Publications - Abstracts:

Community and Social Interaction in the Wireless City: Wi-Fi use in Public and Semi-Public Spaces.

Abstract

A growing number of cities have announced plans or are in the early stages of deploying municipal broadband wireless networks; Muni Wi-Fi. These projects promise untethered Internet access in private, public, and semi-public spaces. While there is a significant body of research addressing whether fixed Internet use increases, decreases, or supplements the ways people engage in residential and workplace settings, few studies have addressed how the use of wireless broadband in public and semi-public spaces influences social life. Ubiquitous Wi-Fi adds a new dimension to the debate over how the Internet may influence the structure of community. It is unclear if wireless Internet use will facilitate greater engagement with co-present others, or encourage a form of ‘public privatism.’ Will Wi-Fi alter the prevailing trend in how personal networks are structured, the tendency toward home-centeredness and privatism? This paper reports the findings of an exploratory, ethnographic study that examined how Wi-Fi was used and influenced social interactions in a series of Wi-Fi coffee shops. Observations were drawn from four different settings; paid and free Wi-Fi cafés in Boston and Seattle. This study found contrasting uses for wireless Internet and competing implications for community. Two types of practices, typified in the behaviors of ‘true mobiles’ and ‘place makers,’ offer divergent futures for how Muni Wi-Fi may influence the structure of social relationships.

Contact me for a draft copy (in press, New Media & Society)