Ordinary Usage of New Media Internet Mobile

International Journal of Japanese Sociology 2005, Number 14

Ordinary Publishing, Ltd. ORIGINAL ARTICLEMedia BlackwellUsage of New

Ichiyo Habuchi et al.

Ordinary Usage of New Media: Internet Usage via Mobile Phone in Japan

ICHIYO HABUCHI, SHINGO DOBASHI, IZUMI TSUJI

AND

KOH IWATA

Abstract: This paper, by analyzing Internet usage via mobile phones in Japan, aims to clarify an aspect of information behavior in present-day Japanese society. Many discourses on the mobile Internet in Japan, either positive or negative, emphasize its novelty and describe this new media as an exotic phenomenon. These discourses can be divided into two categories. The nationalistic discourses and the moral panic discourses. Both types of discourse have built certain images of social influences of the mobile Internet in the future. However, it would be unwise to conclude that those images of the mobile Internet express the reality of this new medium, simply because they lack empirical ground. With these points in mind, based on the result of our national survey conducted in 2001, we would like to show the actual status of use of the mobile Internet and discuss that the ordinary usage is a critically important realm to understand the process of social reception of the mobile Internet. As our data shows, although the actual usage of the mobile Internet is not very conspicuous, it gives us a chance to understand how the mobile Internet has been integrated into our everyday lives. Keyword: mobile Internet, youth culture, ordinary usage of new media

Introduction

Japan is a country with one of the longest histories of practical use of mobile phones. Its history started with port/harbor ship phones in 1953 and, three years later, train public phones became available. Twenty years later, car phones were developed, which were the predecessors of personal mobile phones. Thus, mobile phones were originally aimed for public use like the public telephone in Japan. The situation...