Indigenous adoption of mobile phones

F. Sudweeks, H. Hrachovec and C. Ess (eds.) Indigenous adoption of mobile phones and oral cultures.

This preliminary research into an Australian indigenous community illustrates how oral culture of an indigenous community is integrated with a new form or technology-the mobile phone. It also shows that technology can influence the way in which the people of ‘oral culture’ communicate with each other.

This finding can be compared with some of the previous studies made by Western media studies scholars such as Katz and Aakhus’s (2002). They have argued that the mobile phone is adopted and used universally to local peoples regardless of cultural or regional differences, owing to the its (somewhat neutral) design appealing to a wide range of populations.

That is, in Sudweeks’s research, the mobile phone interacts with its users who have particular culture and tradition. Technology is filtered and “cultured” through local traditions and histories, but also is re-articulate with tradition in many unexpected ways.
References

F. Sudweeks, H. Hrachovec and C. Ess (eds.) (2008). Indigenous adoption of mobile phones and oral cultures, Proceedings Cultural Attitutdes Towards Communication and Technology, Murdoch University, Australia, 384-398.

Katz, JE and Aakhus, MK (2002) Perpetual contact: Mobile communication, private talk, public performance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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