‘Playful Identities’ research blog

Advertisement for mobile phone operator, 28 nov. ‘06 Kaduna Nigeria.

Interestingly, you hardly see any mobile phone actually being used by people on the ads here.

Pic taken November 27 2006 at Abuja supermarket.

Today we were in Kaduna to meet the folks from Newage Film Company. Nothing spacy in long robes but a professionally looking company. Esther talked her head off…i shot some stuff with the dv we brought. We both have a good feeling about it. Tomorrow to Jos..

oh, and i just posted these last 2 items from my mobile phone…well done MTN for having gprs access in nigeria!

we have arrived in abuja safely. Picked up from the airport by driver and an armed man… That moist smoky air and thick sound of crickets… Absurd style of driving: drive right side, pass right side. Cook pierre at daniels (esther’s cousin in abuja) place is from benin. Weird that one of the first conversations here in anglophone nigeria is in french….
tomorrow we go to kaduna to meet some film people from the “new age film company”. See if they are interested in collaborating.

Tomorrow me and Esther Polak are going to Nigeria on the NomadicMILK fieldtrip. Packing my bags now… I will try to post some new stuff here once in a while when we are able to get online.

Apparently our telcom operator in Nigeria MTN has gprs access too, so I’ll check that out as soon as I am there. However, as you can see here, there are still some white areas in Nigeria…(and that’s only the GSM network).

Anybody can upload a short mobile phone clip to the website 15×15.org which is then displayed on the homepage for 15 seconds as one of 15 clips being shown simultaneously.

Interestingly, most people seem to film themselves and then put it online… Affirmation of the mobile phone as a tool for reflexive creation and expression of personal identity?

BTW: I am being eating by a purple Tyrannosaurus Rex…

(Thanks Tim for reminding me!)

Xen Mendelsohn from Xellular Identity has a very interesting interview with Nick Wright from Mobile Youth Trends. Nick is co-author of the mobileYouth 2006 report. Some of the good stuff:

- Young people don’t use their mobile phones ‘just for fun’ but also for serious matters: to say something about themselves and their relationships with other young people (self-expression).

- Branded goods play an important role in this self-expression.

- Texting is "a reaffirmation and a reminder that “I’m with you�."

- Many young people feel depressed after a whole day without SMS. Some young people even go to rehab clinics for being "text-addicts"!

- The mobile phone has taken over the former position of cigarettes in offering a private space for unsupervised private communication. (And some studies suggest young people are smoking less and less because their money now goes to phone bills - MdL)

- Texting is attractive because the language can be deformed so that no adult can understand it. (This is also pointed out by Mitzuko Ito in an article (in Ling & Pedersen: 2005) about how traditional institutions like family and the classroom are being challenged by the mobile phone - MdL).

- The phone itself allow for personalization (wallpapers, ringtones, etc.) and enables young people to express themselves and "advertise their identity as part of their peer group." (> Interesting notion "advertizing identity" - we are all designing and branding ourselves to some extend).

- The basic social needs of young people are: "Social Networking, Communication, Status display, Personalisation and acting as a Behavioural Platform."

- Mobile operators realize too little of these characteristics of young people’s interaction with the mobile phone.

Read the whole interview here!