Dresden
Finally for today I'm in a session on convergence and networking which, perhaps unsurprisingly, has a strong representation of Korean and Japanese researchers. The first paper is by Euchiul Jung and is presented in absentia - it is motivated by the increasing flow of people, culture and information beyond national boundaries, and looks at ethnicity-based public spheres at local levels. Diasporic identity is a reconstructed and transformed cultural identity - a hybrid identity.

The paper found that new media technologies were helpful in keeping the members of such communities in touch with their cultures of origin, and increased the close connection between them and their home culture. Key media here were both the Internet, which allowed more access to information and culture from the culture of origin, and the mobile phone, which allowed for more mobility and flexibility. Both increased the intra-cultural communication within the diasporic community. This also led to a growth in the cultural politics of distinction, recognition, and identification, and allowed for the emergence of mediated, ethnicity-based public spheres and communication networks. The result was a transformed, hybridised cultural identity.

Media Ownership in South Korea

Next up is a paper by Dal Yong Jin, also presented in absentia. This is a comparative study of media ownership in the U.S. and South Korea in the wake of media ownership regulation patterns. As a result of deregulation, privatisation, and liberalisation, there has been an ongoing transformation of media industries and the national communication systems. Beyond transnational players, this also needs to take into account the role of governments and national media producers, of course.

In the Korean broadcasting sector, privatisation of the broadcast media, a rise in commercial broadcasting, relaxing of foreign ownership restraints, and the rise of cable and digital satellite broadcasting have all had an impact. There was a further shakeup after the 1997 economic crisis, during which some of the first-tier commercial conglomerates withdrew from the media sector. By contrast, transnational corporations' involvement has grown since the late 1980s, and a relaxation of foreign ownership rules in the late 1990s further opened the door for them. Digital satellite broadcasting was one of the first industries where locally based transnational interests became the key players.

Perceptions of Ubiquitous Computing Scenarios

Up next is Nicola Döring, with a study of user attitudes towards smart objects. She reviews the two key paradigms at play in linking computers and the world: virtual reality brings the world into the computer, while ubiquitous computing brings computational power and networking into the physical world (the disappearing computer, computing without computers). Increasingly, in this context, we are moving from science fiction to science fact. The study at hand investigated consumers' perceptions in relation to smart objects, and did so in the context of five scenarios of use: the smart supermarket where a smart shopping cart assists consumers, animal chips which enable pets to be tracked, the smart exhibition where a digital assistant enables the retrieval of additional information and annotation of artwork, human chips which store medical and other information about their carrier, and the smart travel planner, a Web-based application which assists in the planning and booking of travel.

Responses to the study's non-representative survey of some 1000 respondents were that most of the scenarios were quite feasible, and perceived utility generally outweighed risk (it was roughly equal in the case of the human chip). Most of the scenarios felt moderately familiar to respondents, except for the human chip and travel planner. Interestingly, too, UMTS users rated all five uses higher in their utility - and users who already had pets with embedded animal chips rated the utility of that scenario higher, but showed no variation on the other scenarios. Elderly users rated the human chip higher in utility - and it is a scenario which may be particularly useful for them, of course. So far, these results are based on a survey in Germany - a similar study in Japan is still ongoing.

Mobile Phone-Based Internet Use in Japan

On now to Ron Korenaga, with a study of mobile phones as Internet media in Japan. These tools are now computers as much as (or perhaps more than) phones: Japanese now use mobile Internet more than PC-based Internet access today. Why is mobile Internet access in Japan so successful? On the one hand, pricing options are more favourable in the case of mobile phone use; on the other, mobile Internet providers offer pay services which are increasingly popular. Mobile email is also preferred to mobile voice conversation or PC-based email; this may be explained by specific cultural attitudes in Japan (such as the importance placed on personal privacy, or the perceived imposition of calling people who may not anticipate a call). Further, there is now a convergence of broadcasting and mobile communication. This also involves direct participation of users in television shows, and the direct digital broadcasting to mobile phones (known as wan-segu). Broadcasting and telecommunications have indeed converged in this case.

But what are the disadvantages of mobile phone-centred use in Japan? Email, music downloads, news and weather reports, information services, and downloading digital photos and videos are the main uses for mobile phones in Japan at present. The use of mobile phones for such purposes may limit users' literacy of PC-based devices, however - and indeed the availability and use of PC-based email for example by school students remains relatively low. At the same time, the use of mobile devices may also lead to an increase in multitasking abilities amongst users.

Convergent Trends for Niche Media

Christopher Vaughan is the last presenter. He notes some of the well-established shortcomings in the self-understanding of Americans' positioning within the wider global context, but also points out that in the convergence of media and the convergence of audiences that these media can support there may be a countercurrent to such isolationist trends. Niche communities have long operated outside of the mainstream of communication, and with the increasing use of the Internet their power has been increased. Interestingly, this has also helped to strengthen alternative identities - many online niche communities have taken to using their own languages and dialects rather than operating in English, for example.

A site called NewAmericaMedia.org brings together many such niche publications and discourses. By joining together in this form, these niche media find new audiences, of course, and while these niche media continue to exist in separate publications, there is also an emergence of something of a national audience for such publications overall. This is particularly prominent also in youth media, and in fact the young audiences of such media forms are increasingly bilingual and multicultural. Different spaces for such youths are MySpace and Facebook (but there also are problems with the former, where some predatory practices have occurred), and indeed there may be some connections between these and niche media which would be worth exploring.

Technorati : ICA2006, Internet, Japan, Korea, mobile, niche media, ownership, ubiquitous
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