The Impact of Technological Malfunctioning, Breakdown, and Repair on Communication

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The cellular phone - increasingly, the "smart" phone - is playing an increasingly important role in the way that Americans communicate. But if cell phones are central to how we interact, and also to the ways that individuals conceive of their identities, what happens when they do not work the way they are supposed to? There has been considerable scientific research on the cellular phone itself, and even on its role in changing communicative processes; however, there has been almost no scientific attention paid to cellular phone breakdown and repair, a strange omission since one of the primary aspects of cellular phone use revolves around its inadequate functioning. The research will study the problems that cellular phone malfunction poses, and the strategies that are adopted to cope with their breakdown and repair. It will contribute to improving understanding of the role of cellular communication in education, family life, and identity formation. Data from the project will inform an exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) on the cell phone, set to open in 2019. The NMNH, which hosts an average 7 million visitors each year, provides an excellent forum for disseminating enhancing scientific and technological understanding to the public.Dr. Alexander Dent and Dr. Joel Kuipers of The George Washington University, together with Dr. Joshua Bell of The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, will collaborate in a three year study that examines the breakdown of cellular phones in two ways. First, they will look at how teenagers handle the breakdown of the physical phone itself: cracked screens, inadequate signals, and software glitches. Teenagers are uniquely connected to their cellular devices, and their social and emotional worlds are intimately tied up with their devices. Second, they will examine how teenagers handle the breakdowns in social life that take place through phones: the accidentally forwarded emails, deleted messages, and disastrous auto-corrects. The investigators will accomplish this analysis through a range of ethnographic methods, beginning with surveys of the sophomore classes of two racially diverse Washington DC high schools (400 subjects). From these initial surveys, 30 individuals will be selected for more in-depth cellular phone "biographies." And finally, 10 families will be selected for immersive video recording at home and in schools, in addition to in-depth interviews. Data will be coded according to five sorts of trouble: hardware, software, infrastructure, etiquette, and conversational. At a time when smart phones are proliferating around the world, and when their importance to our day-to-day communication is so great, it becomes imperative to understand the ways in which physical breakdown and communicational breakdown are related to one another, reinforcing not only the problems, but the shape that repairs take. Material from this study will be presented in academic papers, as well as an NMNH exhibit on the cellular phone. The project's investigation of teen insights into repair will help us understand the formation of technological expertise, the ways in which different media work together in "media ecologies," and the beliefs that people hold about the importance of cellular communication to everyday life.