ABSTRACT

This article introduces our mobile diary method, a qualitative method for the study of mobile phone practices. Adapted from the diary methods of psychology and media studies audience research, it is designed to foreground tacit and mundane data about everyday mobile phone practices. The diary interview reconstructs details of the social practices of everyday life that make up each participant’s “yesterday” and situates mobile practices within this account. To illustrate the method, we provide examples from our study, Izolo, that spanned three distinct South African neighbourhoods in different parts of the country and focused on less-connected people. Participants owned mobile phones and were officially classified as poor or very poor. Grounded in a media practice approach, the method generated rich narratives that foregrounded the experiences of marginalised people. It explicitly addressed technological infrastructures and digital materialities, including devices, platforms, tariff structures, different types of connectivity and computational power. Such holistic narratives are essential to understanding the full spectrum of digital inequality, and allow a movement beyond binary conceptions of digital divides. The method provides the kind of detailed empirical overview of existing media practices that enables careful policy making and innovation in developing countries.

摘要

本文介绍了我们的手机日记方法，这是一种研究手机习惯的定性方法。它改编自心理学和媒体研究的日记方法，进行了受众研究，旨在显示有关日常手机使用情况的默认和平常数据。日记访谈重建了构成每个参与者“昨天”的日常生活社交实践的细节，并将移动实践置于此帐户中。为了说明该方法，我们提供了我们的研究Izolo的示例，它跨越了该国不同地区的三个不同的南非社区，并且重点关注人际关系较弱的人。参与者拥有手机，并被正式分类为贫穷或非常贫穷。该方法以媒体实践方法为基础，产生了丰富的叙事，展现了边缘化人群的经历。它明确涉及了技术基础设施和数字重要性，包括设备，平台，资费结构，不同类型的连接性和计算能力。这样的整体叙述对于理解数字不平等的全部范围至关重要，并且可以超越数字鸿沟的二元概念。