The Ethnography Of Communication
by Imran Ali
My former boss, Dr. Norman Lewis, related a few days ago that there was a ‘dearth of substantial qualitative research on telephony itself’. Odd for an industry that’s now straddled three centuries, but there are few landmark studies into the motivations of voice and messaging - why people send texts, make calls and how they measure their user experience.
Fortunately, there are individuals who are beginning to pay attention to qualitative ethnographic studies. Nokia’s Jan Chipchase has undertaken fascinating studies into the ‘Next Billion‘ consumers across the developing world and where people keep their mobile handsets.
Also, SS7 expert and UCL doctoral candidate, Lee Dryburgh, pointed out a pair of interesting texts which I haven’t had a chance to review, but look to be promising sources of research:
- Robert Hopper’s Telephone Conversation includes an interactional methodology for examining telephone conversations. Something that may be adaptable for mobile messaging contexts.
- Luke and Pavlidou’s Telephone Calls compares and contrasts conversational structure across different cultures and languages, looking for common conversational patterns.
As an industry, we breathlessly pursue progress in technologies, standards, business models and innovation - yet focus relatively little effort on ethnography. That’s why innocuous technologies such as text messaging escaped the attention of mobile operators. They were ill-placed to understand the motivations of mobile users and consequently couldn’t spot an emerging user trend.
