The British Journal of Sociology 2014 Volume 65 Issue 2

The advanced use of mobile phones in five European countries1 Leopoldina Fortunati and Sakari Taipale

Abstract The paper explores the advanced users of mobile phones in Italy, France, Germany, Spain and the UK (EU5 countries) and aims to clarify the social meaning of advanced use. The mobile phone is seen as a strategic tool of social labour, whose capabilities are exploited to a different extent in the five studied countries. The analysis is based on a cross-national survey data collected in 2009 (N = 7,255). First, the results show that there are substantial differences in the advanced use of mobile phone and its predictors in Europe. Generally, only about one third of the studied mobile features are exploited. British and French people are the most advanced users, followed by German, Spanish and Italians. While Italians have stuck to early developed mobile phone features, Britons especially have continued to adopt the newer properties of the mobile phone. Second, the article shows that owing to the extensive under-utilization of its features, the mobile phone as a tool of social labour is efficiently exploited by only a small number of people. They, however, constitute technological vanguards that make use of the diverse features in different countries. This limited use of advanced features results in the new patterns of social stratification. Keywords: Mobile phone; advanced use; Europe; convergence; social stratification

1. The mobile phone: between innovation and simplification The aim of this study is to map the reality of the advanced use of mobile phones in the five most populous and industrialized European countries – France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the UK (otherwise defined as the EU5 countries) – and to clarify its social meaning. By the expression ‘advanced use of mobile phones’ we mean the extensive utilization of the services and functions available with today’s mobile phone. This expression is preferred to that Fortunati (Department of Human Sciences, University of Udine) and Taipale (Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä) (Corresponding author email: [email protected]) © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014 ISSN 0007-1315 print/1468-4446 online. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA on behalf of the LSE. DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.12075

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of ‘smartphone’, which emphasizes the technical functionalities similar to those of a personal computer which are incorporated into a mobile phone, but does not deal with the ‘smartness’ of actual use. Today’s mobile phone conveys not only speech but also text, images, videos and music, and thus it serves as a medium of communication, education, information, organization, health and entertainment. With the rapid evolution of this communication technology, the advanced use of the mobile phone has become increasingly possible for many people. Whereas the Internet – considered as the first meta-medium (Agre 1998) – requires other media (e.g. a computer or a mobile phone) to function, the mobile phone is a truly self-sufficient meta-medium. The mobile phone has specific hardware and software which enable it to accommodate other media (e.g. television, radio, press and the Internet). In fact, it was in 2002 that it was noticed that the convergence between the mobile phone and the Internet was developing under the aegis of the mobile phone (Fortunati and Contarello 2002). Later developments have confirmed this trend: the number of people accessing the Internet through a mobile phone exceeds the number of people accessing it through a desktop computer (Vincent and Harris 2008). As a fully-fledged meta-medium, the mobile phone mediates a large part of the immaterial sphere of our everyday life (Fortunati 2007). The increased technical capability of mobile phones stems from an intense negotiation between two groups of social actors: operators, manufacturers and content providers on the one hand, and users on the other. In this negotiation, different needs are involved, and while the needs of users are not always clear and readable, those of operators and manufacturers are much more evident. According to Peppard and Rylander (2006), this latter group aims to grow revenues by increasing the volume of traffic. Assuming that an increase in traffic can no longer be achieved by increasing the number of customers (as the penetration rates of mobile phones have almost reached saturation point), the only realistic strategy is to intensify the use of mobile phones. This is done not only by increasing the volume of mobile calls and messages but also by attracting users with new and more costly services, functions and applications. Current mobile phones are complex tools with an increased technological capacity and improved interfaces (Peppard and Rylander 2006; Siau and Shen 2003). These so-called smartphones have been investigated in a field of research where sociology (Geser 2004) and communication (Katz and Aakhus 2002) merge with human-computer interaction (Bao et al. 2011). Due to this multidisciplinary nature, but also due to the absence of a shared (industrial) definition of smartphone (Dörflinge et al. 2010) and rapid technological development that alters the research object, the definitions and descriptions of smartphones often appear inaccurate or outdated in the literature. Thus it could be more promising to study ‘mobiles-in-practice’, to paraphrase Orlikowski’s (2000) words, as this approach formulates questions from the perspective of actual use: What do users do with the mobile phone today? © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014

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Which functions do users decide to activate and which do they, in practice, ignore? Previous research indicates a general tendency among users to simplify technological artefacts by under-exploiting their technical capabilities (Chiaro and Fortunati 1999). In the same way that having a device does not imply using it, having a fancy ‘smartphone’ does not mean that all its features are skilfully exploited. This simplifying tendency seems to be a constant over time, yet it is affected by several socio-demographic factors (Mante-Meijer and Klamer 2005). In this article, the increasingly complex and technically more capable mobile phone is studied through sociological concepts. The advanced use of the mobile phone is linked to the concept of social labour as it was formulated by Negri (1979) in the book From Mass Worker to Social Worker: Interview on Operaism. This concept was later revisited by Fortunati (1995[1981]) in her book The Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labour and Capital and by Hardt and Negri (2000) in the book Empire, where they suggest substituting the old notion of working class by the new label ‘multitude’ (see also Hardt and Negri 2004). The article begins by presenting the mobile phone as a tool of social labour, and by producing an overview of its use in the EU5 countries. Based on this overview, research questions and hypotheses are formulated. Next, the survey data collected from Italy, France, Germany, Spain and the UK in 2009 (N = 7,255), and the statistical tools are presented. The results are organized into three parts. First, the mobile phone features exploited in each country, and their average numbers, are explored by using descriptive statistics and univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA). Second, the main dimensions of mobile phone use are detected by applying a correspondence factor analysis. Finally, country differences are reported by analysing the advanced use index and its main predictors.The findings are discussed in the concluding comments.

2. Mobile phone as an advanced tool of social labour The observation that different societies have approached globalization in different ways (Tomlinson 1999) provides a foundation for the first research question. In terms of mobile communication, this difference of approach has meant country-specific timing and strategies in the building of each new generation of wireless infrastructures, different pricing policies and different operator-specific provisions of mobile applications and services. The first research question is: What is the role of country differences in the advanced use of the mobile phone in the EU5 countries? This first research question is grounded in previous literature showing that the patterns of diffusion and the use of mobile phones vary between countries (Fortunati and Taipale 2012; Fortunati and Manganelli, forthcoming). Prior research has also identified that users’ attitudes towards the mobile phone vary British Journal of Sociology 65(2)

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between countries (e.g. Campbell 2007; Lemish and Cohen 2005; Nielsen and Fjuk 2010). Nevertheless, country differences in the advanced use of the mobile phone have remained unstudied. It is with this prior knowledge that the following hypothesis addressing the first research question is presented: H1: There are several country differences in the advanced use of the mobile phone owing to country-specific social structures and economic imperatives, and specific cultural traditions. The second research question addresses the social meaning of advanced use. Through this more theoretical research question, the article aims to bind empirical findings to a larger theoretical discussion where the mobile phone is viewed as a means of sustaining the immaterial and communicative spheres of life. The second research question is: What is the socio-demographic composition of advanced users of the mobile phone? The mobile phone is associated with the process of social labour (Fortunati 2007)2, as it is used to support all the activities that can be placed under the umbrella of reproductive labour (Fortunati 1995[1981]). This especially includes, but is not limited to, immaterial activities such as organization, communication, information, entertainment, civil and political engagement, education, social interaction, affects, love, sex and emotions. All these activities contribute to the valorization process in the reproductive sphere which consists of the domains of family, relatives, friends and other intimate relationships. Immaterial labour converges with material labour to create added value that is embodied in human beings. This notion of domestic or reproductive capital includes, systematizes and enlarges the notions of human, social and cultural capital. In this framework, the mobile phone, like other instruments of information and communications technology (ICT), works on the side of immaterial reproduction (e.g. Fortunati 2007; Hardt and Negri 2000; Hochschild 1983). It helps us to sustain the immaterial sphere of everyday life. At the same time, the mobile phone contributes, along with all other ICT, to the new patterns of social stratification of the ‘working class’ (Tronti 1966), understood in broad terms as referring to both paid and unpaid forms of work (Hardt and Negri 2000; Wajcman 2008; Wajcman et al. 2010). A small number of advanced users, the technological vanguard that represents the classic quarter of all users (Orlikowski 2000), are accompanied by a larger group of naive users (Hargittai 2010). Various elements influence the new patterns of social stratification seen through the lens of the mobile phone: the managerial and organizational skills of this complex labour force, and its ability to co-operate and to improve through the advanced use of mobile phones (Bittman, Brown and Wajcman 2009). In addition, elements such as the desire to obtain social prestige and to display it contribute to the expression at a symbolic level (Arvidsson 2008). As a result, the advanced use of the mobile phone also has a meaning of social distinction (e.g. Lasen 2005). © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014

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In general, the old logic of the Taylorist system is quite inverted in global societies. For example, while automation in the traditional factory meant the increasing loss of workers’ skills (deskilling, Zuboff 1988), in contemporary life the advent of ICT has led to an increasing acquisition of skills (reskilling and upskilling). Moreover, while the electromechanical machine was inevitable for workers, and knowledge for them constituted power, in the electronic society the access to and use of ICT is at the discretion of users. It is not an obligation, although the skilled use of ICT is one of the fundamental elements of its social productivity. Furthermore, electromechanical technologies were usually programmed to elicit the maximum amount of energy and skills from workers. In comparison, in the post-Fordist world ICT is programmed to deal with the human body as a source of voluntary work, fun, virtuosity, self-discipline and self-control, and spontaneous sharing. Workers do not only produce and consume but have a chance to co-create and ‘prosume’, ‘pursuing selfrealization through productive labour (and not idle leisure)’ (Arvidsson 2008: 328; also Arvidsson 2005; Zwick and Dholakia 2008). This leads to the second hypothesis of this study. If the mobile phone works as a strategic tool of social labour, it is expected that: H2: The advanced use of mobile phones is common to the variety of sociodemographic groups which contribute to outlining the new social stratification in the five European countries.

3. From smartphones towards advanced use There are various reasons why ‘smartphone use’ is difficult to measure in survey studies, and it is also difficult to distinguish it from the use of regular mobile phones (Bakke 2010: 351). First, as we wrote above, there is no one shared definition of a smartphone (Dörflinger et al. 2010). Different definitions are still competing to acquire general acceptance. Second, users are often unaware of the full capabilities of their phones (Nielsen and Fjuk 2010: 378), which means that a smartphone can be used in a ‘not smart’ fashion. Research literature also suggests that conventional quantitative methods may not be the most appropriate tools for analysing the newest features of mobile phones, as these features are of interest to only a small group of pioneering users (Koskinen 2007; also Ling and Julsrud 2005). The expectations for smartphones and their related applications and services were enormous when the third generation of mobile telecommunications technology (3G), which enabled faster communication and data transfer, was introduced. However, apart from basic services such as ringtones and Short Message Services (SMS), many services failed to meet these high expectations, and, consequently, people began not utilizing smartphones to the full British Journal of Sociology 65(2)

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(Verkasalo et al. 2010). A considerable number of people also continued to prefer a regular mobile phone, and/or a personal computer, to the smartphone. The literature is full of studies focusing on different features of smartphones, especially in-built cameras and wireless Internet connections. Furthermore, many of these studies analyse a small number of early adopters, typically young and technologically-savvy people (e.g. Hjorth 2007; Koskinen 2007; Koskinen, Kurvinen and Lehtonen 2002; Scifo 2005). ComScore (2011a; 2011b) provides a good overview of the diffusion and use of smartphones in Europe and the USA. These reports show that smartphone penetration in the EU5 countries increased by 9.5 percentage points to 31.1 per cent between December 2009 and December 2010. During the same period of time, smartphone penetration in the USA climbed 10.2 percentage points reaching 27.0 per cent in 2010 (comScore 2011a: 20). The most common mobile activities in 2010 in the USA (the data are not available for the EU5) were sending text messages (68.0 per cent), taking photos (52.4 per cent) and accessing news and other information sources (39.5 per cent). Other common mobile activities included emailing (30.5 per cent), accessing social networks or blogs (24.7 per cent), playing games (23.2 per cent), web searching (21.4 per cent), capturing video (20.2 per cent), instant messaging (17.2 per cent) and listening to music (15.7 per cent) (comScore 2011b: 28). ComScore reports indicate that, despite the rapid adoption of the newest mobile phones, the use of the newest features remains limited. The study by Nielsen and Fjuk (2010: 379), for example, shows that most mobile Internet usage concerns e-mails, news and simple databases such as Wikipedia and Google. Bakke (2010: 359) suggests that a low level of comfort with technology may hinder the adoption and use of this technology to its full capacity, even if some studies suggest that users’ technological competencies increase over time. To summarize, cross-national representative survey studies are required to explore systematically what people really do with their mobile phones (Harkness et al. 2010). Analysing a large survey, which measures the use of various functionalities of the mobile phone and makes possible the creation of an index for advanced use, is our strategy to place the advanced use of mobile phones into perspective. This strategy should also produce results that are more able to be generalized than those premised on qualitative methodology, small samples and/or the uncertain measures of smartphone possession.

4. Method and measures 4.1 Data and statistical procedures The paper is based on a telephone survey that was carried out in EUS countries in 2009 (N = 7,255). The sample is representative of the populations of © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014

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these countries, and is structured as follows: Italy (N = 1,398), France (N = 1,424), Germany (N = 1,919), the UK (N = 1,411) and Spain (N = 1,103). The survey was designed for scientific purposes, although it was funded by Telecom Italia (Fortunati 1998). Weighted data are used in order to correct distortions caused by age, education, ownership of a computer and access to the Internet. More specifically, the article explores the subsample of mobile phone users (N = 5,992) which corresponds to 82.6 per cent of the entire sample. In terms of statistical procedures, the article utilizes univariate ANOVA, correspondence and regression analysis.

4.2. Measures 4.2.1 Dependent variable Advanced use of the mobile phone: An index of advanced use of the mobile phone use was created by combining information from 20 questions that measure whether or not the respondents use different mobile phone functions (e.g. SMS, Multimedia Message Service (MMS), instant messaging and Internet browsing). All these items were first coded so that they had only two values (1 = ‘Yes’, 0 = ‘No/My mobile phone does not have this function’), and then combined into one index, which is indicative of the advanced use of the mobile phone (M = 6.88, SD = 4.84, Range = 0–20).

4.2.2 Independent variables Gender was measured by using two fixed choices: male (51.0 per cent) and female (49.0 per cent). The age of respondents was given in full years (M = 43.74, SD = 17.67, Range = 14–88), but later it was divided into five categories: 14–17, 18–24, 25–44, 45–64, and 65 years and over. The indicator for the level of education was: low (primary and secondary school diploma, 38.9 per cent), medium (high school diploma, 40.5 per cent) and high (college/university degree or higher, 20.6 per cent). The respondent’s main activity included the following categories: employed (58.2 per cent), unemployed (4.0 per cent), student (8.7 per cent), housewife/househusband (7.9 per cent) and retired (21.2 per cent). The family typology comprised single people (23.1 per cent), couples with no children (23.3 per cent), couples with children (38.4 per cent), single parents (5.9 per cent) and mixed families (9.3 per cent). The level of urbanization was measured through the estimate by the respondent of the size of his or her place of residence: essentially rural (less than 5,000 inhabitants, 11.0 per cent), relatively rural (5,001–100,000 inhabitants, 41.0 per cent) and essentially urban (more than 100,000 inhabitants, 48.0 per cent). British Journal of Sociology 65(2)

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Table I: The use of mobile phone functions (%) (N = 5,992)

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

SMS Clock Alarm clock Take photo Bluetooth Text editing (writing with T9) Make video MMS Reading the news (receiving SMS or MMS with news MP3 Games Radio broadcast Voice recording Instant messaging Download logos and ringtones Email Internet browsing Chatting Download software Using the handset as a modem

Does not have or use the function

Uses the function

Total

20.4 23.7 35.3 46.1 55.6 60.0 63.7 66.5 66.8

79.6 76.3 64.7 53.9 44.4 40.0 36.3 33.5 33.2

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

67.1 68.9 72.0 72.8 74.7 80.8 83.8 85.8 86.3 90.0 91.3

32.9 31.1 28.0 27.2 25.3 19.2 16.2 14.2 13.7 10.0 8.7

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Note: Mobile television is not included as it was not available in Italy, and the questionnaire covered only features that were available in all five countries. The locational functions of mobile phone were not included as GPS-enabled phones were just about to enter into the market when the questionnaire was designed.

5. The advanced use of the mobile phone in Europe The current smartphones can be seen as a kind of ‘bricolage’ technology: a mixture of features drawn from old media (radio, television and newspapers), new media (the Internet), audio-visual technologies (camera and video), timekeeping technologies (watch, alarm clock) and trans-platform content such as music, games and data. However, what kinds of mobile functions, services and applications do people really use in these five European countries? Previous studies on smartphone users (e.g. Verkasalo et al. 2010) have often contributed to the false impression that the majority of people use a mobile phone in a very skilled manner. Table I contains information about the real use-in-practice of various functions, services and applications of the mobile phone. These features form the basis of the aggregate variable of advanced use that is applied later in the study. The table clearly shows that advanced users of the mobile phone are relatively few compared with the large majority of users who only exploit basic features. The table also shows that the most used functions are SMS, clock, alarm clock and camera, and presents the mobile phone as a device in which convergence fundamentally takes place with a time measuring instrument, such as the watch, or the alarm clock as a particular function of the clock, and © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014

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with an expressive medium such as the camera. Sending and receiving SMS is the most widespread use of the contemporary mobile phone. Since its invention (the first was sent in 1992), the SMS has represented the shift in the mobile phone from an oral communication device to a device that enables written interaction. Nevertheless, a fifth (20.4 per cent) of mobile phone users do not use SMS or they answered that their mobile phones do not have this function. The non-users are most often Italians (23.9 per cent) and British people (23.0 per cent), followed by French people (19.9 per cent) and Germans (18.4 per cent). Spanish people have the lowest rate of SMS non-use (15.7 per cent). Writing SMS by using T9, a predictable text input system, is an even less frequent practice among mobile phone owners. In fact, this function is used by 40 per cent of respondents. Italians are the biggest users, followed by Spaniards, while Germans and French people are less involved in this practice. It is interesting to note that 15.9 per cent of Britons and 9.4 per cent of Spaniards stated that their mobile phone does not have this function. This can also be considered to be a sign of naive users who are not familiar with the functions of their mobile phone. The second most common function of the mobile phone is using it as a clock. This feature has been embraced with enthusiasm especially by young people. The mobile phone has, in fact, changed the ritual in many families in which adolescents received a watch as a birthday gift from their parents or as a confirmation gift from their godparents (e.g. Ling and Helmersen 2000). For a long time, this was a kind of rite by which adolescents entered the world of punctuality and time control. Britons (82.3 per cent) seem to take advantage of this function slightly more often than Italian (79.8 per cent), French (78.7 per cent) and German (74.3 per cent) mobile users, and much more than Spaniards (62.9 per cent). More than half of all mobile phone users also utilize a mobile phone as an alarm clock (64.7 per cent), another function pertaining to timemanagement. The utilization of the alarm clock function is a little less popular than the use of the mobile phone as a clock, but it still involves more than half of users. Using the mobile phone as an alarm clock is most common in the UK (73.0 per cent), followed by France (65.8 per cent), Spain (65.8 per cent) and Germany (63.8 per cent). Italians take considerably less advantage of this function (57.2 per cent). Mobile photographing is also relatively popular in the EU5 countries: 53.9 per cent of mobile phone owners use this feature. This function extends the scope of the mobile phone from the mouth-ear axis to the eye. Mobile photographs bring the eye into the focus of mobile phone usage. This practice is also differentiated by country. In Spain (60.0 per cent) and France (58.1 per cent) it is a more common practice than in Germany (52.2 per cent), Italy (51.4 per cent) and the UK (50.4 per cent). More advanced functions such as making videos or sending MMS are less exploited (36.3 per cent and 33.5 per cent). British Journal of Sociology 65(2)

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Spaniards utilize MMS more than the others, while Britons are the most active in making mobile videos. Table I also reveals that the functions most closely associated with the ambiguous concept of ‘smartphone’, like managing emails (16.2 per cent), Internet browsing (14.2 per cent) and downloading software (10.0 per cent), are actually used by a small proportion of all mobile phone users. Other advanced functions, such as Bluetooth (44.4 per cent), instant messaging (25.3 per cent), chatting (13.7 per cent) and using the handset as a modem (8.7 per cent), are also used by only small segments of all users. These findings provide support for the view that the new functionalities of the mobile phone, such as mobile Internet and email, are still just minor extensions of the use occurring on other technological devices and platforms (laptops, desktops, etc.) (Nielsen and Fjuk 2010). Country comparisons show that Italians are the least active in utilizing these functions. Only 5.2 per cent of Italians use their mobile phone to download software, whereas in the other four countries the proportion of people downloading varies between 9.2 and 13.4 per cent. Moreover, in Italy 7.7 per cent of people use the mobile phone to browse the Internet, while in other countries mobile Internet browsing varies, with between 11.8 and 20.3 per cent of people using this function. A similar difference can be found in relation to mobile phone use for emails. In Italy, only 7.5 per cent of people manage to send and receive emails through their mobile phone, while in Spain (12.0 per cent), Germany (15.5 per cent), France (20.0 per cent) and the UK (25.6 per cent) this is a more common practice. Trans-platform content, such as music, games and news, make the mobile phone more expressive on the one hand and more a ‘mass medium’ on the other. MP3 (a music player feature) is used especially by the French (40.9 per cent), followed by Britons (31.0 per cent) and Germans (29.3 per cent), while ringtones (and logos) are used especially by Spaniards (26.3 per cent) and then by Britons (22.8 per cent). Mobile gaming, again, has gained popularity among the French (40.9 per cent), and news reading is the most common practice among Italians (40.1 per cent). To sum up, the analysis of single mobile phone features indicates that there are many country differences in mobile phone use in the EU5 countries. The index of advanced use allows further investigations of cross-national differences in a comprehensive manner. Univariate ANOVA (F(4,5986) = 26.74, p < 0.001) was carried out to analyse country differences regarding this index variable. The results show that the average number of the functions people use is 6.88 out of the 20 functions studied. This is to say that people utilize, on average, about one third of the features studied. And hence there seems to be an oversupply of mobile services and applications in relation to what users need or are able to utilize. The most surprising result of the ANOVA is that Italians, who are the population with the highest number of mobile phones (Fortunati and Taipale © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014

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The advanced use of mobile phones in five European countries 327 Table II: Numerical results of correspondence analysis Coord.

Contrib.

Coord.

Factor 1. New advanced features vs. early features (Inertia 67.8%) UK −0.19 37.82 ITALY 0.25 Chat −0.55 27.09 News 0.23 Email −0.29 8.97 T9 0.21 Voice recorder −0.21 8.26 Internet −0.23 5.03 Factor 2. Multimoda communication vs. written interpersonal communication (Inertia 17.2%) SPAIN −0.14 52.09 ITALY 0.08 Logos and ringtones −0.18 16.42 Instant messages 0.19 Bluetooth −0.09 9.17 Clock 0.09 MMS −0.10 8.06 Chat 0.12 MP3 −0.08 5.21

Contrib.

52.69 11.82 11.27

22.62 23.27 16.15 5.54

2012) and with the most intense use of them (Fortunati and Manganelli forthcoming), utilize the smallest average number of mobile phone functions (M = 5.88, SD = 4.38). In other words, even an intense use is not automatically a skilled and diversified use that would facilitate communication, organization of social relations or affective work usually associated with mediated immaterial labour. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that German (M = 6.63, SD = 5.00) and Spanish (M = 7.04, SD = 5.24) people are more ‘advanced’ in their use than Italians, but decidedly less advanced than Britons (M = 7.66, SD = 4.82) and French people (M = 7.40, SD = 4.61), who exploit the highest average number of the mobile phone’s functions. Even if Italians use the mobile phone intensively, they seem to utilize more basic features than other nationalities. A possible explanation is that Italian users who acquired the mobile phone first and began to use it with passion have remained anchored to its basic functions. In other words, there might be an inertia which develops in this country in respect of a specific usage and makes users less receptive to newer features that mark the evolution of the artefact. The slower take-up of the advanced features of the mobile phone among Italian users may serve as an example of this.

6. The dimensions of the advanced use of the mobile phone A correspondence factor analysis was executed, with the purpose of creating a comprehensive picture of mobile phone usage in the five countries (see Table II). Apart from country (5 categories), data concerning gender (2), age (5), education (3), respondent’s main activity (5), family typology (5) and degree of urbanization (3) were entered in the analysis as illustrative variables. The analysis was performed on a matrix of 20 mobile phone features and 28 British Journal of Sociology 65(2)

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Figure I: Two dimensional correspondence analysis

socio-demographic variables. It produced four dimensions: the first accounts for 67.8 per cent, the second 17.2 per cent, the third 11.1 per cent and the fourth 4.0 per cent of total inertia. Due to a relatively low explanatory capacity of the third and fourth factors, the following analysis focuses on the first and second factors, whose relationship is illustrated in a two-dimensional Figure I. As regards interpretation, countries with an absolute contribution of at least 20 per cent, and mobile features with a contribution of at least 5 per cent, were examined most closely3. The first factor, ‘New advanced features vs. early features’, is shaped mainly by two countries: Italy and the UK. At the positive end of the pole is Italy, where early features such as T9 and the reception and reading of news characterize mobile usage more than in the other countries. As these features were added to the mobile phone shortly after its invention, this result confirms what was anticipated above: the inertia of Italians towards the adoption of more recent features. At the other end of the pole is the UK. Like Italians, Britons also adopted the mobile phone at an early stage and use it very intensively. However, in contrast to Italy, British users eagerly embraced more recent features relating to the worldwide web: email, chat and the Internet. Thus, the UK shows a more dynamic attitude towards the mobile phone than Italy. From © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014

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another perspective, it appears that Italians use mobile features that speed up the writing of SMSs (T9) and the accessing of news sources. This differs from Britons who are more interested in other written forms of communication, both asynchronous, such as emailing, and synchronous, such as written chatting. In addition, Britons use the mobile Internet to access the world of written communication and silent activities. In the UK, the voice is present in only one advanced feature, voice recording. The second factor, ‘Multimodal communication vs. written interpersonal communication’, owes much to the large contribution of Spain. It seems that Spaniards particularly exploit the multiple means of communication provided by the mobile phone. On the one hand, they use many logos and ringtones, and connect via Bluetooth. On the other hand, audio-visual functions, such as MMS and MP3, are typical. Italy represents the opposing aspect of this factor. In particular, two written modes of communication, instant messaging and written chatting, are quite common in Italy. This result also reflects the reluctance of Italian users to explore richer and more innovative means of communication, and their tendency to remain bound to the modality of written communication. Finally, France and Germany did not contribute to the emergence of these two factors, and are thus positioned at the intersection of the two axes. 7. Predictors of the advanced use of the mobile phone Regression models for each country were produced to outline the profile of the most advanced mobile phone users, and to verify if the country differences remain after controlling all socio-demographic variables. The results are presented in Table III. The model for Italy shows that age is clearly the strongest single predictor of the advanced use of the mobile phone: younger people use more functions than older users. The advanced use also increases with the level of education. Furthermore, gender seems to play a significant role in Italy: men are more likely to utilize a wider range of mobile phone features. The respondent’s main activity is also connected to the advanced use of the device: housewives/househusbands and unemployed people use fewer functions than employees. In France, younger people and men use the mobile phone in a more versatile manner than older people and women. However, the level of education is not as strongly connected to the advanced use of mobile phones as in Italy, although students, in particular, seem to use more functions than employees. In France, people living in a family without children mostly make use of more functions of the mobile phone than those living in a family made up of a couple with children. In Germany, just as in Italy and France, younger people and men use a wider range of mobile phone features than older people and women. And, like British Journal of Sociology 65(2)

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Table III: Regression analyses for the advanced use of the mobile phone by country (Beta) Predictors

Italy

Gender (ref. men) −0.074*** Age −0.631*** Education (ref. low) – Middle 0.109** – High 0.86*** Activity (ref. employee) – Housewives/househusband −0.085*** – Unemployed −0.061** – Pensioners 0.020 – Students 0.015 Family (ref. couple with children) – Couple without children 0.023 – Single parents 0.050* – Mixed families −0.002 – Single 0.036 Degree of urbanization (ref. Essentially rural) – Relatively rural 0.033 – Essentially urban 0.065* F 73.54*** Adjusted R squared 0.45 N 1,263

France

Germany

UK

−0.077* −0.207***

−0.072** −0.465***

0.023 −0.041

0.094* 0.047

0.069* 0.159***

0.052 0.146***

Spain −0.025 −0.141** 0.008 0.113*

0.056 0.075* −0.072 0.107**

−0.029 −0.033 0.001 −0.001

−0.102** −0.023 −0.051 0.062

−0.089* 0.032 −0.123** −0.034

0.136** 0.065 0.065 0.087*

−0.064 −0.036 −0.009 −0.078*

0.085* −0.054 0.040 −0.096*

−0.020 0.082 −0.108* 0.021

0.069 0.025 11.69*** 0.15 854

0.067 0.141*** 24.28*** 0.21 1,249

0.064 0.123 4.27*** 0.06 773

0.113 0.053 5.72*** 0.09 708

Note: * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001.

Italians, Germans who have a medium or high level of education achieve higher scores on the advanced use index than their fellow citizens with a low level of education. In contrast to Italy and France, the regression analysis for German respondents does not reveal significant connections between advanced use and family type, except for a weak negative effect of being single. However, the advanced use seems to be geographically differentiated in Germany. Those who live in the most urban areas use significantly more mobile phone features than those who live in essentially rural areas. The regression models for the UK and Spain explain a considerably smaller amount of the total variance of the dependent variable than the models for France and Germany. This stems from the fact that age in particular, but also gender, has less explanatory power in these two countries. In the UK, gender and age are not related to advanced use at all, probably because in this country social stratification is currently based more on class differences than on gender and age segregation (e.g. Goldthorpe 2010: 736). However, highly educated people are clearly more advanced users than those with a low education. The model also shows that housewives/househusbands use fewer mobile phone features than employed people in the UK. There is also a weak connection between advanced use and family type: those in a relationship and without children use the studied features of the mobile phone slightly more (while single people use them less) than the reference category of those living in a family with children. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014

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In Spain young age is positively linked to advanced use in the same way as in Italy, France and Germany. However, this link is weaker in Spain. In contrast to Italy, France and Germany, gender is not associated with advanced use in Spain. As in most other countries, a high level of education is linked to the more advanced ways of using a mobile phone. Housewives/househusbands and pensioners are the two groups that differ from employees in terms of their lower level of advanced use. Additionally, as in other countries, family type is only weakly connected to advanced use in Spain: people living in mixed families seem to use fewer mobile phone features than couples with children, yet the difference is not very significant.

8. Discussion This article aimed to map the reality of the advanced use of mobile phones in the EU5 countries, and to clarify the social meaning of advanced use. The results of this study show that the advanced users of the mobile phone are relatively few, and thus it still makes sense to talk about a vanguard. However, only a small proportion of this vanguard makes use of the Internet-related features, which represent the cutting edge of this technological innovation and add to the truly networked labour practices (e.g. Bratich 2005). In response to H1, several country differences in the advanced use of the mobile phone were discovered, as expected. By means of a correspondence analysis, it was found that the two countries that adopted the mobile phone at an early stage have reacted to its later developments in different ways. While Italians have not taken up the latest features that are integrated into the mobile phone, Britons have, and they use the mobile phone, at least in this sense, in a more advanced manner. Spaniards, instead, use logos, ringtones and other audio-visual functions of the mobile phone more than the other nationalities. Furthermore, although the regression analyses showed that there are variables, such as age and level of education, which are quite similarly connected to the advanced use of the mobile phone in many countries, none of the predictors was statistically significant in all five countries. This finding provides strong support to H1: country differences clearly arose from country-specific economic, social and cultural systems which deserve more careful investigation in the future. In response to H2, as was expected the mobile phone as a strategic tool of social labour is used by different social groups which contribute to outlining the social stratification of the working population, including both paid and unpaid workers. The results of the regression analyses help to outline the socio-demographic profile of this technological vanguard made up of those who exploit the mobile phone in an advanced fashion. In almost all the studied countries, these social groups include young people (except in the UK) and British Journal of Sociology 65(2)

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well-educated people (except in France). It really seems that the ‘digital generations’ are more enthusiastic users of the most advanced features of the mobile phone, and that more highly-educated people are linked to social positions where the advanced use is more appreciated. Men comprise a larger part of this vanguard than women, especially in Italy, France and Germany. However, the male dominance is perhaps beginning to crumble, since no significant gender differences were found when analysing the British and Spanish respondents. The regression analyses also revealed that two other social groups are part of this new vanguard: first, French people and Britons living in families without children, and second, German people living in cities. These findings indicate that families with children, who were the real driving force behind the diffusion of ICT and especially of the mobile phone and the Internet, are losing their power in the new millennium. Families without children seem to have more resources, in terms of time and money, available for a sophisticated use of the mobile phone. As to the second social group, while the diffusion and regular use of the mobile phone are not very sensitive to the place of use (Fortunati and Taipale 2012), the advanced use more often takes place in the most urban cities, at least in Germany. Finally, there is a group of the so-called ‘weak social subjects’ that clearly remains outside this new technological vanguard. This group consists of housewives and househusbands living in Italy, Spain and the UK, but it also includes Italian unemployed people and Spanish pensioners. These people are clearly beyond the reach of the latest technological innovations. They still live and work in isolation in the domestic sphere, and usually have limited economic resources and low education. Taken together, these results show that although the mobile phone is endowed with multiple technical features, which enable the mediated sustaining of the immaterial sphere of everyday life, it appears as a genuine tool of value creation only in the hands of rather small groups of people. Thus, the results of this study support the idea that there is a new pattern of social and technical stratification that in reality is produced through the advanced use of ICTs, such as the mobile phone, and which concerns only a minority of those who have an access to the current set of ‘organizational strategies and discursive procedures aimed at reconfiguring social relations of production’ (Zwick, Bonsu and Darmody 2008: 184).

9. Conclusions In conclusion, the results show theoretical implications especially in respect to three crucial arguments: convergence, diffusion of innovation and the mobile as a tool of social labour. The advanced mobile phone represents a kind of hybrid convergence in which text messages, pictures, videos, software © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014

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downloading and alarm clock merge together, although they do not converge into any single dimension. Furthermore, when looking these so-called ‘smartphones’ as technologies-in-practice (Orlikowski 2000), it appears that the true convergence of mobile phones in Europe is taking place in a very limited way, affecting only those features that support written modes of communication (chat, email) and the Internet. In addition, this type of convergence between the more advanced features occurs more widely in the UK than in the other four countries. However, the convergence is taking place more consistently with technologies other than ICT, such as time measuring technologies (clock and alarm clock) and news reading, which have become embedded in the mobile phone. In this respect, Italians have contributed much to the convergence process. This reading of the mobile phone as a time measuring technology confirms once more its potential for improving the logistics of work processes. It also confirms its potential for enabling ‘tasks or parts of task sequences to be delayed, consolidated, programmed in advance, and performed from a remote location’ and for ‘allowing for tighter and more efficient “real time” planning of activities, thus “softening” precise schedules’ (Wajcman 2008: 71; see also Bittman, Brown and Wajcman 2009). The empirical results of this study support the idea of a convergence of culture (Jenkins 2006). It is users, not technology, who have the final word in the convergence phenomenon. Various proposals for a more intensive use of the mobile phone arrive from manufacturers and operators, but it is the will of users which in large part determines the extent to which the many functions are used. The results of the study attest to the fact that the convergence is, in practice, a process which does not occur within the same family of technologies (ICT) as we used to think, but between different families of technologies. The results also add to another milestone in communication sociology: Rogers’ (1962) theory of the diffusion of innovation. According to Rogers, innovators and early adopters are the quickest to adopt an innovation. Innovators are typically young, upper class and affluent. They are inclined to be social and have good access to scientific resources and the possibility of interacting with other innovators. Early adopters are young, well-educated, have prominent social status and financial lucidity and are sociable. Compared with other categories, the group of early adopters typically includes more opinion leaders. This study shows that innovators and early adopters are far from expressing similar behaviour, as Rogers illustrated. In this study Italians represent innovators and early adopters, who at the beginning of the mobile phone diffusion adopted it and many of its early features (T9 and news services) with enthusiasm. Later, however, Italians resisted further innovations. Britons represented another type of innovators and early adopters, who also adopted the mobile phone at the beginning with enthusiasm, but also British Journal of Sociology 65(2)

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continued to be open towards all its new features. Italians and Britons probably share the same favourable attitude towards new ideas and innovations. However, they possess the available resources to keep pace with developments to a different degree. Italians are probably hampered by the fact that the cost of the advanced use is more expensive in Italy than in the UK (International Telecommunication Union 2011: 68). Thirdly, this study also contributes to the stream of research which views the mobile phone as a tool of social labour. The diffusion of ICT has created specific technological vanguards which are often disconnected from the directed and centrally organized labour process in the industrial sector. These technological vanguards include both material and immaterial workers, and consist of the well-educated youth of the five countries. According to the present findings, the members of these vanguards have different characteristics from those who are situated in the traditional industrial system, who are adults and have, on average, a lower education. As a result, these technological vanguards can be seen to be positioned within the new groups of the working population (Tronti 1966; Negri 1979) which are otherwise called, as we mentioned before, the ‘multitude’ and which include not only paid labour but also, for example, the self-employed, members of the precarious workforce, and the forms of reproductive and social labour. As the new technological vanguards include social groups that have high unemployment or precarious employment rates (e.g. Vosko, MacDonald and Campbell 2009), it is clear that the advanced use of the mobile phone does not only evolve around the secured paid work, but also around precarious or unpaid work. Nevertheless, our research indicates that the advanced use of the mobile phone has a limited effect on the value created by the multitude of ‘newly empowered, entrepreneurial, and liberated consumers’, as Zwick, Bonsu and Damody define this group of people (2008:164; see also Ritzer 2004; Slater 1997; Zwick and Dholakia 2008). Value creation, which in today’s knowledge-based capitalism requires a deep reconfiguration of labour and power relations, is perhaps better implemented through the social uses of the Internet. Compared with the mobile phone, the computer and the Internet are more capable of attracting large repositories of data, facilitating immaterial co-production and experimentations, as well to nourishing playfulness among users.The mediation that takes place through the basic functions and services of the mobile phone has only a limited connection to the collaborative and cooperative functions of the Internet (so-called Web 2.0 and 3.0). Instead, mobile phone usage is more closely linked to the sphere of domestic reproduction and the material needs of family, kin and non-kin relationships, which involve such elements as organization, coordination, entertainment, sociability, intimate affairs, affects and sentiments.This sphere also contributes to the valorisation process, but through a less advanced use of the mobile phone. The results of our study imply that this © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014

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simplified ‘reading’ of the mobile phone (Wajcman and Jones 2012: 676) comes from the large group of naïve users (Hargittai 2010), who exploit the mobile phone in a more traditional manner. (Date accepted: October 2013)

Notes 1. The preliminary results of this study were presented by the second author in ‘Lifestyle and Mobile Communication Workshop’ at Åbo Akademi University, Finland, on 22–23 November 2011. In addition to the organizers of the workshops, anonymous referees and the editorial team of the British Journal of Sociology, we would like to thank Telecom Italia for funding the survey and the Academy of Finland (Project No. 137446) whose research funding enabled Dr Taipale’s participation in this study. 2. This analysis is also supported by the discussion carried out by Schütz and

Luckmann (2003) who, as Gebhardt points out (2010), see technologies as working tools of everyday life. 3. The absolute contribution of a point to a dimension is the proportion of inertia (variance) explained by the point. The sum of the contributions of the points to each dimension is equal to 100. Only points with considerable value (i.e. >100/n where n is the number of points) are discussed. In our case, it is 100/5 = 20 for countries, and 100/20 = 5 for mobile features.

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The advanced use of mobile phones in five European countries.

The paper explores the advanced users of mobile phones in Italy, France, Germany, Spain and the UK (EU5 countries) and aims to clarify the social mean...
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