Those who use their cellphone to talk about news of the day or even to express opinions about issues, are more likely to be civically and politically engaged, a study by a communications expert has revealed.
The study was conducted by Scott Campbell, an assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan, US, and the study’s lead author. The co-author was Nojin Kwak, an associate professor in the university's Department of Communication Studies.
Among the control variables, female and higher educated respondents were found to be more civically engaged, and those with greater interest in politics demonstrated greater participation in political events and opportunities, the researchers found. Among the communication variables, political talk was significantly related to both criterion variables.
The use of mobile telephony for discussing and exchanging opinions on issues was significantly related to both participation measures (civic engagement and political participation). Among the three dimensions of mobile phone use, information exchange was found to have the strongest relationship with the criterion variables. However, the researchers found, the findings also show that there was little relationship between mobile sociability and participation. In fact, use of the mobile phone for personal recreation was positively and significantly related to political participation and civic engagement.
The explanation for this trend, says Campbell, may lie in the shared affordability of these technologies."These include multiple channels for interaction and data exchange, perpetual and globalised connectivity, personalisation, and wireless portability. Although harnessed in different ways, many of the social affordances of the mobile phone parallel those of the computer-based Internet. Thus, both mobile and Internet technologies lower the threshold for communication, which, as this and previous research suggests, offers significant social capital benefits when used for informational purposes."
Although the results highlight benefits of mobile-mediated information exchange for civic and political engagement, they also illustrate that these benefits are not uniformly accessible. The researchers say, "Individuals who feel more comfortable using mobile telephony and use it for exchanging information about public affairs tend to be more civically and politically engaged than those who are less comfortable with the technology. This finding underscores an emergent dimension of the digital divide—technological fluency."
Campbell and Kwak also ran regression analyses using age as a moderating variable. They found that as age increases, the associations between use for recreation and participation in civic life become stronger. The finding suggests that this form of mobile communication is a more valuable resource for public involvement among older users. They found that recreation is the only dimension of mobile phone use for which age yields a significant interaction effect, revealing a distinctive trend in the intersections between mobile communication, age, and civic/political engagement.
The data for this study came from a national mail survey that was conducted in the US immediately following the 2006 midterm Congressional elections. The data collection was conducted by the research firm Synovate. The researchers used a stratified quota sampling method to select approximately 2,000 mail survey respondents, from which 777 usable responses were received. This represents a response rate of 38.9%. Respondents reported the frequency in which they participated in a certain activity in the past two months.
So would these be culture-specific? Campbell told this correspondent via email, "Yes, the findings could definitely be cultural-specific. The data for this study come from a national sample of adults in the US during the 2006 mid-term elections. So, the findings reflect what people in the US were doing with the technology during a particular point in the election cycle. That said, I do think that informational uses of the technology would be likely to link people to civic and political life in other nations as well, but that the extent to which this happens and how is culturally situated."
The study factored 14 items to assess cell phone patterns: go online to share content that is entertaining; browse web just for fun; go online to share content about hobbies or personal interests; go online to upload content that is mostly just for fun; go online for games and other forms of entertainment; go online to get information about hobbies or personal interests; call friends or family; use text/instant messages to interact with friends or family; e-mail friends or family; go online to express my opinions about issues; go online to share news items; use text/instant messages to discuss political matters; go online to read opinions of others regarding issues; call others to discuss political matters; eigenvalues (eigenvalues are properties of a matrix, they are computed to give important information about the matrix).
And what about the usage patterns of people in different countries. Campbell points out, "Yes, people in different countries use the technology differently and with different levels of frequency. So, those aspects are culturally situated as well."
His current projects examine how mobile communication patterns are linked to both the private and public spheres of social life, such as social networking and civic engagement. Several of these projects use a comparative approach to situate the role of mobile communication technology in the larger media landscape.
