How do Canadians, sixty-five years and older, use cellular telephones? Why do they use them? What are their observations on the shifting landscape of mobile media from their perspective? These questions are at the heart of “seniors and cells,” an interrogation into the way that older Canadians tactically negotiate a variety of barriers to access and make decisions about their media use.
Based on interviews with over three-hundred participants from across the country, seniors and cells includes users often excluded from industry and academic research agendas: the older user.
Publications:
Forthcoming, 2012 Kim Sawchuk and Barbara Crow, “Remote Grandmothering: Intergenerational Dis/connections and Communications Ecology throughout the Lifecourse,” Guest Editors: Larissa Hjorth and Sun Sun Lim, Feminist Media Studies.
2012 Kim Sawchuk and Barbara Crow, “Seniors, Mobility and Tactical Cell Phone Use,” In Technologies of Mobility in the Americas. (Eds.) Philip Vannini, Lucy Budd, Christian Fisker, Paolo Jiras, New York: Peter Lang, 2011.
2012 Barbara Crow, Kim Sawchuk and Benjamin Poppinga, “Outside the Laboratory: Mobile Methods and the User Experience,” wi: journal of mobile media, Spring.
2011 Kim Sawchuk and Barbara Crow, “Pilot Project: Privacy, Communication and Seniors,” Report prepared for PI: Les Jacobs, York Centre for Public Policy and the Law, “Privacy Rights Mobilization among Marginal Groups: Fulfilling the Mandate of PIPEDA,” Office of the Privacy Commission of Canada, Ottawa, Canada, 25 pages.
2010 Kim Sawchuk and Barbara Crow, “Talking ‘Costs’: Seniors, Cell Phones and the Personal and Political Economies of Telecommunications in Canada,” Telecommunications Journal of Australia, Vol. 60(4): 55.1-55.11.
2009 Kim Sawchuk and Barbara Crow, “Leave it to Beavers: Animals, Icons and the Marketing of the Bell Beavers,” In The Nation on Screen. (Eds.) Enric Castelló, Alexander Dhoest and Hugh O’Donnell, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 309-326.
Conference Presentations:
2011 “Maintaining Mobility: Embodiment, Aging, and Tactical Movement,” Mobilities in Motion: New Approaches to Emergent and Future Mobilities, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, March 21-23 and Canadian Communication Studies Association, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, June 1-3.
2011 “New and Old, Young and Old: Aging the Mobile Imaginary,” with Kim Sawchuk, Materialities and Imaginaries, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, February 11-12.
2010 “Seniors and Cells,” with Kim Sawchuk, Cultures of Movement: Mobile Subjects, Communities, and Technologies in the Americas, Royal Roads University, April, 8-10.
2010 “Seniors, Mobility and Tactical Cell Phone Use,” with Kim Sawchuk, DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media, OISE, University of Toronto, November 12.
2010 “Into the Grey Zone: Seniors, Cell Phones and Milieus that Matter,” with Kim Sawchuk. Observing the Mobile User Experience, Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop held in Conjunction with NordiCHI, Rekjavik University, Rekjavik, Iceland, October 17.