nms.sagepub/ New Media & Society
nms.sagepub/content/12/5/763The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/1461444809349578 2010 12: 763 originally published online 9 February 2010New Media Society Lee Humphreys Mobile social networks and urban public space  Published by:
www.sagepublications  can be found at:
New Media & Society Additional services and information for
nms.sagepub/cgi/alerts Email Alerts:
nms.sagepub/subscriptions Subscriptions:
www.sagepub/journalsReprints.nav Reprints:
www.sagepub/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions:  nms.sagepub/content/12/fs.html Citations:
Article
Corresponding author:
Lee Humphreys, Department of Communication, Cornell University, 305 Kennedy Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.Email: lmh13@cornell.edu
Mobile social networks and urban public space
Lee Humphreys Cornell University, USA Abstract
The development and proliferation of mobile social networks have the potential to transform ways that people come together and interact in public space. These services allow new kinds of information to flow into public spaces and, as such, can rearrange social and spatial practices. Dodgeball is used as a case study of mobile social networks. Based on a year-long qualitative field study, this article explores how Dodgeball was used to facilitate social congregation in public spaces and begins to expand our understanding of traditional notions of space and social interaction. Drawing on the concept of parochial space, this article examines how ideas of mobile communication and public space are negotiated in the everyday practice and use of mobile social networks.
Key words
connect下载mobile phones, mobile social networks, parochial space, public space, social interaction It would be easy to believe that communication technology has always allowed people to overcome barriers of time and space. People have used the telegraph, telephone, television, computers and the internet to share information and interact across temporal and geographi-cal boundaries. In some cases communication technologies have even encouraged the shift and acceleration of information flows. With the rise of electronic and networked technology, scholars have suggested that social interaction has become increasingly disembedded from the particulars of time and space (Giddens, 1991; Meyrowitz, 1985). People can use the inter-net and mobile technology to connect with friends and family from all over the world.
While telecommunications allow people to connect with those far away, it would be an oversimplification to suggest that these technologies make local connections and relations unimportant. In fact, there is a growing movement to help people use telecommunications to connect with other locals. Services such as CraigsList, MeetUp and Plazes harness the power of the internet to facilitate connections between people based on new media & society 12(5) 763–778© The Author(s) 2010Reprints and permission: uk/journalsPermission.nav DOI: 10.1177/146
1444809349578nms.sagepub
764 new media & society 12(5) geographic proximity. More recently, services that connect local people have moved beyond the internet to the mobile or cell phone. The accessibility and mobility of this device suggest that people can use these services to connect with local people in real time as they move through cities.
People increasingly use mobile social networks to transform the ways they come together and interact in public space. Almost 50 million people worldwide engage in mobile social networking (Shannon, 2008). These services allow members to access net-works of friends or potential friends through their mobile phones. Much like social net-work sites on the internet (boyd and Ellison, 2007; Ellison et al., 2007), new mobile social networks can be used to build and reinforce social ties (Humphreys, 2007). These mobile social networks can facilitate the flow of new kinds of information into public spaces and as such can rearrange social and spatial practices. This article begins to explore how these new mobile services can be used to facilitate social interaction in public spaces. I discuss the nature of the interactions that occur when using mobile social networks and examine how people connect via mobile phones with other people in their city.
The article begins by discussing the literature related to urban public spaces and social interaction. By addressing the historical role of telecommunications in the city, I attempt to contextualize the use of mobile social networks not as entirely radical and new, but as a next step in the intricate interdependency between communication tech-nology and urban living. I next outline the mobile social network case study, Dodgeball, and discuss the data collection and analysis procedures. Then I introduce the concept of parochialization as a means of capturing the sense of commonality that emerges among participating co-inhabitants of the social space. I explain how Dodgeball informants used the service to socially coordinate and congregate with others in urban public spaces. I conclude by arguing that spatial factors are very relevant in mediated com-munication and suggest how this research might be extended to other social media. Urban public space and social interaction
Public space plays an important role in urban environments and can be a refuge from the hustle and bustle of city life. When I use the term public space, I am referring to non-domestic physical sites that are distinguished by their relative accessibility such as dance clubs, parks, restaurants, bars, cafes, the street, etc. (Lofland, 1998; McCarthy, 2001). While some would delimit public spaces to non-commercial physical sites of congrega-tion like parks or plazas (Carr et al., 1992), I am including more semi-public sites of consumption like cafes and bars because these semi-public spaces often serve th
e same social function as a site of sociality and recreation. As Zukin (1995) argues, there is an increasing commodification of public spaces in urban centers; thus using a broader defi-nition of public space, which includes semi-public sites of consumption, more accurately reflecting the everyday practice of urban life away from home and work.
Public spaces also serve as an important site of social interaction. According to Carr et al. (1992: 45): ‘Public places afford casual encounters in the course of daily life that can bind people together and give their lives meaning and power.’ Public spaces allow people to gather and socialize away from home and work. Oldenburg (1991) calls some of these sites of social congregation, ‘third places’. These are places where people can
Humphreys 765 gather for casual but important sociality without excessive social or personal obligations. This kind of public interaction can alleviate stresses from work by offering relaxing and entertaining social contact (Carr et al., 1992; Oldenburg, 1991).
Cities are typically characterized by diversity along nearly almost every social axis: race, class, religion, sexuality, education, political ideology and even temperament. Thus sociality in urban public spaces can occur between people of very different backgrounds. However, there can be social inhibitor
s to striking up conversations in public (Goffman, 1963, 1971). People with commonalities are easier to engage with than are people with whom one has nothing in common (Carr et al., 1992).
Mobile social networks seek to alleviate some of the challenges of interacting with others in public. These services use mobile technology to facilitate the exchange of social or locational information among users to encourage face-to-face interaction. One mobile social network, Dodgeball, was specifically designed to facilitate sociality in public spaces. This article examines the spatial practices associated with this service. Spatial practices refer to the everyday lived experience of and movement through social and physical space (Certeau, 1984). By investigating the common practices associated with mobile social network use, one can begin to understand the meanings and perceived effects of the technology’s adoption and identify social implications for users.
Researchers have begun writing about the specific role of mobile and ubiquitous tech-nology in the city. Townsend (2000) suggests that mobile technology changes the urban metabolism by accelerating the exchange of information to the point that it can bring about a ‘real-time’ city. This study aims to ground discussions of the ‘city of the future’ in the everyday experiences of Dodgeball users and as such explore the lived complexity of using mobile social networks in the city.
Case study: Dodgeball
Dodgeball was a service, owned by Google and based in New York City, that allowed users to let personal networks of friends know when they were at their local bars and restaurants via their mobile phones. This service required its members to join a social network system and was free to use. Members set up a Dodgeball social network by inviting people to be their friends and then they could also see their friends’ friends, simi-lar to Facebook and MySpace (boyd and Ellison, 2007). Rather than separately calling or text messaging each individual in one’s Dodgeball network, users sent one text message (called a ‘check-in’ message) to Dodgeball, which then broadcasted the message to their friend networks alerting them where they were and that they were interested in meeting up. For example, a friend might receive a message saying, ‘Your friend, Lee, is at the Irish Pub (19th & Walnut St). Why not stop by and say hello or check in to let her know where you are.’ Dodgeball was primarily used to facilitate meeting up with one’s social network of friends in local public spaces.
Dodgeball also integrated Google Maps into their service so that users could see a map of their check-in locations as well as their friends’ check-ins. Using the maps, users could get a visual representation of their social outings. These maps were available primarily on the Dodgeball website, but they could also be accessed if the Dodgeball member had a smart phone with mobile internet capabilities.
766 new media & society 12(5) Within the first year of existence, Dodgeball registered about 15,000 us
ers (Terdiman, 2005). This was the last reported number of users because Google acquired the company in mid-2005. While the number of users grew substantially as social media and mobile technology proliferated over the next few years, Google has not released any user data to the public.
Dodgeball was officially shut down in January 2009, but Google launched Google Latitude which allows users to ‘see where your friends are right now’ on a Google Map.1 Like Dodgeball, Google Latitude offers users the ability to share their locations with friends via their mobile phones or their computers. Google Latitude is more technologi-cally advanced than was Dodgeball. As a mobile service, Dodgeball relied on text mes-saging to send location information to and from users. Google Latitude depends on mobile smart phone technology so that users will only see a Google Map of their friends’ locations via their phone rather than receiving text messages with their friends’ locations. The location-sharing function of Dodgeball and Google Latitude is fundamental to each service and very similar.
Data collection and analysis
Becker (1998) and Lofland et al. (2006) recommend the use of naturalistic and open-ended methods to study social interactions because it allows people to use their own language to describe the social p
ractices embedded in their everyday lives. In this vein, I conducted qualitative fieldwork of Dodgeball as a mobile social network. Dodgeball was originally chosen as a case study because it was one of the earliest mobile social net-works available in the USA (Terdiman, 2005). The investment by Google had also sug-gested a long-term viability of the service (Benner, 2005). Dodgeball was also only available in major cities within the US and thus became a useful lens through which to explore the relationship between urban spatial practices and mobile social networks.
The data collection began in November 2005 and concluded in November 2006. Twenty-one in-depth interviews were conducted with Dodgeball users from seven cities throughout the USA.Because the Dodgeball system does not allow users to easily send messages to people who are not ‘Dodgeball friends’, I initiated contact with Dodgeball’s founder, Dennis Crowley, to ask if he would help recruit participants. Crowley sent recruitment emails to top users in several cities. In addition, I used snowball sampling based upon those interviews. In total, I interviewed 13 users through an introduction from Crowley and eight users with a snowball sample from the original 13. These partici-pants were among the more active Dodgeball users in the USA and thus are not necessar-ily representative of all Dodgeball users. In addition to interviews, I analyzed messages sent among a group of Dodgeball users during a week-long period in October 2006 in order to explore trends in timing, language and pro
ximity. I also interviewed Crowley to understand the background and context of Dodgeball as a mobile social network.
I interviewed nine women and 12 men, ranging in age from 23 to 30. Geographically, they lived in Chicago (n = 1), Los Angeles (n = 2), Minneapolis (n = 4), New York City (n = 9), Philadelphia (n = 3), San Francisco (n = 1) and Seattle (n = 1). I conducted fieldwork in Philadelphia, New York City and Minneapolis and therefore was able to interview more
Humphreys 767 users in these cities. Other interviews were conducted over the phone. I recorded all of the interviews and transcribed them myself in order to ensure the accuracy of the content.
My observational fieldwork in New York City and Minneapolis involved meeting up with study participants in the evening and observing how they used Dodgeball to coordi-nate meeting up with others in semi-public spaces like bars and lounges. In total, I observed six Dodgeball users in New York City and three users in Minneapolis. I also conducted participant observation where I was an active member of Dodgeball in Philadelphia for about a year. I invited friends to use Dodgeball and used the service to coordinate some of my own socializing in the city throughout the year. My participant observation was primarily a means of becoming more familiar with the various techno-logical aspects of the service.
Throughout the project I drew on grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). Rather than linearly collecting data and then subsequently analyzing it after data collection is completed, I used a constant comparative method to iteratively collect and analyze field notes and interview transcripts to identify themes and categories throughout the process. The initial themes that emerged included concepts related to space such as public, paro-chial, private and neighborhood. Once these initial themes were identified, I used QSR’s N6 to help organize and systematize the coding of the transcripts and field notes. I con-tinued collecting and analyzing data until I reached theoretical saturation, when all newly collected data could be understood and accounted for through the categorization and theoretical framework established from previous data collection and analyses (Glaser and Strauss, 1967).
Maxwell (1996) suggests that member checks can be an important tool to help mini-mize threats to validity in qualitative research. Therefore I sent different parts of the analysis and write-up to the founder of Dodgeball and four other participants in order to solicit feedback on the interpretations and conclusions I had drawn. None of the member checks led to any suggested changes in the findings.
A final note about my data collection concerns the multiple points of communica-tion, interaction and observation of users. The communication exchanges I had with informants about the mobile social networks were both direct and indirect. I was able to directly gather data about these systems through
observing user behavior (e.g. what people put in their profiles or where I observed them using the services). Most of the data about usage, however, were collected indirectly through people’s formal self-reports during interviews. While I have little reason to believe participants lied to me about their usage, I cannot necessarily verify their responses. Keenly aware that they were being interviewed, some participants may have performed a particular role of ‘mobile social networker’. This performance, however, is just as important to under-standing cultural norms. Even performances convey expectations, attitudes and beliefs about how mobile social networks are supposed to work.2
Glaser and Strauss (1967: 68) recommend collecting various ‘slices of data’ in order to strengthen the conclusions. My slices of data included in-depth and informal inter-views with both users and the founder of Dodgeball, field observations, participant obser-vations, analyses of a sample of Dodgeball text messages and an analysis of industry press about Dodgeball. Taken together, these various data sources can triangulate the

版权声明：本站内容均来自互联网，仅供演示用，请勿用于商业和其他非法用途。如果侵犯了您的权益请与我们联系QQ:729038198，我们将在24小时内删除。