I received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant!
I am so excited to find out that I have received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant! I will be going this summer to work with in China with the China Internet Network Information Center 中国互联网络信息中心 (CNNIC), the government agency that manages all of China’s internet affairs (equivalent to the FCC in the US). I met with CNNIC last summer in Beijing. We agreed upon a summer project in which I would analyze how youths and migrants are using ICTs to manage their inter-personal communication networks, with a special interest in online gaming networks.
It’s pretty exciting that these next 3 months at CNNIC will be the start of my dissertation fieldwork. I will be in Beijing for two months this summer! Here’s the title and description of my project below. If you or anyone you know is working on anything related to China and the internet - I would love to talk to you or them! And let’s talk if you are you going to be in Beijing this summer!
Title: China’s Internet Policy and Digital Network Architecture: Information Communication Technology (ICT) Practices among Youths and Migrant
Project Summary: This project asks how China’s internet policies and digital architectures influence the communication practices of two important and growing populations of new users—youths and migrants. I investigate how the inter-personal communication patterns of youths and migrants are affected by two factors: (1) recent internet usage policies set by the Chinese administration and (2) cellphone and internet digital architecture—an infrastructural comparison that is a central feature of this study.
The availability of popular ICTs to all citizens in countries such as China, renders problematic any theoretically dichotomous notions of the “Digital Divide” that are based on ICT “haves and have-nots”—where the “haves” have more technology and are consequently more empowered than the “have-nots.” A central contribution of this study is that it has the potential to transform current concepts of technology access and of ICT usage by accounting for important and specific technological differences in digital architectures and communication policies in the practices of new ICT users in China.
Thank you to Christena Turner, Richard Madsen, Eric Cech, Shannon Spanhake, Kenyatta Cheese, leah muse-orlinoff, stephanie little, Bill Blanpied and Bill Chang for all your help!
Is the cellphone a mundane non “technology” among the elite?: From Huffington Post to Rupaul’s Drag Race
When does something stop being a “technology”? The word technology is a loaded term that is full of futuristic newness— the information age, the network society, the post-industrial era—-all the hopes and fears of “modernity.” These thoughts swirled in my mind when my friend forwarded me Karen’s Leland’s column from The Huffington Post, Does Friendship Trump Technology?
In the article, she talks about how utility technicians accidentally cut the internet line to her house just as she was trying to get online to map directions to a meeting. She gets in her car and starts considering several options to get to an internet connection and then realizes that the quickest way to find directions was to actually use her cellphone to call her friend, who could then look up the direction online from her house. With her friend’s help, Leland gets to the meeting place early enough to even get a cup of coffee. Leland’s point is that friendship is more important than technology because in the end it was her friend who helped her, not the internet: “Technology is great, but a girl’s got to have friends.”
When I read this, i thought that it didn’t make any sense. Her friend fulfilled her role as a good “friend” through the use of technology. Her friend answered the phone call at an inconvienient hour, but nevertheless did so because Leland used her cellphone to wake up her good “friend.
Essentially Leland’s whole entire story could not have taken place without technology tools. To even get to her meeting, Leland is driving in a car that has an engine powered by an internal computer. To even reach her friend, Leland has to use the cellphone. For her friend to even process images, she has to find her glasses. For her friend to even give direction, she has to turn on her computer to get to mapquest (btw tell your girlfriend to use google maps - she can tell you traffic patterns and give you street view).
We can even look at it in another way - the stoplights that are programmed to direct the traffic that Leland is driving in, the coffee machine that makes her coffee, the cellphone towers that enables the calls through the electro-magnetic spectrum, the internet router her friend uses to get online - on and on. Anything and everything can be technological. The entire story is only possible with objects that create the space for the rich interaction that she has described.
Leland’s article points to one common way that technology is defined, as a new system or set of practices that are antithetical to human interaction, alienating people from friendship, love, and human touch. Technology (for Leland the unavailable internet) is seen as the anti-connector - but the ironic part is that Leland uses technology to connect to her friend who could then connects online to connect her to the directions she needed to connect to her meeting.
Technology and human interaction are not mutually exclusive - we use tools to get things done. What if the article was titled, Does Friendship Trump Tools? Or Does Friendship Trump Cars? Or Does Friendship Trump Pencils? It just sounds ludicrous because it points to the illogical boundaries on what we define as “technological.”
Leland’s point that technology does not trump friendship also reveals an underlying fear that technology would even be in a place to trump friendship. Her statement is an affirmation that her friend was there for her when her technology failed her. Is this a new way of defining friendship? Who do we turn to when our technologies fail us in critical moments?
What I think is interesting in this article, is that it actually points to a discursive cultural change in the way that elites or let’s middle- to upper-class people think about cellphones - that it has become so integrated into their lives that it’s taken for granted now as a mundane tool - just like a car or pencil or eyeglasses. NOW That’s interesting!
So at what point is an object not a “technology” and just a mundane object? Well one way is to see how it is incorporated it into discourse. In this article, the discourse of the cellphone is dis-associated from “technology” because it referred to as a non-technology.
Another way is to notice how images of technology are incorporated into our visual culture. Look at the way visual culture in music videos and movies reenact scenes of everyday life. Do you notice when your favorite TV shows incorporates a pencil into the story - no because it is just a mundane object (unless the specific topic is about the pencil). For example, movies and music videos often show characters using cellphones as part of the interaction. I know that from a more mainstream cultural studies point of view this is usually interpreted as the selling of “coolness” - the selling of the need to consume a cellphone as part of a modern consumer. ok - point taken and yes I agree.
However, another way to think about it is that many of the interactions cannot take place without the cellphone - and that speaks to the role of this technology as an everyday object that is assumed to be part of interaction - as if only with the cellphone such interaction could be accomplished. It’s hard to imagine how Leland could’ve reached her friend from her car without the cellphone unless she did it telepathically.
The first time I actually thought that the cellphone may be a mundane technology for Americans or Westerners or middle- to upper-class users was when I was watching Rupaul’s Drag Race (part 6 episode 6) where the drag queens had to compete for the best impersonation of a female executive.
When the queens took to the runway, each of them had a different outfit with various tools to support their look - such as a briefcase of files or glasses or purse. 3 out of the 4 contestants drag queens started their “Executive Realness” impersonation with a cellphone! They pretended to be on an important business call. The one who didn’t use the cellphone chose a briefcase as the stand in for “executiveness.” (oh and just in case you are curious, Phoebe, middle, was “excutive fabulousness.” A judge said that Rebecca Glasscock, far left, looked like “Donald’s Trump next ex-wife.”)
So what’s the connection between Leland’s Huffington Post article and Rupaul’s Drag Race? The cellphone is mundane! From Leland’s post to Rupual’s drag queens - it’s just a part of the everyday - and who better than drag queens to exaggerate the everyday - the queens of impersonations are best at pulling out the mundane ways we re-enact power in a gendered way.
Ok Tricia so why is it so important to understand that the cellphone could now be considered mundane? In terms of my research with new technology users, it just reminds me how careful I need to be in what kind of assumptions I bring to my research, such as my research questions, analysis and conclusions. I live in a country where a cellphone may mean one thing - which I am saying may have become a mundane everyday tool - but I do research in other countries where the cell means an entirely different thing - a non-mundane tool.
Even with technologies that are not mundane - the researcher still needs to be aware of what that the tool means to her/him - but my point is that one has to work even harder to be self-reflective about the taken for granted ideas that we bring to our fieldsites or to the design process with technology that have become ordinarialized (yes I made that word up).
I think one of the consequences of technologies becoming everyday, is that it’s hard to think about its usage in a context entirely different from our own experience. That then leads to certain assumptions and hope about the role of the technology. I find that this is most problematic in technology projects that are tried in “developing” areas of the world. You have all these “first world” or Western funded NGO’s going into these impoverished regions “bringing” or “introducing” technology with the hopes that it will jump-start economic development in the region. I find myself cringing at these projects because one, there is already lot of criticism over the failure of technology-based development projects, but also because these projects are run by people who come from the US or Europe - where technology is used in a very socially and culturally specific context. What happens then is that these people think, “well the internet is helpful for me, so it will be helpful for others who won’t have it. Life for these people will be better with internet access.” I don’t dispute that people have more choices with access to more information, but access to information is sooo socially contexual that how information is then used, processed, fulfilled, interpreted, recycled, managed and mashed - is specific to each region/community/country and I it is too often that this is not considered.
Instead, technology for development projects tend to take a linear approach where the goal is to bring the community “up” and out of poverty. There are assumptions that quality of life is a uni-directional march towards modernity and the tools that come with it.
One way to get out of this trap is that I think researchers of technology use need to spend more time understanding the mundane among new users. This takes time. This it one of the roles of ethnography. The mundane is the everyday - the take for granted. If we can better understand the everyday, then we can better understand the role and meaning of new technologies, which then leads to the greater possibility of more relevant designs for new users in new-to-us markets.
Leaving for 3rd ethnographic fieldwork trip to Mexico in a migrant-sending Oaxacan village.
This will be the 3rd time over a period of 3 years that I’m going into the mountains of Oaxaca (Sierra Madre y La Madre del Sur) to do research on ICT usage in a rural Oaxacan migrant-sending village. This year is particularly exciting because I feel that after two years of building up my relationship with the village the families really have become my friends. And I get to spend New Year’s Eve in the village!
The Mixteca Baja is one of my favorite places in the world because the people and the place are so hospitable. I feel really at home here. As an urbanite, getting to know how people live in rural areas is such a great learning experience. It is amazing the amount of knowledge that is required to live off the land. Here are pictures below from the last trip in 2009. In the first few pics, I am riding Mocho, a one-eared donkey. I am playing with some of the kids and the last few pictures are of the village cemetery. The rest of my pics are here.
So this year I’m going with a research colleague, Tanya Menendez, who came as a research assistant 2 years ago. Tanya is now very involved in the currently funded project. She has also developed a close relationship with many of the families. I’m really excited to have her come with me this time. Plus, it’s always good to do fieldwork in teams of two when the language you are working in not your first. I am sure there will be many times that Tanya is going to correct me on my Spanish.
This time we are going to live with some of the families in the village. In the previous years we stayed in a hotel in a town 45 minutes away. This year we get to experience the village 24/7! This means that I can focus a lot of my ethnographic efforts on the social practices inside homes and really observe family interaction. It also means more home cooked yummy meals!
In terms of the fieldwork, I’m super interested in seeing what kind of social changes have taken place since last year and in comparison to two years ago. When I was there last year, there was a noticeable increase in the population of young males (from around 20 in the village to around 50) because many of them had been deported - not because they were criminals - simply because ICE (US immigration and customs enforcement) had picked them up while they were walking on the street looking for work.
With the economy as it is, I wonder how the families are doing economically and socially. In one family, the father had shown up in the village over night after having been deported. The family couldn’t get in touch with him for many weeks because he was held up in a detention center. When he appeared in the village 1 month later after no contact with his family, overnight they realized that they had lost their only source of income. Having to return back to a complete subsistence lifestyle, the mother had to make some tough decisions about the finances. They had to take their oldest son (15 years old) out of school even though he wanted wanted to finish high school. Their plan was to have being work or migrate to the US so that he could help with the fees of his two younger brothers staying in school. The mother also had to cut off cellphone usage for both sons. With no father working in the us, the kids’ social circle had shrunk down to their own village overnight. It became difficult for them to reach or even see their friends in other villages.
Another major change that we had noticed was that the youth were no longer treating their cellphones as a necessary object. Rather, many of them were using MSN Messenger as their primary communication tool with their friends. The novelty of a cellphone had worn off. This was a noticeable difference from the 1st year where the youth carried their cellphones with them everywhere in EVEN though the signal was horrible within the village. These cellphone carrying youth were the first cellphone adopter in the village and they made their cellphone ownership status very obvious. They never let it leave their hands and it was always visible. However, during the 2nd year, the youth rarely carried their cellphones on them. Many of them reported that they had forgotten it or that it wasn’t charged.
This year, I wonder how the youth will be using the cellphones and MSN. I’ve noticed that they sign on to MSN less often and I wonder if this is due to the economy tightening up.
I have a long fieldwork guide, but I would like share a quick glimpse into some of the topics that Tanya and I would like to find out from this year’s fieldwork trip:
understanding spatial perspectives: We will have people draw mental maps of their daily activities within the village and point out when and where they use their cellphones or make time to go to the internet cafe 45 minutes away. Some questions to ask: where they usually leave their cellphones, why do they carry it with them, what areas have good signals, how to they manage sharing a cellphone, when does their schedule change, where are all the places they visit in the surrounding area on a typical month?
Do more research on the caseta telefonica: when do they chose to make or receive calls at the caseta, who calls them, have they noticed any differences in calling patterns in the last 3 years, who initiates calls in the family, have they changed the way that they use the caseta?
private communication and inside the home: how to women manage the finances, how do they use the cellphone, what do they use it for, how do they communicate with other women, how to they manage their kid’s schedules, how often to they talk to their husbands and sons in the US, what is most important to them, how often to they leave the village, do they take a cellphone with them, when was the first time they used a cellphone, do they prefer to use the caseta, the telefono fijo, or the cellphone and why, and what made them decide that a cellphone was important for their child, who taught them how to use the cellphone?
undocumented migrants in detention centers: Talk to return migrants who have been held in federal detention centers: what phone #’s do they call, how often are they allowed a call, who tells them when they can make a call, do they have difficulty reaching their family in Mexico, how do they feel in the detention centers, do they hear of stories where people can’t reach their family in Mexico, what makes them want to stay longer or plead their case, did they try to look for a lawyer, and do their friends and relatives in the US know when they are picked up?
how families are dealing with the slow economy: are migrants getting or maintaining jobs, are they feeling the economic slowdown, how are families managing with less income, what kind of decisions have to be made with less money in the family, are documented versus undocumented migrants experiencing the economic slowdown in different ways, are migrants sending less money?
Changes in usage of communication tools: how do people decide when to use IM vs cellphone vs the caseta, has cellphone signal improved this year, how often are people using their cellphones, have prices changed for cellphone usage, are people on special plans and if so how did they find out about it, how much are people spending per month on cellphone usage
going to the cybercafe: I would like to go to do some mobile ethnography again and travel with the youth to the cybercafe in the town 45 minutes away. what kind of websites are they visiting, how have their internet viewing patterns changed, how often they go to the cafe, how do they negotiate getting money from their moms to pay for internet time, how often to they talk to their friends online, how have their viewing patterns changed over the last 3 years, what new things have they discovered about the internet, how often to they use email, who do they email with.
life histories: understand life changes among informants, what they plan to do, what kind of path they see for themselves, will they chose to migrate to the US, what are some difficulties they are dealing with, any stories from the previous year, what are they excited about, how they feel about their role in the village?
Cultural changes with the village and migration: how the village is doing with its resources, how the tree replanting project is going, status on water treatment, status on the library initiative, how do the older people feel about the younger people, are people moving back from the US, is there a population decline, how was the fiesta this year, why do people decide to not migrate, how do young people feel about migration, what does the village do with the return migrants and the deported migrants, how quickly do the deported migrants return to the US,
