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Smartphones are increasingly used to advance mobile media methods. The devices' capabilities to automatically log behavioural data as well as the integration of this log data into qualitative interviews for elicitation purposes promise increased validity. The paper argues that despite recent efforts in mixed methods, the methodological potential of the personalized user interfaces of smartphones has been overlooked. As these smartphone interfaces are the result of continuous personalization processes, they can be seen as snapshots of the phone's current use. Thus, this form of data should have strong explanatory powers for understanding the related mobile media practices. The paper discusses the implications of this interface-based approach with two example studies where smartphone interfaces were integrated into qualitative interviews. It concludes that the approach is a useful addition to existing mobile media methods and enforces the notion that researchers need to discover new forms of data.

In der aktuellen Flüchtlingssituation erreicht ein Großteil der MigrantInnen Europa mit einem Smartphone in der Hand. Der Artikel setzt sich vor diesem Hintergrund mit der Frage auseinander, wie syrische Flüchtlinge auf der Reise nach Europa konkret ihre Smartphones nutzen und welche persönliche Bedeutung sie den Geräten dabei zusprechen. Die Ergebnisse der zugrunde liegenden empirischen Studie zeigen eine Vielzahl von Nutzungspraktiken, die sowohl praktischen Zielen als auch der emotionalen Unterstützung dienen, sodass die Geräte als unerlässlich wahrgenommen werden. Angesichts dieser Wirksamkeit scheint die Möglichkeit groß, dass Smartphones für diese Flüchtlinge dann auch in ihrer neuen Umgebung eine zentrale Rolle übernehmen.

"Der Beitrag befasst sich mit Mobile Shopping als alltäglicher Konsumpraktik und stellt Ergebnisse einer qualitativen Studie mit Smartphone-Nutzern vor, die ihr Gerät im Einkaufskontext verwenden. Anders als bei traditionellen Mobiltelefonen ist die Verwendung von Smartphones nicht auf soziale Interaktion beschränkt, weshalb sie als Mobile Media konzeptualisiert werden. Es zeigt sich, dass sich die identifizierten Praktiken im Umgang mit dem Smartphone im Einkaufskontext vier Funktionen zuordnen lassen: Recherche, Kaufen, Gedächtnis und Feedback. Mit ihrer Hilfe strukturieren die Nutzer Abläufe und Entscheidungsprozesse in ihrem Konsumalltag und vernetzen sich mit ihrem sozialen Umfeld sowie anderen Konsumenten, wobei visuellen Kommunikationspraktiken eine zentrale Bedeutung zukommt. Letztlich hat die mobile Vernetzung, die über Smartphones zur Verfügung steht, auch eine transformative Wirkung auf die Wahrnehmung der Machtverhältnisse zwischen Händlern und Kunden." (Autorenreferat)

"Der Beitrag befasst sich mit Mobile Shopping als alltäglicher Konsumpraktik und stellt Ergebnisse einer qualitativen Studie mit Smartphone-Nutzern vor, die ihr Gerät im Einkaufskontext verwenden. Anders als bei traditionellen Mobiltelefonen ist die Verwendung von Smartphones nicht auf soziale Interaktion beschränkt, weshalb sie als Mobile Media konzeptualisiert werden. Es zeigt sich, dass sich die identifizierten Praktiken im Umgang mit dem Smartphone im Einkaufskontext vier Funktionen zuordnen lassen: Recherche, Kaufen, Gedächtnis und Feedback. Mit ihrer Hilfe strukturieren die Nutzer Abläufe und Entscheidungsprozesse in ihrem Konsumalltag und vernetzen sich mit ihrem sozialen Umfeld sowie anderen Konsumenten, wobei visuellen Kommunikationspraktiken eine zentrale Bedeutung zukommt. Letztlich hat die mobile Vernetzung, die über Smartphones zur Verfügung steht, auch eine transformative Wirkung auf die Wahrnehmung der Machtverhältnisse zwischen Händlern und Kunden." (Autorenreferat)

This thematic issue is an interdisciplinary exchange of methodological, practical, and ethical issues linked to conducting research across online and offline spaces in times of mobile technologies. It includes a wide range of disciplines, geographical locations, methodological approaches, and designs. The seven articles in this thematic issue are organized around three distinctive potential entry points: (a) researching across online and offline spaces with ethnographic, multisited, nonmedia-centric approaches; (b) making use of mobile media for researching across online and offline spaces; (c) researching emerging technologies built across online and offline spaces. All authors make their research processes transparent and share not only the methodical challenges and ethical dilemmas they faced, but also the opportunities that arose and methodological ways forward.

How do people use media technologies in everyday life and how do they make sense of them? This is one of the core questions in media and communication studies, gaining even more in relevance in light of the rapidly changing, convergent media environment. Yet, rich and context-sensitive data about media and technology use are difficult to generate when media consumption is increasingly pervasive, ubiquitous, and often goes on in passing. At the same time, the full potential of smartphones in qualitative research has not yet been realized. The mobile instant messaging interview (MIMI) introduced and assessed in this paper is intended to fill this gap by exploiting some of the unique communication and multimedia features offered by mobile instant messaging apps. Drawing on diary techniques and on the tried and tested mobile experience sampling method (MESM), the MIMI uses WhatsApp for an in situ exploration of distinct settings and situations of social action (e.g., media usage). To substantiate the approach, the results of a pilot study conducted with young smartphone users are presented, discussing the advantages and drawbacks of mobile instant messaging interviews in detail, from the researcher's as well as the participant's point of view.

We exploit a large exogenous shock to study the determinants of college attendance and the role played by one's environment. We analyze whether, and how quickly, adolescents' college plans are adapted, explore factors leading to the adjustment, and examine how these factors ultimately impact later educational attainment. Using differences across East German cohorts induced by the timing of the German Reunification (a change for the East from state socialism to capitalist democracy), we show that shortly after relative to before that time, college plans among high-school students increased substantially, which was followed by sizable increases in the completion of the college entrance certificate five years later. Our analysis sheds light on the elasticity of beliefs and preferences of different cohorts of youths in the case of a large shock. Perceived educational returns, economic preferences ("consumerism") and sociopolitical attitudes ("individualism") adapt quickly in response to the shock and are directly linked to changes in plans and outcomes. Cohorts closer to critical educational junctions at the time of Reunification, however, adjusted their plans to a much lesser extent. While they similarly updated the expected returns to education, they exhibited a slower adjustment in their preferences relative to younger cohorts.

The Covid-19 pandemic temporarily, yet significantly, reshuffled the position, functions and (mediated) constructions of cities and urban places. The national lockdown, implemented by Austria on 16 March 2020, turned cities overnight from centres of hybrid cultural, economic, social, political life and power to places where urban life(styles) were put on hold. This article begins by presenting first key results of a longitudinal study with young adults studying in educational institutions in the state of Tyrol through the harshest country-wide lockdown measures and their gradual withdrawal. We analyse how participants coped with the disruption of their urban lives and lifestyles and the strategies they employed to compensate. We highlight three main insights. First, participants who had originally migrated to the city from their (often rural) hometowns largely returned to join their families. From there, no longer being an object of physical experience, the city became a digitally imagined, constructed and communicated place, reiterating public discourses that condemned the city as a place where lockdown measures were breached, and the virus spread unchecked. Second, where possible and adapted to the affordances of digital media, students shifted their previous lifestyles to digital space as well as created innovative ways of socialising digitally—thus producing alternative digital forms of urban lifestyles and digitally-mediated urban experiences. Third, during the lockdown period, the importance, use intensity as well as a variety of digital media peaked tremendously. This trend, however, was short-lived as yearned-for offline sociability largely returned to the city once measures were relaxed, leaving those in rural homes detached from their urban peers.

The Covid-19 pandemic temporarily, yet significantly, reshuffled the position, functions and (mediated) constructions of cities and urban places. The national lockdown, implemented by Austria on 16 March 2020, turned cities overnight from centres of hybrid cultural, economic, social, political life and power to places where urban life(styles) were put on hold. This article begins by presenting first key results of a longitudinal study with young adults studying in educational institutions in the state of Tyrol through the harshest country-wide lockdown measures and their gradual withdrawal. We analyse how participants coped with the disruption of their urban lives and lifestyles and the strategies they employed to compensate. We highlight three main insights. First, participants who had originally migrated to the city from their (often rural) hometowns largely returned to join their families. From there, no longer being an object of physical experience, the city became a digitally imagined, constructed and communicated place, reiterating public discourses that condemned the city as a place where lockdown measures were breached, and the virus spread unchecked. Second, where possible and adapted to the affordances of digital media, students shifted their previous lifestyles to digital space as well as created innovative ways of socialising digitally—thus producing alternative digital forms of urban lifestyles and digitally-mediated urban experiences. Third, during the lockdown period, the importance, use intensity as well as a variety of digital media peaked tremendously. This trend, however, was short-lived as yearned-for offline sociability largely returned to the city once measures were relaxed, leaving those in rural homes detached from their urban peers.