COMM3200: Mobile Communication

Department: Communication Studies
Institution: Northeastern University
Term: Fall 2024

This course explores how mobile communication mediates social life and the way we move around in the world. Mobile phones are perhaps the most relevant communication media today. Originally developed as telephones (albeit mobile), our smartphones today do much more than allowing us to talk to each other. For the past two decades what we still call “phones” transformed into a medium to access the internet, ride public transportation, pay for goods, locate information and people, control HVACs, and open cars, just to name a few. For many people in the world, cell phones are not only their first phone but also their first computer and location-aware device. Smartphones are in the 21st century what desktop PCs were in the 20th century: communication media that revolutionized the way we communicate, socialize, and interact with the world around us.

Following an introduction to core concepts and theories in mobile communication, the course focuses on the impact that mobile communication technologies have on social relationships, media forms, economics, politics, and health. Students will gain new perspectives on the mobile communication technologies with which they are most familiar, as well as new and emerging apps, software, and services. We will focus on different types of mobile technologies, such as smartphones, RFID tags, GPS technologies, and smartwatches, along with the infrastructures that support them (e.g., the “internet of things”, “smart cities”). Critical to our analysis will be the consideration of the diverse cultural and socio-economic contexts in which mobile communication occurs. The course will provide a survey of the state of mobile communication technologies today, focusing on history, current uses and social appropriations of technology.