Browsing by Subject "semiotiska resurser"

Digital screens have come to play a crucial role in the Finnish upper secondary school context, not least because of the digitalization of the Finnish Matriculation Examination from 2017. Students' own mobile phones have become part of the digital school environment, along with laptops, smartboards and touch pads. Following the advancements in mobile phone technology, online services have become mobile and available in almost any situation, also in face-to-face interaction. The aim of this thesis is to provide knowledge of mobile phone use and in which ways it matters to what happens in social interaction. By studying how students use mobile phones as part of everyday conversation, this study provides an insight to the evolving dynamics of our digitalized society, with implications for what happens in upper secondary education. The research material was gathered at two Finno-Swedish upper secondary schools by the research project Textmöten during 2015 and 2016, consisting of video recordings and recordings of the students' mobile phone screens. Eight upper secondary school students participated as focus students in the project; of whom three participants was analysed in this thesis. Focus was on breaks during school days where the focus students showed their mobile phone screens to other students, by performing screen displays. In the study, I applied a ethnomethodological perspective and the material was analysed with conversation analysis. As was shown in the study, screen displays contributed to the interaction by enabling new kinds of activities and contents of communication. The screen display had an inclusive function, when used to expand the group for which a content was available. It also functioned in a excluding way, when used to temporarily screen off from ongoing group conversation to engage in a two-party interaction. Screen displays were performed in connection to talk, which showed that they are dependent on talk to be constituted as understandable actions. Similarly, what was said about the screen was connected to the screen content. Thus, it seems as if screens are made relevant within the realms of a conversation rather than being the determinant for social interaction as such. Also, the smallness of the screen, phone ownership and user history enabled the phone owner to make decisions about the distribution of the screen content, giving him or her higher epistemic status than others in relation to the screen content.