The Ubiquitous Internet: User and Industry Perspectives

184 Pages·2015·1.115 MB·English

by  Anja Bechmann (Editor), Stine Lomborg (Editor)

The Ubiquitous Internet
Understanding the role of the future internet requires addressing both the
users’ experiences and the industry’s approaches to capitalizing on their users.
Combining these two perspectives, this book provides an important con-
tribution to developing a coherent view of the social consequences of the
ubiquitous internet.
—Tanja Storsul, University of Oslo, Norway
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 rela-
tion 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 commodifi-
cation and value-creation.
Anja Bechmann is Associate Professor, Head of Digital Footprints Research
Group at Aarhus University and board member of the National Council
for Digital Security in Denmark. She is the initiator and co-developer of the
Digital Footprints software and has published extensively on cross-media,
internet economy, privacy regulation, and social media.
Stine Lomborg is Associate Professor of Communication and IT at the Uni-
versity of Copenhagen in Denmark. She has published extensively on user
studies, focusing on the role of social media in everyday life. She is the
author of Social Media – Social Genres: Making Sense of the Ordinary (with
Routledge).
Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture
1 Cyberpop 9 Mobile Technology and Place
Digital Lifestyles and Edited by Gerard Goggin and
Commodity Culture Rowan Wilken
Sidney Eve Matrix
10 Wordplay and the Discourse
2 The Internet in China of Video Games
Cyberspace and Civil Society Analyzing Words, Design,
Zixue Tai and Play
Christopher A. Paul
3 Racing Cyberculture
Minoritarian Art and Cultural 11 Latin American Identity
Politics on the Internet in Online Cultural
Christopher L. McGahan Production
Claire Taylor and Thea Pitman
4 Decoding Liberation
The Promise of Free and Open 12 Mobile Media Practices,
Source Software Presence and Politics
Samir Chopra and Scott D. Dexter The Challenge of Being
Seamlessly Mobile
5 Gaming Cultures and Place Edited by Kathleen M. Cumiskey
in Asia-Pacific and Larissa Hjorth
Edited by Larissa Hjorth and
Dean Chan 13 The Public Space of Social
Media
6 Virtual English Connected Cultures of the
Queer Internets and Digital Network Society
Creolization Thérèse F. Tierney
Jillana B. Enteen
14 Researching Virtual Worlds
7 Disability and New Media Methodologies for Studying
Katie Ellis and Mike Kent Emergent Practices
Edited by Ursula Plesner and
8 Creating Second Lives Louise Phillips
C ommunity, Identity and Spatiality
as Constructions of the Virtual 15 Digital Gaming Re-imagines
Edited by Astrid Ensslin and the Middle Ages
Eben Muse Edited by Daniel T. Kline
16 Social Media, Social Genres 21 Online Games, Social
Making Sense of the Ordinary Narratives
Stine Lomborg Esther MacCallum-Stewart
17 The Culture of Digital 22 Locative Media
Fighting Games Edited by Rowan Wilken and
Performances and Practice Gerard Goggin
Todd Harper
23 Online Evaluation of Creativity
18 Cyberactivism on the and the Arts
Participatory Web Edited by Hiesun Cecilia Suhr
Edited by Martha McCaughey
24 Theories of the Mobile
19 Policy and Marketing Strategies Internet
for Digital Media Materialities and Imaginaries
Edited by Yu-li Liu and Edited by Andrew Herman,
Robert G. Picard Jan Hadlaw, and
Thom Swiss
20 Place and Politics in Latin
American Digital Culture 25 The Ubiquitous Internet
Location and Latin American User and Industry Perspectives
Net Art Edited by Anja Bechmann and
Claire Taylor Stine Lomborg
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The Ubiquitous Internet
User and Industry Perspectives
Edited by Anja Bechmann
and Stine Lomborg
First published 2015
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The ubiquitous Internet : user and industry perspectives / edited by Anja
Bechmann and Stine Lomborg.
pages cm. — (Routledge studies in new media and cyberculture ; 25)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Information technology—Social aspects. 2. Internet—Social
aspects. 3. Internet industry. 4. Ubiquitous computing—Social
aspects. I. Bechmann, Anja, 1976– II. Lomborg, Stine, 1982–
HM851.U25 2015
303.48ʹ33—dc23
2014030120
ISBN: 978-0-415-72574-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-85666-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Figures and Tables ix
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction: The Ubiquitous Internet: Introduction
and Conceptualization 1
STINE LOMBORG AND ANJA BECHMANN
PART I
Users and Usage Patterns
1 Next Generation Users: Changing Access to the Internet 11
GRANT BLANK AND WILLIAM H. DUTTON
2 The Internet in My Pocket 35
STINE LOMBORG
3 Managing the Interoperable Self 54
ANJA BECHMANN
4 The Dynamics of Real-Time Contentious Politics:
How Ubiquitous Internet Shapes and Transforms
Popular Protest in China 74
JUN LIU
PART II
Commercialization, Standards, and Politics
5 Histories of Ubiquitous Web Standardization 97
INDREK IBRUS
viii Contents
6 Mobile Internet: The Politics of Code and Networks 115
LELA MOSEMGHVDLISHVILI
7 Predictive Algorithms and Personalization Services on
Social Network Sites: Implications for Users and Society 130
ROBERT BODLE
8 The Digital Transformation of Physical Retailing:
Sellers, Customers, and the Ubiquitous Internet 146
JOSEPH TUROW
Conclusion 165
ANJA BECHMANN AND STINE LOMBORG
Contributors 169
Index 171
Figures and Tables
FIGURES
1.1 Next Generation Users: 2007–2013. 18
1.2 Next Generation Users by content production. 20
1.3 Next Generation Users by entertainment. 21
1.4 Importance of media for information. 22
1.5 Importance of media for entertainment. 22
1.6 Next Generation Users by information seeking. 23
1.7 Next Generation Users by locations. 24
1.8 Next Generation Users by lifestage. 25
1.9 Next Generation Users by income. 26
1.10 Next Generation Access shaping patterns of use. 27
3.1 Descriptive statistics on the types of posts on walls
and in groups. 61
3.2 Descriptive statistics on comments on wall and group posts. 62
3.3 Descriptive statistics on the number of ‘likes’ on different
content units. 63
TABLES
1.1 Next Generation Users (%) 18
1.2 Predicting Next Generation Users 28
3.1 Designated Facebook Apps on Mobile Devices 64
3.2 The Number of Groups Within the Three Categories
Open, Closed, and Secret 67
3.3 Thematic Coding of Groups 68