Nancy Baron wrote:
I'm looking for current statistics (worldwide and/or by country) on comparative use of cells phones for spoken communication versus text messaging. Many thanks for any data or sources you might have.
I don't have any statistics myself, but as this is becoming the new evolving research field in mediated communication in Norway at the moment, there are quite a few new projects that focusses on different aspects of the use of cell phones. Berit Skog at the Department of Sociology at NTNU is leading one of these projects (the most established one as far as I know), and I presume she would know about the statistics if there are any or forward your request (berit.skog@svt.ntnu.no). It is a really interesting question you are asking, and I'd really appreciate it if you could post the numbers to the list if you find any. My guess is that the differences are huge between countries: in Norway for instance (where I come from), "everyone" owns a cell phone (and the majority of children above 12, creatin a severe gap between the have's and the have not's). The costs for using it for regular calls are quite high though (in opposition to the US), whereas sending text messages on the other hand is very cheap. Teenagers hardly ever use their phones to speak, but as a written kind of medium, and several research projects focus on the specific language evolving through cell phone text messaging. It will be really interesting to learn more about this field in the years to come! Good luck in your search. Best regards, Janne Bromseth