COVID-19 surveillance in Israeli press: Spatiality, mobility, and control

2021 ◽  
pp. 205015792110682
Author(s):  
Aya Yadlin ◽  
Avi Marciano

In March 2020, Israel passed emergency regulations authorizing its internal security agency to track citizens’ mobile phone geolocations in order to tackle the spread of COVID-19. This unprecedented surveillance enterprise attracted extensive media attention and sparked a vigorous public debate regarding technology and democratic values such as privacy, mobility, and control. This article examines press coverage of Israel’s surveillance of its citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic by four leading news sites to identify and map the frames that informed their reports. Based on a thematic analysis, our findings point to supportive and critical constructions of mobile phone location-tracking and organize them within two scapes: personal; and international. These attest to the collective imagining of intimacies and public life, respectively. We draw on the case study to articulate mobile phones as devices that reduce movement into manageable mapped information and individuals into controllable data. Mobile phone location-tracking during the COVID-19 pandemic is understood as turning mobility into order and control.

Author(s):  
Laura Stark

This chapter surveys and analyzes recent literature on mobile communication to examine its relationship to gender and development, more specifically how women in developing countries use and are impacted by mobile phones. Focusing on issues of power, agency, and social status, the chapter reviews how mobile telephony has been found to be implicated in patriarchal bargaining in different societies, how privacy and control are enabled through it, what benefits have been shown to accrue to women using mobile phones, and what barriers, limitations, and disadvantages of mobile use exist for women and why. The conclusion urges more gender-disaggregated analysis of mobile phone impact and use and offers policy and design recommendations based on the overview and discussion.


Author(s):  
Kalogeraki Stefania ◽  
Papadaki Marina

The mobile phone has become an indispensable mean of communication in the world today, and for teenagers specifically has become de rigueur in everyday life. The eagerness of teenagers to embrace mobile devices can be associated with such devices' instrumental as well as social and expressive functions. However, these functions are intertwined with critical impacts on the interaction between teenagers and parental/peer groups. On the one hand, the mobile phone acts as a symbolic “umbilical cord” that provides a permanent channel of communication, intensifying parental surveillance. On the other hand, it creates a greater space for interaction with peers beyond parental monitoring and control. This article summarizes current research and presents an empirical example of the impact of teenagers' mobile phone communication on the dynamics of parental and peer group interactions during their socialization and emancipation from the familial sphere.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-132
Author(s):  
Olabisi Olapoju

Mobile phone use among university students is now pervasively altering their social interaction with others. The study investigated the influence of mobile phone use among commuting University Students on their interaction with co-travellers and the environment through which they travel. Three hundred students of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria were purposively sampled to respond to a 10-minute questionnaire. The questionnaire contained questions such as ownership of mobile phones, type and number of phones owned, frequency of usage and the influence of mobile phone usage during transit on interaction between the students and their co-travelers and with the environment they traveled through. Results showed that all the respondents possessed at least one mobile phone. In addition, results revealed a negative correlation between time of use of mobile phone and interaction with co-travelers (α=0.05, r= -0.039) and no significant correlation between length of use of mobile phone and interaction with the environment (α=0.05, r=0.079). The study established that mobile phone intrusiveness has an influence on students' interaction during commuting.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tirion Elizabeth Havard ◽  
Michelle Lefevre

Mobile phone ownership has become almost universal, with smartphones the most popular consumer electronics device. While the role of technologies and digital media in the domestic abuse of women is gaining international attention, specific information regarding how mobile phones, and their various ‘apps’, may assist perpetrators in the coercive control of their current or former partners is still a relatively unexplored area in the research literature. This study with women survivors was able to identify that perpetrators use mobile phones in ways that go beyond the traditional tactics of abuse identified through the globally used feminist theorisation of the Power and Control Wheel (developed by the Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Programme). The portability and diverse capabilities of mobile phones have been manipulated by abusive men to develop strategies of ‘agile technological surveillance’, which allow them to track and monitor their partners in various ways ‘on the go’ and irrespective of physical proximity. An adaptation of the Power and Control Wheel has been developed and licensed to account for these new opportunities for surveillance, manipulation and control. Proposals are made for integrating this revised framework into professional practice to inform the assessment and management of risk in abusive relationships.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tusabe Fred

Abstract Background Hospital and Community-acquired infections are escalating and pose significant public health unhealthiness worldwide. The advancements of telemedicine and automation of healthcare records are supported by cellphones, laptops and wearable devices. This study focused on the incidence of healthcare workers’ mobile phones becoming contaminated with pathogenic bacteria and their possible roles as vehicles of transmission of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria.Method: A case study at two referral hospitals in Uganda between May and October 2020. Self-administered questionnaires were administered to participants after informed consent. Mobile phones of the participants in different departments of the hospitals were swabbed and samples were collected and transported to the microbiology laboratory for bacterial culture and antimicrobial susceptibility tests. Results: The point prevalence of Healthcare workers’ mobile phone bacterial contamination with one or more species was 93%. Organisms isolated were E. coli 5.6% (1), Micrococcus spp 11.1% (2), Coagulase-negative staphylococci, CoNS, 61.1% (11) and Bacillus spp 22.2% (4). About 45% of the organisms were multidrug-resistant. Resistance was major to penicillin, cotrimoxazole, ciprofloxacin and Gentamycin respectively. The isolated E. coli was resistant to all antibiotics used in the study. Only 15% (2) of the participants disinfected their phones at least once a week and 8% cleaned their hands after using a mobile phone.Conclusion: Healthcare Workers’ mobile phones can act as fomites for the transmission of multidrug-resistant micro-organisms. This study provides strong evidence for developing and strengthening disinfection protocols for mobile phones and does not underscore the importance of hand hygiene in the middle of a patient encounter especially when the HCW grabs a phone but doesn't re-clean their hands before patient contact.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Josephat Muntangadura ◽  
Barbra Mazarire

Mobile phones are now being used by all members of society, men, women and the children. When members of society use them it affects their lives, thus the research is interested in exploring how mobile phone usage affects the lifestyles of female university students. The study explored the dependency and effect of mobile phone usage among female students at a university of technology. A cross-sectional survey was carried at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), Soshanguve South campus. The study focused on the following objectives: exploring the classification of female university students who own cell phones, establishing the general phenomena influencing the use of mobile phones by female university students at a university of technology and perceived gratification and finally establishing the patterns of mobile phone use by female students and the lifestyle patterns generated thereafter. The study collected data from 100 female students at the institution using a survey. The findings indicated that the main reasons female university students at TUT use a mobile phone are for socialising, sharing academic work and solutions as well as for safety and privacy purposes. The major reason for choice of brand was seen to be usability and price. The respondents showed some signs of addiction to their mobile phones. The findings of this study are beneficial to marketers of mobile phones in Pretoria and the rest of the country; it is also useful to mobile phone developers, universities, parents, and researchers exploring mobile phone adoption and usage pattern in a developing country such as South Africa.


Author(s):  
Yasuo Asakura ◽  
Eiji Hato ◽  
Takuya Maruyama

This chapter reviews the development of mobile phone-based travel survey instruments and systems over the last 15 years and discusses the issues and challenges that they will likely face in the future. The essential ideas were proposed in earlier mobile phone surveys in the 1990s but have since become more sophisticated. Probe Person (PP) survey systems were developed in the 2000s using GPS-assisted mobile phones connected to Internet Web diaries, and were implemented in several cities in Japan. This chapter presents the characteristics of PP systems and survey examples. Smartphone-based travel survey systems have recently been developed and implemented all over the world. This chapter includes a case study of a smartphone-based PP survey system in Kumamoto, Japan. Advantages and remaining issues are discussed with the goal of improving information use and enhancing communication technologies in the field of travel data collection and analysis.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document