What Characterizes the Polymediality of the Mobile Phone? The Multiple Media within the World’s Most Popular Medium

19 Pages Posted: 15 Jul 2016 Last revised: 3 Aug 2016

See all articles by Martin Hilbert

Martin Hilbert

University of California, Davis

Ashwin Aravindakshan

University of California, Davis

Date Written: June 1, 2016

Abstract

While the mobile phone is the world’s most popular media device, it is actually not one single medium, but provides an entire media ecology. As a result, it is effectively used as a different medium by different user groups. The article deepens our understanding of this polymediality by characterizing differences in mobile apps usage among different user groups, including gender, education, occupation, screen size, and price. We monitored the complete app usage of 10,725 smartphone users for one month each (56 million sessions, recording almost 1 million hours). We develop a theoretical framework to classify the over 16,000 apps used into five categories of polymediality. Testing a battery of 33 concrete hypothesis we provide a broad characterization of the mediatic nature of the cellphone by asking who, with which characteristics, uses which kinds of apps in what extensity and intensity? For example, we find that the the mobile phone is used as a traditional human-to-human communication medium by women and the higher educated, while men and the less educated see it rather as an entertainment medium. Rather surprisingly, it is not the young and high occupational grades that use the mobile phone as a human-to-machine computer (including gaming and artificial intelligence tools). Large screen size is related to extensive long sessions, while a small screen size is related to intensive frequent usage. The results provide ample empirical evidence that any aggregated treatment of the mobile phone as a single medium will miss its inherently polymediatic nature.

Keywords: Mobile apps, polymedia, mobile phone, technology adoption, human-to-machine communication; media classification

Suggested Citation

Hilbert, Martin and Aravindakshan, Ashwin, What Characterizes the Polymediality of the Mobile Phone? The Multiple Media within the World’s Most Popular Medium (June 1, 2016). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2809953 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2809953

Martin Hilbert (Contact Author)

University of California, Davis ( email )

One Shields Avenue
Apt 153
Davis, CA 95616
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.martinhilbert.net

Ashwin Aravindakshan

University of California, Davis ( email )

One Shields Avenue
Apt 153
Davis, CA 95616
United States

HOME PAGE: http://ashwin.faculty.ucdavis.edu

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