On the 21st of February, our colleague Antti Paakkari gave the defence for his doctoral thesis at the University of Helsinki! The title for his thesis is ”Entangled Devices. An ethnographic study of students, mobile phones and capitalism”. You find the abstract below and you can access the digital version here. The ethnographic data Antti based his thesis on is from the Textmöten research project .
Not for the first time I was amazed by the opportunities for multiple research foci that this set of data offers. The fieldwork included quite technical solutions and was time consuming, but the data it generated made it worth all the effort. As the opponent, associate professor Minna Ruckenstein (University of Helsinki), pointed out, the data offers a unique insight into students mobile phone use. I was eagerly awaiting critical questions in regard to the methodology as I am mentally preparing for the day I will give my defence. The opponent was however mainly impressed by the work we had done and suggested that we publish more methodological papers. Antti himself did however point out, that in the future, he would prefer to engage the students even further in the research design.
Matilda
Doctoral student, Textmöten
Abstract
Keywords: school, technology, phones, mobile devices, capitalism, as- semblage, platform capitalism, digitalisation