The Texas Tech University College of Media & Communication was unusually quiet for a Friday. A campus snow day ceased the usual bustle of the building, with classrooms void of students and hallways unlit.
At noon, stirring the silence, the door to Room 056 was propped open, and a scattering of professors made their way into the room. They removed coats and winter gear, as several opened sack lunches with sandwiches, sodas and chips.
Glenn Cummins, Ph.D., associate professor and associate dean for research in the Texas Tech University College of Media & Communication, introduces the first speaker of the Center for Communication Research Colloquium in the Mass Communications Building on Friday.
These few braved the winter weather for the first Center for Communication Research colloquium. This session featured Scott Campbell, a professor of telecommunications and an associate professor of communications studies at the University of Michigan, and his lecture, “Mobile Communication and Social Privatism: Reaching in at the expense of reaching out?”
After a brief introduction from Glenn Cummins, Ph.D., associate professor and associate dean for research in the College of Media & Communication, applause welcomed Campbell to the front of the room, and the slides for his speech were projected on the screen.
“This process of being mobile, of being accessible at any time, is no longer new,” Campbell said, highlighting a main focus of his lecture. “It’s kind of like telling time.”
Scott Campbell, a professor of telecommunications and associate professor of communications studies at the University of Michigan, speaks at the first Center for Communication Research Colloquium.
The professor began with his background, detailing his start in telecommunications during the 1990s as an employee for Sprint Corporation.
“Mobile communication became digitized,” Campbell said. “It became cheaper and more friendly and had more functionally with voicemail and text messaging and caller ID.”
Campbell said he can recall the specific day he decided to transition from a career in marketing and development of this new technology to researching the social implications of telecommunications.
It was during the late 1990s in Kansas City, Missouri, the city of Sprint Corporation’s headquarters, and it was a local restaurant’s “Taco Tuesday.”
Faculty members in the College of Media & Communication attend the first Center for Communication Research Colloquium.
“On that Taco Tuesday, I noticed everyone at my table had these devices out,” Campbell said of early cell phones, “and had set them on the table in case they got any calls or texts. I looked around, and I started noticing that this was kind of the case at all of the other tables.”
Now, 15 years into his research on mobile communication, Campbell is penning his knowledge of the industry in a new book.
Campbell explained several researchers were concerned about the causation between media and social isolation, with several reports indicating lengthy amounts of time spent on mobile devices makes individuals feel lonesome.
“We did some follow-up research that things evolved,” Campbell said. “The Internet evolved, that people evolved, that technology evolved and norms about them — those kind of negative effects went away. But still, it’s one kind of brick in the foundation of a long stream of concerns and warnings that new technologies have a way of socially disconnecting us, even if they are technologies that are specifically for social connection.”
Campbell, left, answers a question from Erik Bucy, regents professor of strategic communication in the College of Media & Communication.
Campbell said social privatism, a concept borrowed from sociologist Rod Fisher, is different than social isolation. It instead focuses on a type of social withdrawal in which individuals are still highly connected with their close, personal ties. He explained the data the professor is using comes mostly from text messaging and calling on a cell phone.
“There’s positive correlations between mobile communication and face-to-face communication,” Campbell said, dispelling the notion increased time on a device equates to less personal interaction. “There’s positive correlation between mobile communication and spending time with others. It’s not taking away from that. It’s actually something that we use to organize face-to-face meet-ups.”
In an interview with The Hub@TTU, Campbell addressed the embedded nature of mobile communication within our society.
“My colleague, Rich Ling, calls it soft collusion,” Campbell said, alluding to an individual with no means of transportation, who is an annoyance to his friends by constantly requesting car rides. “Now it’s not just your problem if you don’t have a cell phone; you’re a pain for other people now.”
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