[Air-l] Norway Conference on Mobile Communication

[Naomi Susan Baron]

An announcement of a conference that may be of interest to members of AOIR:

Front stage/Back stage:  Mobile communication and the renegotiation of the
social sphere

Announcing the fourth in a series of international conferences to examine
the social and economic meanings of mobile communication.  The conference
will be held in Grimstad, Norway 22 - 24 June.  Deadline for the submission
of abstracts is 15 November 2002.  A link to the conference web site is
http://emarkets.grm.hia.no/semoc/
Purpose of the conference:
Mobile communication in its various forms, has arrived on the scene in a
dramatic fashion.  SMS, voice telephony, mobile Internet, WLAN technology,
Bluetooth, PDAs and many other technologies and services are being used by
broader and broader sections of society.  Their general social acceptance
and the increasing economic accessibility of mobile technologies have meant
that they have been adopted and used by ever more groups in society.  The
use of these technologies has altered the way we interact, the way we
present ourselves in both public and mediated communication and how we use
our telecomm budgets.  Taking a page from Goffman, we wish to frame the
conference around mobile communication's impact on our front stage facades,
our back stage interactions - as well as the blurring of these two.  Our
goal is to provide a forum wherein social scientists, economists, policy
makers and industry representatives can meet to examine the ways in which
social practises and routines related to mobile communication have and will
influence the way that we go about our everyday lives.
A limit of approximately 20 papers will be accepted for the conference.