The Ubiquitous Internet

Anja Bechmann, Stine Lomborg, Anja Bechmann, Stine Lomborg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317931393
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Computer Science

This book presents state of the art theoretical and empirical research on the ubiquitous internet: its everyday users and its economic stakeholders. The book offers a 360-degree media analysis of the contemporary terrain of the internet by examining both user and industry perspectives and their relation to one another. Contributors consider user practices in terms of internet at your fingertips—the abundance, free flow, and interconnectivity of data. They then consider industry's use of user data and standards in commodification and value-creation.

Part I
Users and Usage Patterns

This section examines the ubiquitous internet from the users’ perspective. The four chapters in this section explore the (new) communicative practices and modes of engagement that arise with the increasingly multi-device, portable, interoperable, and open internet. In what ways does it change or reify existing patterns of internet usage? How do users experience and manage the ubiquitous internet, and with what consequences for their privacy and empowerment? The chapters address the ubiquitous internet both in terms of cross-device and within-device uses, as well as in terms of the interconnectedness of specific services such as apps and social media.

Common for the four chapters is a reliance on empirical user studies, drawing on a diverse set of methods, including surveys, interviews, behavioral API data, and documents. Moreover, the questions of ubiquitous internet use, forms of user engagement, and empowerment that form the basis of the chapters are classic questions posed to all kinds of media in various strands of media audience research (Jensen & Rosengren, 1990).

The internet is itself a dynamic technology that is constantly evolving as users adopt and reject new features and applications and use them in ways that are often unanticipated. The first chapter of this volume, by Grant Blank and William H. Dutton, is anchored primarily in longitudinal survey data on how Britons use the internet, which illuminates the emergence of new patterns of accessing the internet over multiple devices—some of which are portable. Hence, in this first empirical analysis, ubiquity is addressed as the interconnected use of devices for communication that forms a basic condition for internet use. Blank and Dutton specifically investigate the rising use of mobile devices among a range of devices used to access the Internet, and label those who adopt this new approach to internet use ‘Next Generation Users.’ Next Generation Users are defined as Internet users who access the Internet (1) on mobile and (2) on multiple devices. In contrast, first generation users remain anchored to one or more personal computers in the household or workplace for accessing the internet. Their analysis further shows how the emerging pattern of access is reshaping the use and impact of the internet. Next Generation Users are disproportionately likely to use the internet for entertainment, content production, and information-seeking, even with controls for demographic factors. Blank and Dutton conclude that mobility and multiple devices are reconfiguring access to information, people, and services in ways that are likely to empower Next Generation Users in relation to other users. This, the authors suggest, may herald the beginning of a new digital divide, or be a transitional phase to an un-tethered internet age.

Complementing Blank and Dutton’s focus on the patterns of access to and communication on ubiquitous, (mobile) internet devices, in chapter two of this volume Stine Lomborg discusses how ordinary users make sense of these devices as pocket-size, portable entry-points for going online in everyday life. In the scholarly literature, the ubiquity of digital media and communications has been framed, very broadly, as nurturing an experiential sense of being ‘always on,’ of ‘ambient intimacy,’ and so on. But what does it mean, in a qualitative sense, for individuals to be ‘always on’ the internet, for instance by carrying the internet with them on their mobile devices as they go about their everyday business? Lomborg combines an affordance-based analysis of smartphones with an empirical study, based on qualitative interviews with a sample of twelve Danish smartphone users, on the meanings and significance that they ascribe to their smartphones as ubiquitous internet devices in everyday life, with a particular focus on social media. The study argues that the experiential qualities of ubiquitous internet arise not merely from the constant and convenient availability of the internet, but are negotiated in the concrete situations of use.

Continuing the exploration of social media use in the context of the ubiquitous internet, in chapter three of this volume Anja Bechmann presents an analysis of the largest, most interoperable, and diversified social media data company on the internet. Facebook collects personal and sensitive data about its users across devices and services in various contexts ranging from self-reported information on religion and politics, everyday whereabouts and check-ins to pictures from Instagram, playlists from Spotify, and running routes in Runkeeper. The users share these data paths with their network of friends, Facebook administrators, external companies, advertising agencies, and app developers, but how do users navigate in this seamless service? How do they manage interoperability, what is considered to be sensitive data which should not be shared, and why? And what are the user strategies of personal data sharing in the seamless and ubiquitous environment of Facebook? Bechmann focuses on interoperable and potentially seamless communication as one of the main characteristics of the mobile and ubiquitous internet. Drawing on API (Application Programming Interface) data retrieval from Facebook and interviews with high-school students, she presents an ethno-mining inspired study of interoperability and data sharing in the setting of Facebook, showing how participants use Face-book groups as a privacy filter. The high-school students choose not to use the built-in potential for interoperability in the service. The chapter further demonstrates that, in using groups as a privacy filter, the students have a common understanding of personal data and personal data handling, along with a high degree of experienced control when designing their own code of conduct, practices, and uses of the Facebook interface and functions in the quest to socialize with their friends.

Completing the user studies section, and pointing beyond the mundane usage patterns described in the first three chapters, in chapter four of this volume Jun Liu explores the interrelationship between the ubiquity of information and communication technologies and contentious politics. Specifically, Liu looks at how ubiquitous internet generates new dynamics of contentious politics and empowerment by taking information and communication technologies (ICT)-mediated contentions in China as the case. The study investigates two cases in rural and urban China in which Chinese people employed their digital devices for protests, based on analyses of documents and accounts from eleven in-depth interviews with participants in these protests. Liu demonstrates how ubiquitous internet enables and facilitates the emergence of real-time contentious politics, in which it acts not only as means of overcoming censorship but also as means of organizing and mobilizing. Ubiquitous internet thus integrates the dynamics of real-time politics into the process of contentious activities and transforms contentious politics in contemporary China.

Reference

Jensen, K. B., & Rosengren, K. E. (1990). Five traditions in search of the audience. European Journal of Communication, 5 (2), 207–238.

1
Next Generation Users

Changing Access to the Internet

Grant Blank and William H. Dutton

Many claim that we have entered a ‘post-PC’ era. The basis for this perception are arguments like ‘more and more consumers are using their mobile devices as their “default gateway” for accessing the Internet’ (King, 2012), or

as soon as 3 to 5 years from now, the average business professional will be transitioning from ‘Heavy’ clients such as desktop PCs and business laptops with large amounts of localized storage and localized applications … to very small and extremely power efficient … systems … which will function mostly as cache for applications that run remotely.

(Perlow, 2012)

Hewlett-Packard’s September 2012 announcement that it would lay off 29,000 employees seemed to support this argument with hard data on the decline of the personal computer and subsequent shifts of investment away from desktop computers to the mobile internet. There is no question that the phenomenal growth of smartphones, tablets, and readers is having a major impact on how people access the internet. However, the arguments favoring the ‘post-PC’ era are based on the assumption that PCs are being supplanted by lightweight, mobile devices. Although PC sales are slowing as the market matures (BBC News, 2013) the assumption that PCs are being superseded lacks systematic evidence based on trends in how users access the internet.

The movement to mobile devices is one element in the larger movement that includes platform-independence and interoperability of services and applications on the internet. All these contribute to the ubiquitous internet, where we no longer ‘go to’ the internet. Instead the internet is available at all times, in all circumstances—anytime, anywhere. Mobile devices facilitate this move by making the internet accessible when no wired connection is available. Mobile devices offer new kinds of access to the internet but, as our analysis indicates, the relationship between PCs and mobile devices is a great deal more complex than simple replacement of one device by another. We examine mobile use by defining Next Generation Users (NGUs) as internet users who access the internet (1) on mobile and (2) on multiple devices. We use data from the Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS) to describe the rise, extent and characteristics of NGUs. As we describe the relationship between PCs and mobile devices through the lens of NGUs we will answer several questions: Who uses these devices? What differences might they make in relation to how people use the internet, such as for various entertainment or information services? Are they closing down the internet by making it harder for users to access new content, or are they opening up the internet to new users and uses? If they are valuable new channels for access, are they more widely accessible, enabling new users, or does access on new devices reinforce existing digital divides?

Theoretical Perspectives

Most generally, three competing theoretical perspectives on the social role of the internet may offer useful insights into this shift and its consequences. They are all qualitative explanations of how people relate to the internet, rather than operationally defined models, but they capture the major competing perspectives on the role of the internet in everyday life, which we can compare and contrast with our empirical survey findings.

Technical Rationality

One dominant perspective is a technical rationality that draws on major features of new technologies to reason about the likely implications of adoption. Although many social scientists view this as a technological determinist perspective, it characterizes some of the most prominent scholars of the internet and new technology, such as Lawrence Lessig (1999) and his view that ‘code is law.’¹ The view from this perspective is that the move towards ‘appliances’ is bound up with adoption of closed applications or ‘apps’ that have a limited set of functions. These appliances restrict the openness, and ‘generativity’ of the internet, compared to general-purpose personal computers, which enable users to program, write code, and not be limited by a secured set of applications and sites (Zittrain, 2010). Because those who adopt the new appliance devices, such as tablets, are satisfied with the closed applications, they are likely to be less sophisticated than those who remain anchored to personal computing, and less creative in their use and application of the internet. Will they move users toward a role as more passive browsers of information and consumers of entertainment?

Domestication: A Social Rationality

In contrast, there is a more socially deterministic perspective on the role of the internet and related information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the household that is best captured by work on the ‘domestication’ of the internet. Domestication (Haddon, 2006, 2007, 2011; Silverstone et al., 1992) emphasizes the influence of households or work places on shaping, taming, or domesticating technologies as users fit them into the values and interests of their particular social context. People adopt and integrate technologies into their everyday routines in ways that follow and reinforce existing practices, which differ across households. The concept of domestication was developed as a way to elaborate a conceptual model for exploring the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in life within the household (Silverstone et al., 1992; Livingstone, 1992; Silver-stone, 1996). The formulation entails four ‘non-discrete elements’ that enable the domestication process, which have been called: appropriation, objectification, incorporation, and conversion (Silverstone et al., 1992, p. 20). Appropriation occurs when the technology is purchased and its entry into a household must be managed. Objectification refers to how consumers locate a technology in the household, both physically and symbolically. Incorporation occurs when the technology is fitted into everyday routines of a household. Finally, conversion designates the ways in which technologies are displayed to others for impression management.² These elements do not have a strict order. Although appropriation is clearly prior, the other three elements interact and shape each other.

This chapter is particularly interested in the incorporation of the internet into daily routines of people as they appropriate an array of internet technologies into their everyday routines. Characteristic of the internet is that it is not a single new technology. ...