read an article, in the last week, about a study of online gamers....playing everquest I believe, that reported the large number of hours spent at the game. Lost the link. Anyone recall it/recover it. A google search of everquest will probably yeild about 20 billion hits. Edward Lee Lamoureux, Ph. D. Associate Professor, Speech Communication and Multimedia Editor, Journal of Communication and Religion Bradley University Peoria IL 61625 ell@bradley.edu http://hilltop.bradley.edu/~ell Fax: 309-677-3446

Sorry to be a tad late in responding to this... The classic reference here is Hofstede's work -as he introduces "power distance" as an axis for comparing cultures. High power distance cultures - i.e., those in which large gaps between the elite and non-elite are tolerated - appear to diffuse technology more rapidly than low power distance cultures. A partial explanation: when the boss comes in with a new technological toy _qua_ status symbol - then everyone else has to have one too (never happens in the States of course - smile!). While there are quite a few studies now that document the role of power distance - including the specific phenomenon of new technology as status symbol - I'd have to do some checking to see if they specifically include discussion of mobile phones. My apologies for not doing this just now - but perhaps a search on "power distance + mobile phones" would be of use to you? For that: Carleen Maitland and Josef Bauer's chapter in my _Culture, Technology, Communication: Towards an Intercultural Global Village_ (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001) details a global quantitative study that includes discussion of power distance. Their findings suggest that another of Hofstede's axes, uncertainty avoidance, is the only such variable that is unambiguous with regards to network/CMC diffusion - i.e., countries with low uncertainty avoidance (=greater willingness to take risks) diffuse new technologies more rapidly. (The other strongly predictive cultural variable was national use of English language.) Other non-cultural variables - i.e., teledensity, density of PCs, and International Call cost - played even more important roles in diffusion. They also note: In addition to using generic national cultural variables, research by DeKimpe, Parker, and Sarvary (1997) suggests the variables used in a diffusion study should match the innovation being studied. In their study of the global diffusion of cellular telecommunications, they include a social system variable and social heterogeneity, measured as the number of ethnic groups in a country. Heterogeneity of ethnic groups relates to society-wide communication and hence the use of mobile telephones. This variable was shown to have a significant impact on a country¹s adoption timing. [Dekimpe, M. G., P. M. Parker, and M. Savary. 1997. "Globalization": Modeling technology adoption timing across countries. Fontainbleu: France, INSEAD.] Hope that helps, Charles Ess Director, Interdisciplinary Studies Center Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC 2002: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/~sudweeks/catac02/ Education is what is left over after you've forgotten everything that you've learned. (source unknown)

From: "Patrick B. O'Sullivan" <posull@ilstu.edu> Reply-To: air-l@aoir.org Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 14:25:55 -0800 To: air-l@aoir.org Subject: [Air-l] Technology as social status symbols

I have a grad student conducting a literature search for studies of technology as a status symbol to explain adoption/overadoption/reinvention as well as to better explain the social elements of technologies. Can anyone suggest studies that might be of help?

Thanks

Patrick

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