{"title":"Life fits home: Exploring people's experience with a COVID-19 tracing app in Turkey through a qualitative study","authors":"Alper Alan","doi":"10.1177/20501579241235503","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579241235503","url":null,"abstract":"Mobile apps have been developed to manage COVID-19 in many countries. However, for these apps to be truly effective, they need to be widely adopted by society. To date, there has been less qualitative research on user experiences and perspectives on these apps. The goal of this study was to explore how users perceive and use different features of a COVID-19 tracing app provided in Turkey. Semi-structured interviews ( n = 15) were conducted over the phone, audio recorded, and then transcribed verbatim. The transcriptions were analyzed through thematic analysis. The analysis began by categorizing each transcript at the sentence level through open codes, which then grouped into broader themes. In total, 8 male and 7 female participants from 10 different cities took part in the interviews. On average, participants were 32 years ( SD = 6.8) old, and their app usage experience was 9.8 months ( SD = 3.1). Thematic analysis revealed five key themes: long-term adoption and engagement, perception and desired features, privacy concerns, reliability, and emotional and behavioral impact. The main reasons for users to download and use the app were to check the COVID-19 density map in their region and to access personal health codes for security checks. The COVID-19 density map caused many users to change where they usually travel and shop. Most participants felt comfortable sharing their personal data to collectively manage the pandemic. The majority found the app useful, stating that the app allows them to take precautions against the virus and therefore helps them feel good emotionally. Future contact tracing apps need to provide indicators to enable users to evaluate whether app use is making a difference in the pandemic.","PeriodicalId":46650,"journal":{"name":"Mobile Media & Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140053701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Qualitative research using social media by Bouvier Gwen & Rasmussen Joel","authors":"Deyi Kong","doi":"10.1177/20501579231215250b","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579231215250b","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46650,"journal":{"name":"Mobile Media & Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139156747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Left to our own devices: Coping with insecure work in a digital age by Ticona Julia","authors":"Guanqin He","doi":"10.1177/20501579231215250","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579231215250","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46650,"journal":{"name":"Mobile Media & Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139157204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Homelessness and mobile communication: Precariously connected by Humphry Justine","authors":"Tom De Leyn","doi":"10.1177/20501579231215250a","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579231215250a","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46650,"journal":{"name":"Mobile Media & Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139156694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lynn Schofield Clark, Carlos Jimenez, Johnny C. Ramirez
{"title":"Tethered compliance: Exploring the role of the smartphone in online civic engagement among low-income US young people through two pandemic-era case studies","authors":"Lynn Schofield Clark, Carlos Jimenez, Johnny C. Ramirez","doi":"10.1177/20501579231208006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579231208006","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers the roles that smartphones play as young people living in low-income communities navigate everyday activities, including those of online civic engagement. Drawing on ethnographic data collected during the COVID-19 lockdown, we offer empirical and methodological support for Hartmann’s concept of mediated mobilism, highlighting smartphone-related frictions and tensions that emerge at the intersections of social and political mobilities and immobilities. Specifically, our data demonstrate that as smartphones kept young people on call for parents, caregivers, siblings and others who might need them to help negotiate the heightened demands that characterized family life during the pandemic, young people found themselves in situations that we term tethered compliance, torn between the desire to participate in online civic engagement and political mobilization and the need to fulfill various exigencies of family life that emerged as a result of physical and social immobilities. Whereas scholars previously argued that mobile media held promise for mitigating structural inequality and enhancing youth online civic engagement, our findings suggest that these technologies are instead adding a new layer to be managed.","PeriodicalId":46650,"journal":{"name":"Mobile Media & Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2023-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139249729","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Regulating Platforms by Terry Flew","authors":"Rui Wang","doi":"10.1177/20501579231179547","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579231179547","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46650,"journal":{"name":"Mobile Media & Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48514149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Taipale, Tomi Oinas, Loredana Ivan, D. Rosenberg
{"title":"Mobile phone use before and during the COVID-19 pandemic – a panel study of older adults in seven countries","authors":"S. Taipale, Tomi Oinas, Loredana Ivan, D. Rosenberg","doi":"10.1177/20501579231185479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579231185479","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this study was to investigate the changes in older adults’ mobile phone use from before to during the COVID-19 pandemic. The media displacement and digital divide approaches served as the theoretical frameworks of the study. The data were drawn from the 2018 and 2020 waves of the Aging + Communication + Technology cross-national longitudinal panel study. The sample consisted of older Internet users, aged 62 to 96 (in 2018), from Austria, Canada, Finland, Israel, the Netherlands, Romania, and Spain, who participated in both waves (N = 4,398). Latent class analysis and latent transition analysis with multinomial regression models were the main methods applied to the data. With regard to the findings, three mobile phone function use profiles—Narrow Use, Medium Use, and Broad Use—were identified from the data. Lower age, being married, higher income, and place of residence (in 2018) predicted belonging to the three profiles, while country differences in the prevalence of the profiles were substantial. Between 2018 and 2020, transition from one profile to another was relatively rare but typically toward the “Broad Use” category. Profile transitions were most common in Romania, while stability was highest in Finland, Israel, and Canada. In addition, gender, age, marital status, and place of residence predicted the likelihood of changing from one profile to another between 2018 and 2020. The results suggest that older adults’ mobile phone function use is relatively stable over a two-year time span. While new mobile phone functions are adopted, they seem to augment the spectrum of mobile usage rather than displace older similar functionalities. In addition, demographic, socioeconomic, and country-level digital divides, although slightly modified over time, remain significant among older adults.","PeriodicalId":46650,"journal":{"name":"Mobile Media & Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2023-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45671052","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The R package rtoot","authors":"","doi":"10.1177/20501579231176674","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579231176674","url":null,"abstract":"Mastodon experienced a recent surge in user numbers following the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk. While the number of active users is decreasing again, Mastodon is predicted to stay a larger platform than before (Hoover, 2023). Independent of its long-term success, the events of 2022/2023 make Mastodon a unique case study for scholars to investigate the phenomenon of large-scale user migration. Mastodon’s unique characteristics, on its own and in contrast to Twitter, make it a curious object of interest for research on social networks, instances, and cross-instance dynamics (Cava et al., 2022; Zignani et al., 2018, 2019).","PeriodicalId":46650,"journal":{"name":"Mobile Media & Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2023-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43341583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Software presentation: Rtoot: Collecting and Analyzing Mastodon Data","authors":"David Schoch, Chung-hong Chan","doi":"10.1177/20501579231176678","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579231176678","url":null,"abstract":"Mastodon is a free and open-source software which allows to run a self-hosted microblogging service, like Twitter. Servers running Mastodon can interoperate, meaning that their users can communicate across different instances. Together, all Mastodon instances form a large decentralized federation of social networking sites. Mastodon was first released in late 2016 but has not attracted as much attention by users and researchers compared to centralized social media platforms such as Twitter. Previous studies on Mastodon (e.g., La Cava et al., 2022; Zulli et al., 2020) classify it as an “alternative social media” platform, in contrast to “corporate social media” platforms such as Twitter. Due to the open-source nature, Mastodon is also famous for being the technology behind far-right social media platforms such as Gab and Donald Trump’s Truth Social. These far-right platforms have also captured certain academic attention (e.g., Zannettou et al., 2018; Zhou et al., 2019). The Twitter takeover by Elon Musk in 2022, however, has changed this alternative—if not fringe—status of the technology and sparked a huge wave of new registrations for instances running Mastodon (Huang, 2022). Mastodon will become increasingly more relevant for communication scholars who study online behavior and phenomena. It is important to note that Mastodon also is a mobile platform. Official mobile apps for the","PeriodicalId":46650,"journal":{"name":"Mobile Media & Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2023-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48792726","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: The Qualified Self: Social Media and the Accounting of Everyday Life by Lee Humphreys","authors":"Becky Pham","doi":"10.1177/20501579231179547a","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579231179547a","url":null,"abstract":"regulation. Scholars and students who are interested in examining platformization would benefit from reading this insightful work. As a notable contribution to the field of mobile media and platform studies, it attempts to move beyond a Western-centric view and highlights the fragmentation of platform governance as illuminated in the case studies covered across several chapters. Furthermore, it also prompts readers to pay close attention to the ideological conflicts shaping the processes and outcomes of regulating platforms. Indeed, by emphasizing the need for a critical analysis of the role played by multiple systems and actors in platform governance, the book serves as a valuable entry point for understanding the possibilities and politics of integrating platforms in an increasingly interconnected society.","PeriodicalId":46650,"journal":{"name":"Mobile Media & Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.9,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42998479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}