The Wireless Leash: Mobile Messaging Service as a Means of Control

1
The Wireless Leash Mobile Messaging Service as a
Means of Control

• Jack Linchuan Qiu
• School of Journalism Communication
• The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Conference Communication Technology and Social
Policy in the Digital Age Expanding Access,
Redefining Control, Palm Springs, California.
March 9-11, 2006
2
Some Basics

• Mobile messaging (MM) SMS MMS
• Since 1992
• Sent among mobiles, also to/from computers
• Mid-2004 41.7billion/month worldwide
• Control over MM ? control through MM
• Characteristics of this working-class ICT
• Mobility
• Interface limitation
• Short, personal, banal

3
Studying Mobile Messaging

• Concentrations of existing studies
• Market analysis
• Youth culture identity
• Personal interpersonal networks
• Semantics of SMS

• What is missing?
• Beyond the market the personal
• Analysis of structures larger than family
  friendship networks
• Questions of power, ownership control

4
Personal, Portable, Panopticon?

• Putting MM in perspective Project Control
• Technical aspects
• Message filtering being relatively easy, just
  like with email
• Handsets being harder to re-configure to bypass
  surveillance
• Organizational institutional aspects

5
Incidents worldwide

• 2001
• Filipino immigrant being arrested in Belgium for
  SMS joke
• 2005
• Detainee abuse video in Malaysia
• Happy Slapping in the UK
• Cronulla Beach riots in Australia
• WTO ministerial meeting in Hong Kong

6
Emergence of an IT Industrial Complexin China

• First SMS sent on May 17, 2000
• Commercial services mushrooming since 2002 (MMS,
  ring tone, m-commerce)

7
Elements of the Emergence

• Chinese telcos listed on NYSE
• China Mobile (10/97), Unicom (6/00), China
  Telecom (11/02), Netcom (11/04) ? ARPU!
• Chinese dotcoms listed on Nasdaq
• Sina, Sohu, Netease, Tom ? New business model!
• SMS Writers flexible labor
• MNCs, equipment manufacturers, mass media ? a
  temporary triumph of SMS

8
The Broadening Scope of Surveillance

• 770 billion msgs who owns them?
• MM as state-owned informational property, as
  mobile remote searchable database
• Bringing private conversation back in
• State control efforts began during the 2003 SARS
  epidemic
• IT firms enter the market of MM control

9

• Founded by returning overseas Chinese students
• Headquartered in Zhongguangcuns state sponsored
  IT incubator
• Awarded with the first MPS authorization to
  develop SMS surveillance system

10
Growth by Reacting to Threats

• Sexuality (e.g. sex jokes prostitution)
• Protests (e.g. anti-Japanese protests of 2005)
• M-Crime (esp. SMS spam scam)
• Real-name registration?
• 75.9 approval rate among Beijing residents
  (2005)
• The broadcast model its panoptic effect

11
The Management of Risk

• Replacing pager (e.g. FLG)
• Replacing phone-in program (radio)
• Chinas first sexual harassment case
• Zimuji (i.e., Master-handset sub-handset)
• Jiqunwang (i.e., CCN, Concentrated collective
  network)

12
The number of CCN wireless phones being allocated
in an apparel factory in Dongguan, Guangdong
Province (January 2006)

13
Features of CCN

• Works like internal work phone for work only
• Employees have to keep the phone on 24/7
• No cost to call within the CCN, very expensive to
  call beyond the CCN
• Operated by the Information Division
• Penalty measures (financial, physical, group)
• Company pays for handset, SIM card and all or
  most of the mobile phone bill (less subsidy for
  those at lower ranks)
• Ordinary workers forbidden to bring mobiles to
  assembly line

14
Pending Issues
To Conclude...

• The global rise of MM the wireless leash
• The malleability of working-class ICTs
• Chinese characteristics its transnational
  dimensions

• Shifting boundaries of control
• Places of control (e.g., factories, media orgs)
• Formations of counter-control