ABSTRACT
This chapter will examine how people’s playful use of the mobile phone supports social cohesion. It is true that there are a variety of ways that we use mobile telephones. We can use them to tell time, take pictures, listen to music, keep our appointment calendar, and note down memos. On advanced phones we can surf the web, sign up to play commercial multiplayer games, find directions, and sign in on social network sites. Among all these flashy applications it is important to remember that we can also talk to and text one another. Indeed it is these last functions that are the most critical when thinking of how mobile communication affects social cohesion. The use of the mobile phone to develop and maintain social cohesion is one of the interesting social consequences of the device (Ling 2008). It has been shown by many researchers that talking and texting via the mobile phone supports bounded solidarity in the intimate sphere (Hampton and Ling 2013; Ishii 2006; Kim et al. 2006; Reid and Reid 2004; Smoreda and Thomas 2001; Wei and Lo 2006). These findings suggest that there is indeed social cohesion being produced, but not how it is being done. Influenced by work of Durkheim (1995), Goffman (1967), and Collins (2004), we maintain that it is important to look at the role of ritual interaction, i.e. a mutually focused activity that engenders a common mood, in order to understand the generation of social cohesion. There are several types of socially mediated rituals that we can examine. They include gossip, flirting, and the use of in-group slang in texts. Playful banter and simple joking with one another via the phone is also a form of ritual interaction. These exchanges are banal and mundane. This does not mean, however, that they are not important. It is through these seemingly prosaic exchanges, which are most likely only entertaining to the immediate participants, that we weave the threads of social cohesion. It is how we develop a sense of our interlocutors and how “our gang of friends” develops the bonds that tie them together.
