Mobil media as a catalyst of temporal dissolution?

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Maren Hartmann; Professorin Dr. Elizabeth Prommer
• Subject Area: Communication Sciences
• Term: from 2015 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 278208817

For a few years now, the dissolution of boundaries has been a central concern within popular debates as well as in media and communication studies. One reason for the dissolution are the digital and mobile information and communication technologies. Until now, the blurring in terms of space has been a central concern, i.e. the change in spatial structures (public vs. semi-public vs. private). The question is, however, whether mobile communication technologies lead not only to the creation of new concepts of space, but also to new and different forms of time and its use and appropriation. A central question of the here proposed project is how far (and if) a new formation of the objective perception of time and the subjective experience thereof is emerging thanks to mobile media. Or rather: How far do mobile media speed up time-related dissolution processes? The autonomy and sovereignty of the user characterize one side of the developments (which includes the dilusion of linear time structures). The other side includes new pressures to act in polychrome ways (and/or to multitask) and the fact that we can fill our free time nowadays with media use. The project has been planned for a length of 36 months. Its aim is to understand if and how far our perception of time and especially our concrete time structuration has changed thanks to the use of mobile devices (including laptops). We also ask what kind of blurring of time boundaries actually take place. At the centre of our concern are those rituals, routines and habitualisations of media use, which are de-, re- and newly structured, as our hypothesis states, thank to mobile media. This question will be answered via a triangulation, combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. This includes time- and mediabiographical interviews and an experience sampling method project part. Our research subjects for the mediabiographical interviews will be located both in Berlin (as a major city) and Rostock (as a smaller city). In these interviews the concrete context of appropriation and use will be approached in order to answer questions about the domestication of mobile media in different use contexts. At the same time the experience sampling method will be used to send a push-questionnaire five to seven times in a theoretical week. This is meant to explore the situated media use patterns and avoids the disadvantages of a retrospective and subjective view. The results will subsequently be triangulated in order to generate prototypical use patterns and user types in relation to the use of time.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Clemens Cap