Living Without a Mobile Phone: An Autoethnography

This paper presents an autoethnography of my experiences living without a mobile phone. What started as an experiment motivated by a personal need to reduce stress, has resulted in two voluntary mobile phone breaks spread over nine years (i.e., 2002-2008 and 2014-2017). Conducting this autoethnography is the means to assess if the lack of having a phone has had any real impact in my life. Based on formative and summative analyses, four meaningful units or themes were identified (i.e., social relationships, everyday work, research career, and location and security), and judged using seven criteria for successful ethnography from existing literature. Furthermore, I discuss factors that allow me to make the choice of not having a mobile phone, as well as the relevance that the lessons gained from not having a mobile phone have on the lives of people who are involuntarily disconnected from communication infrastructures.Comment: 12 page

Forget-me-not: History-less Mobile Messaging

Text messaging has long been a popular activity, and today smartphone apps enable users to choose from a plethora of mobile messaging applications. While we know a lot about SMS practices, we know less about practices of messaging applications. In this paper, we take a first step to explore one ubiquitous aspect of mobile messaging – messaging history. We designed, built, and trialled a mobile messaging application without history—named forget-me-not. The two-week trial showed that history-less messaging no longer supports chit-chat as seen in e.g. WhatsApp, but is still considered conversational and more ‘engaging’. Participants expressed being lenient and relaxed about what they wrote. Removing the history allowed us to gain insights into what uses history has in other mobile messaging applications, such as planning events, allowing for distractions, and maintaining multiple conversation threads

THE ROLE OF INSTANT MESSANGING ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF LECTURER'S PERFORMANCE AT THE UNIVERSITAS ABDURRAB

Recently education has a high demand in terms of communication services, instant messaging (IM) becomes an option in communicating in University as the service increases in accordance with user needs. Previous works have suggested that the use of IM may disrupt the working activities. But in recent years research shown that IM utilization had increased in work life. By using IM technology allows the information shared quickly, precisely and accurately, so that surely will improve the effectiveness of work. Lecturers are the critical aspectto make a better improvement of the university its self. With the development of communication technology will impact the emergence of various types of activities based on technology, all of which are based on electronics such as instant messaging which will help the effectiveness of lecturer's performance. This research uses quantitative method to measure the significance of the effect of instant messaging on the performance of lecturers at the Universitas Abdurrab. This research shown that all lecturers using instant messaging in their work have a significant influence on their performance. Through this research is expected to contribute to encourage efforts to increase the use of Instant Messaging, so that the Internet Service Providers can provide more specific services for the education, especially in the university to support the establishment of e-education and e-management

Performance Assessment of WhatsApp and IMO on Android Operating System (Lollipop and KitKat) during VoIP Calls using 3G or WiFi

This paper assesses the performance of mobile messaging and VoIP connections. We compared the CPU requirements of WhatsApp and IMO under different scenarios. This analysis also enabled a comparison of the performance of these applications on two Android operating system (OS) versions: KitKat or Lollipop. Two models of smartphones were considered, viz. Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy S4. The applications behavior was statistically investigated for both sending and receiving VoIP calls. Connections have been examined over 3G and WiFi. The handset model plays a decisive role in CPU requirements of the application. t-tests shown that IMO has a statistical better performance that WhatsApp whatever be the Android at a significance level 1%, on Galaxy Note 4. In contrast, WhatsApp requires less CPU than IMO on Galaxy S4 whatever be the OS and access (3G/WiFi). Galaxy Note 4 using WiFi has always better performance than S4 in terms of processing

Convenience or nuisance?: The ‘WhatsApp’ dilemma

WhatsApp sends real-time messages and is one of the world's most popular communication applications in the 21st century.While this study extends the current knowledge on the use of WhatsApp, it also highlights the challenges of WhatsApp use by young people. The purpose of this study is to examine the domestication of WhatsApp among young people, specifically the undergraduates at Universiti Brunei Darussalam. Results showed how young people perceive WhatsApp as a ‘convenient’ communication application in their everyday lives. Some of the critical issues arising from the use of WhatsApp included distractions and exposure to unregulated messages or information

THE IMPACT OF WHATSAPP TOWARD UAD UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS’ BEHAVIOR IN LEARNING PROCESS

WhatsApp is one of the social media that is used to communicate in the learning process. At present, students cannot be separated from their daily activities away from this social media. This opportunity can be utilized as well as possible by the students. This research was conducted to find out of using WhatsApp toward undergraduate students’ behavior in the teaching and learning process. This study was descriptive qualitative research. The data were analyzed using descriptive analysis technique. The data were collected using interviews, observation, and documentation. The aim of this study to analyze the impact of WhatsApp toward undergraduate students’ behavior and to analyze students’ behavior in their learning process. The result of this research showed that are a positive impact on student behavior as it affects the learning process as, students’ sharing knowledge, student preparation for class, attention, student participation in class, student learning, desires to take additional classes or in subject matter and the negative impact such as, students are more focused

Use of Social Media and its Perceived Implications on the Social Life of Students: A Case Study of the Students of Joseph Ayo Babalola University Ikeji – Arakeji, Nigeria

The uses of social media have developed into a universal and virtually inevitable phenomenon that has transformed the method by which students communicate, interrelate, mingle and socialize, and have become an integral portion of students’ social and cultural lifestyle. Subsequently, students use a considerable measure of their time on social media. University students and adolescence are viewed as the prevalent users of this contemporary technology. Notwithstanding the mounting quantity of literature on the uses of social media around the globe, there is a drought of investigation on how the uses of social media affect students’ social life. This evocative, investigative study scrutinized the kinds of social media platforms that students generally use, the aggregate time students spend on social media, the reasons why students use the social media and the effects of the use of social media on students’ social life. The sample population of the study consisted of students in Joseph Ayo Babalola University, Ikeji-Arakeji, Nigeria. A well-structured questionnaire was administered to the students to gather their responses. This was analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23. The findings of the study showed that the most frequently used social media platform was WhatsApp. The study also revealed that the majority of the sampled students testified to be actively engaging in the use of social media platforms between thirty minutes to one hour daily. The study additionally found that majority of the students were always excited and wound up saying only a couple of more minutes whenever they were using the social media platforms and checked their social media sites to make updates before embarking on any other task daily. The study also identified that the students knew that their academic performance endured on account of their` social media life and also that it stressed them. Despite the students understanding of these facts, the study found that students flunked to reduce the time used on social media. The study also found that 22.4% of the students were dependent on social media and that they used social media more for socialization than for academic purposes. Consequently, fruitful uses of social media for academic purposes were prescribed so as to reduce the adverse effect of the uses of social media

Understanding Banking via WeChat Diaries

This paper describes the development and refinement of an existing chat application, China’s WeChat, as a remote diary tool, which researchers can employ to acquire a deeper understanding on their consumers whilst overcoming major geographical and time zone constraints. This research was part of a project to understand the experiences of Chinese consumers related to finance and banking. A diary study was conducted through WeChat and phone interviews to understand how consumers conduct their everyday financial transactions. The research illustrated the need to adapt approaches to diary participants, such as utilising a chat agent or avatar to elicit richer data, and demonstrated the utility of a feedback loop, which reassured and reminded participants to post regularly, in turn encouraging posts with more depth. The relationships built over the course of the diary study were also imperative to the success of follow-up semi-structured phone interviews, as trust and familiarity between researchers and participants enabled more intimate conversations. Novel use of the application worked well in gaining a deeper appreciation of the experiences of selected consumers. The paper adds to the growing literature on the use and adaptation of chat applications as a substitute for conventional mobile diary tools, and concludes with a list of key considerations for further applications in a similar research context