have occurred in travel survey methods over the past 40–50 years. A more detailed review is provided about developments over the past 10–15 years. The chapter then explores a number of emerging challenges, including telephone contact of potential respondents, computer-assisted surveys, Internet surveys, mixed-mode surveys, the impacts of language and literacy and the potentials of mobile technologies. Based on this, the chapter then considers future directions that should be pursued. The chapter suggests that it has been changes in survey methodology that have, in the past, sometimes enabled and at other times led to changes in modelling paradigms, and that this may be an appropriate time for travel survey methodology again to enable changes in modelling paradigms. A speculative specification of a new household travel survey that makes use of a number of these developments is then offered. The chapter ends with some concluding remarks that issue a challenge to the travel survey community to think ‘outside the box’ and foster change and improvement in the accuracy and representativeness of travel surveys.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how Bangladeshi farmers interact with mobile telephony and how they negotiate the resulting difficulties. In doing so, the paper seeks to identify how farmers integrate mobile telephony into their daily lives, and what factors facilitate and limit their use of mobile telephony.

The research was based on ethnographic observation, interviews and focus group discussions, collected through four months of fieldwork, conducted in two remote areas of Bangladesh.

It was found that Bangladeshi farmers' use of mobile telephony is inhibited due to language barriers, a lack of literacy, unfamiliar English terminologies, inappropriate translation to local language (Bengali) and financial constraints. However, the social, occupational and psychological benefits from mobile telephony motivate them to use and appropriate it through inventive use and adaptation.

The findings suggest that current understanding of usability needs to be interwoven with that about the appropriation of technology in order to develop a better understanding of the use and consequent integration of a technology in daily lives.

The paper adds to the argument for a bottom‐up approach for ICT‐enabled intervention in development activities and for the mobile telephony manufacturers and network providers it contributes to understanding of the rural consumer market of a developing country.

The paper presents an original conceptual diagram that combines the concept of usability and appropriation.

Discusses the supply of mobile services, regulatory issues, questions of access to mobile services, pricing trends and the future for this sector. Provides a snapshot of the current state of the mobile phone industry worldwide, beginning with an examination of the boom in mobile cellular subscribers. Uses Figures for explanatory emphasis.

Contends the best strategy for facing up to the growing demand for services in mobile communications is to learn from the experience of other countries around the globe. Addresses the key role of regulation, formulating policy framework, overcoming incumbents’ resistance and public scrutiny. Summarizes that the mobile communications sector is the fastest growing area within telecommunications.