Marginal Publics / Privacy in Motion: Homelessness in Times of Mobile Media

这个项目关注的是很少被研究的无家可归者和数字媒体的使用。它解决了两个主要问题：a)柏林的无家可归者如何使用数字和移动媒体；b)这种媒体的使用在多大程度上还包括“走向私人”和/或“走向公众”的过程？从经验上看，该项目包括两个子项目：一个是对无家可归者媒体使用情况的调查，另一个是定性实验，向尚未使用手机的人提供手机。这两个子项目都建立在该领域（在无家可归者收容所、无家可归者聚会点、公共场所）的长期人种学研究基础上。这两种方法的创新结合提供了德国第一个关于无家可归和数字媒体使用的实质性项目。该项目具有探索性的特点，因为它结合了两个理论领域（无家可归者的媒体使用和无家可归者背景下的公共性/隐私问题），以便对动态的边缘公众/隐私进行理论-实证综合。由于其探索性和实验性设计，该项目借鉴了现有研究的不同领域：对无家可归本身的研究，对无家可归人群中媒体使用的研究，以及对媒介公众/媒介隐私的探索。

This project concerns itself with the rarely researched topic of homeless and digital media use. It addresses two main questions: a) How do homeless people in Berlin use digital and mobile media, and b) How far does this media usage also include processes of ‘going private’ and/or ‘going public’? Empirically, the project consists of two sub-projects: a survey on media use of the homeless and a qualitative experiment, providing mobile phones to those who do not use them, yet. Both sub-projects build on longer-term ethnographic research in the field (in homeless shelters, homeless meeting points, public spaces). The innovative combination of both methods provides the first substantial project in Germany on homelessness and digital media use. The project has an exploratory character as it combines two theoretical fields (homeless media use and the question of publicness/privacy in the homeless context) in order to sketch a theoretical-empirical synthesis on marginal publics/privacy in motion. Due to its exploratory character and experimental design, the project draws on different fields of existing research: research on homelessness itself, studies of media usage among homeless populations, and explorations of mediated publics/mediated privacy.