Firstly, once again, it’s been a long time between drinks on New Media Mogul. Apologies for that, but I enjoyed a fairly extensive summer break, the highlight of which was a trip to Cradle Mountain in Tasmania.
I’ve been involved in a side project that looks at the etiquette surrounding the use of media devices in public spaces. This grew out of some field work I was involved in, interviewing people face to face about the ways in which having a mobile phone aided their use of Melbourne’s public transport system.
Time and time again I would get to the end of the interviews, ask people for any further thoughts and have them ranting about the rudeness of people talking on their mobile phones whilst on the train or tram. So it seemed like something that was worth following up.
It’s something that now being taken seriously too. The Western Australian Public Transport Authority recently launched a campaign to gently remind commuters that they should be more considerate when using their mobile phone or iPod.
Our survey (which you are invited to take part in) aims to create a typology of what makes good and bad media etiquette. I’m also quite interested in looking at whether the experience for digital natives and digital non-natives is different; whether digital natives might be more tolerant towards the way in which others use their media devices, and whether this tolerance might be growing with younger members of Generation Y (of which I am one).
The other interesting thing here is that it is not as if many ‘non digital natives’ have grown up without media devices in public spaces; transistor radios and Walkmans have been in existence for many years.
I’ll post some of my analysis here when I get to it…
