Smart Tourist Experiences

After a comprehensive review on mobile tourism experience, the authors have identified the benefits and impacts of mobile use to tourists and their experiences. Besides locating similarities and differences in using mobile for tourism, the authors have confirmed that mobile empowers tourists to get more from their vacations and to have more flexible planning, resulting in satisfaction and accomplishment. This chapter enlightens tourism operators, among other stakeholders, on the opportunities for contextualized mobile advertising, which would attract and convert tourists into potential customers.

Mobile Phone Usage and Its Socio-Economic Impacts in Pakistan

Through examining use of mobile in Pakistan's Sindh province, the current chapter presents a unique and interesting case of the socio-economic impacts of mobile use on users' lifestyles. Although there exists an obvious divide between urban and rural areas in terms of impacts of mobile use, the case of Pakistan could serve as an alert to scholars that why mobile use remains limited in narrowing the gap between urban and rural areas against a backdrop of mobile being widely believed to be able to play a big role in narrowing the social and economic gap between urban and rural areas. The author of this chapter found that mobile use was also gender-biased in rural areas, resulting in a gap between males and females as far as social and economic impacts of mobile use on their lifestyles.

Mobile Learning Experience

As the world is moving towards experience economy, consumers are paying more and more attention to memorable and fun experience beyond a product or service. Learners are the same, especially when learning goes mobile. Mobile learning has been examined in different areas ranging from forms and formats to features and functions. Mobile experience in learning, however, has not yet fully examined. After identifying mechanisms to measure and evaluate mobile learning experience, this chapter reviewed what mobile learning resources could be leveraged to enhance mobile learning experience, followed by recommendations for further studies.

Impacts of Mobile Use on Third Agers in China

The chapter explores the role of smart phones and mobile apps in the process of third age formation in Zhengzhou, a second-tier city in China located in central Henan province. The term ‘third age' refers to a transition period from active work to retirement. Compared with the previous generation, the demographic approaching retirement in China today is more digitally literate, although this varies accordingly in Zhengzhou, a second-tier city. The use of digital technology offers people a different kind of retirement. This study shows that an increasing number of people around retirement age (55-65) in Zhengzhou are using smart phones and apps to reimagine the possibilities of post-work lifestyles. The research asks if the use of mobile apps is changing peoples' perspectives on traditional responsibilities and peoples' expectations of retirement.

My Little Joy in Life

To post food on social media has become a frequent source of fun and joy in life for many mobile users. In investigating such a common scene on Instagram among its young users, the authors of this chapter investigated the relationship between social activity, personal traits like narcissism and shyness, and uses and gratifications from posting food photos on Instagram. Uses of Instagram for posting selfies were also examined for comparison. Results showed that while posting food photos were associated with social activity, posting selfies were associated with shyness. Narcissists were more likely to involve in posting both food photos and selfies. Implications of the results in explaining the generation of visual contents on social media are discussed.

Mobile Translation Experience

After closely examining the experiences of mobile translation in which people engage with translation on mobile platforms in the contexts of healthcare, crowdsourcing, and machine and translator training, the authors have identified a tightly intertwined relationship between mobile translation and machine translation. They have also found that the technological side is more dynamic than the user side in the case of mobile translation and machine translation, which may lead to a gradual reduction of people learning foreign languages and a possible loss of professional translators and language specialists. When it comes to contextual and textual translation, however, human translators currently outperform mobile or machine translators. Although human contribution will be determined by translation scenarios or specific translation tasks, the human-mobile/machine interaction in translation deserves further studies. It is imperative to compare mobile use and experience in human-mobile interaction related to translation in different cultures or countries so as to locate similarities and differences. Furthermore, it is also expected from the editor that further studies should focus on mapping, measuring, and modeling those identified similarities and differences.

Commercial Use of Mobile Social Media and Social Relationship

China is well known for its wide and increasing commercial use of mobile social media for various purposes in different areas, ranging from online shopping to social networking. Such a popular commercial use was insightfully examined in relation to social relationship in the age of mobile internet, which enables people of either weak or strong connections to socialize anywhere anytime, leading to scenarios where mobile social media can be leveraged for profits. In what way can user experiences be guaranteed while platforms' value-added targets be achieved at the same time? In addressing that question, the authors of this chapter examined the commercial use of mobile social media in the context of complicated social networks. It is expected from the editor that further studies are to be carried out to comprehensively and comparatively examine the same topic in different countries or cultures.

Smartphone Usage, Gratifications, and Addiction

Combining a survey and focus groups as a mixed-methods research, the authors of this chapter examined the functions, types, and motivations of smartphone usage and gratifications. Furthermore, the authors also investigated the rates, symptoms, and reasons of smartphone addiction. Still another achievement of the authors was to look into the relationship between smartphone usage, gratifications, and addiction with academic achievements among college students. On top of identifying three levels of addiction, the authors also located distinctive traits of these levels. This chapter provided an interesting example of how mixed-methods research can be employed to investigate mobile use, gratifications, and addiction. It is expected from the editor that this chapter would lead to more comparative studies between or among countries or cultures using by using a mixed-methods research to triangulate and/or complement findings of using different research methods. The inclusion of this chapter in this volume is also meant to invite further studies to investigate the gap between what mobile users want and what they actually get from using mobile as well as its related experience on both the normative and the empirical sides.

Mobile News Experience

Mobile has become a mainstream medium for news consumption on the go. To cater to the growing demand for mobile news, traditional news providers have switched from “mobile too” to “mobile first” strategies. To enhance mobile news communication, it is imperative for mobile news providers to stay abreast of mobile news consumers' changing expectations of mobile news experience in a news app. It is equally imperative to identify the gap between news consumers' expectations and what mobile news experience is embedded in a mobile news app. Using a mobile experience index, the authors of this chapter have located the venue and extent of the gap through conducting a survey of mobile news app users and a comparative analysis of indicators of mobile news experience in selected news apps.

Mobile Experience in War and Conflict Reporting

Defining mobile experience as a process of usage, affordance, roles, and impacts of mobile phones during wars and conflicts, the author has located similarities and differences in mobile experience in war and conflict reporting among professional journalists, citizen journalists, governments, militaries, rebels, NGOs, activists, and communities. After exploring the changes and trends related to mobile experience in war and conflict reporting, the author also offered specific dimensions and directions for further studies.