Transforming travel times, places and practices: Further insights into audiences and users on the move

Patriarche, Geoffroy [FUSL] Hubert, Michel [FUSL] Montulet, Bertrand [FUSL]

User studies have stressed the role played by mobile phones in blurring the boundaries between private and public domains, shaping the meaning and experience of time, sustaining social relationships and supporting real-time coordination (e.g. Caron, Caronia, 2007; Ling, Yttri, 2002). Nevertheless, the diverse interrelationships between mobile media/ICTs and everyday spatial mobility are still largely unknown. Mobility research has pointed out the greater access to a larger choice of transportation modes, the growing variability and complexity of everyday travels (e.g. multimodality, interpenetration of professional and private travels), and the increasing opportunities for re-appropriation of travel times and places thanks to mobile media/ICTs. In addition, new and diverse media offerings provide various kinds of information concerning everyday mobility (e.g. real-time timetables delivered online or through mobile phones). The purpose of this paper is to report on ongoing empirical research into these new audience/user conditions. The theoretical framework draws upon the little existing research in the field (e.g. Flamm, 2005; Holm & Kendall, 2008; Lyons, Holley & Jain, 2008) and further combines relevant audience/user studies and mobility research. The relationship between media/ICT use and everyday mobility is defined as one of mutual construction whereby travel times, places and practices shape and are shaped by media/ICT use. The research method is twofold. First, young people aged between 25 and 35 who either work or live in Brussels were interviewed about their media/ICT uses while on the move. Second, ethnographic research was carried out during train travels, resulting in extensive field notes. Empirical findings suggest that individuals adjust their everyday mobility to fit their media/ICT-related mobile activities. More significantly, individuals actively use mobile media/ICTs to transform their travel times, places and practices in the desired direction. Yet transforming mobility requires social and technical resources that are unequally distributed in time and space, as well as among people.