Abstract
This research explores teenagers’ knowledge representation of six digital technologies – email, IM, internet, digital photos, sms and games. Instead of pre-imposing a specific structure, teens freely express everything they consider relevant by identifying the meanings associated with each digital technology. Drawing on cognitive psychology theories and teenagers’ social development theories, the data from thirteen focus groups were analyzed. The nature of attributes comprising technical features, personal and socially relevant activities/experiences, feelings and attitudes towards these instruments only partially matched other IT conceptualizations. However, those studies applied different methodological approaches. Among the 133 attributes suggested, 30 were shared by at least two digital technologies. The Multiple Correspondence Analysis showed that games were psychologically and functionally (physical attributes) more integrated with IM and internet whereas digital photos were segregated. The communicational and product design implications of assessing attributes are discussed.
Introduction
The increasing relevance of virtual environments and (social) online engagement have raised the topic of imaginary consumption in connection with the notion of conceptual consumption. The latter is neither new nor strictly tied to online behavior but has attained an extensive refocus thanks to it. Ariely and Norton (2009) discussed how conceptual consumption reinforces, precedes and eventually changes the amount and nature (i.e. taste) of physical consumption. The conceptual input (such as preconceptions and ideas) we carry out in association with the product/service may enhance or undermine the consumption experience itself. The conceptualization of technology as (an) embedded system in the complex social context makes it even more theoretically demanding to understand what consumers think about the technology and the corresponding cognitive framing of the artifacts we use in our daily lives (Orlikowski and Iacono, 2001).
Inspired by those two research streams, our research questions are twofold: Which characteristics are commonly shared and which attributes (physical, technical, social, etc.) are distinct and specific to each digital technology? What are the meanings associated with each digital instrument (email, Internet Messenger (IM), internet, digital photos, short message service (sms – or texting) and games)?
Within a phenomenological approach we look to understand consumers’ knowledge organization of those digital tools. Once that psychological cognitive task is analyzed, their knowledge representation is outlined in order to study to what extent those digital instruments are conceptually interconnected – that is, whether they share some attributes.
Clearly, a technical artifact is conceived and manufactured to accomplish a well-defined and specific utility. However, there are some underlying, unexpected and surprising discrepancies between what kind of use and attributes users are aware of or what they would be (technically) expected to know, and how this knowledge is really applied in practice. Additionally, some features that are present, but never highlighted by the brand managers, may be indeed acknowledged and considered very expressive in the eyes of the user, however much these are ignored by the manufacturer’s communicational strategy. Assessing the attributes of different products and the similarities or distinctive features of those attributes along with their meaning is instrumental in designing or redesigning new products/services. Furthermore, it would be helpful to build a communication plan that includes some ‘hidden’ but relevant features. Consequently, exposing ‘new’ attributes may possibly reach new market segments. Specifically, we can also learn what new media features are among the digital technologies’ attributes. Finally, in our study, the consumers under scrutiny are teenagers. Educators tend to stress the risks and dangerous nature of some digital technologies (Willard, 2007). Knowing what teens know allows them to update and refine their pedagogical strategies. Young people are truly global segments since they are attracted by the same brands, websites and gizmos available worldwide (e.g. Larson and Wilson, 2004). However, they are not a homogeneous group. Even within a particular national culture there are several market segments exhibiting distinct consumer profiles in relation to new media (Shuurman et al., 2011).
In the first part of this article the literature directly related to consumers’ conceptualizations of digital technologies and new media is reviewed. Since the objects or concepts in this research are those six digital technologies, the theoretical contributions involving those instruments are taken into consideration. We intend to study the knowledge organization of digital technologies (generation of attributes associated with each tool) and knowledge representation (how those tools are interconnected and cognitively mapped). Along with cognitive psychology’s theoretical background, this research is rooted in the contributions of social psychology. The subjects producing the attributes and linking them with the digital tools are teenagers. Their socio-psychological specificity will be considered. Thus our contribution is dependent on the interpretation of the data generated among that age group (15–16 years old). In the second part, the methodological procedures concerning the data collection of Portuguese teenagers participating in 13 focus groups are described along with the analytical techniques. Finally, the results and the conclusions are presented.
Literature review
Although managerially relevant, there are few studies empirically devoted to analyzing the meaning and characteristics of some digital means of communication. Based on the contributions of theorists who published during the 1990s on Information System Research, Orlikowski and Iacono (2001) identified 14 specific conceptualizations of information technology. Those original conceptualizations were then reduced to five broad metacategories labeled as follows: the tool view, the proxy view, the ensemble view, the computational view and the nominal view. Even among scholars the knowledge organization process is not convergent but complex and diversified. Applying studies to a more abstract dimension, Leiner and Quiring (2008) investigated the perceived components of interactivity. Those authors focused on a user-identified meaning research design to explore not only the technical characteristics but also the subjective significance of different aspects of interactivity. How and under what conditions people use the internet were the research questions generally used to guide the study of online behavior typology (Johnson and Kulpa, 2007). The three salient features extracted were sociability, utility and reciprocity. Other studies have focused on consumers’ importance rating of mobile-commerce attributes (Mahatanankoon et al., 2005), inventorying video game characteristics (Wood et al., 2004), listing internet gratification factors (Song et al., 2004) or evaluating electronic word-of-mouth messages about products (Doh and Hwang, 2009). Chiang et al. (2008), by applying a Correspondence Analysis multivariate statistical technique, showed the associations and similarities of online brands and a pre-defined set of attributes on a perceptual map. The life stage defines the functions and communication patterns of mobile phones as well as attitudes towards mobile phones (Axelsson, 2010). That research demonstrated to what extent age is an important variable in understanding users’ psychology and behavior. More recently, using Shao (2009) and Feijóo et al.’s (2009) taxonomy of mobile services, Bouwman et al. (2011) showed how 120 undergraduate students from three countries scored and matched a list of 48 mobile services with five core dimensions. Those dimensions were: innovativeness, effort to use, usefulness, the fitting of specific situations to contexts, and the likelihood of the technology being used in five years.
Applied to social network site (SNS) users, the meanings of online and offline teen popularity obtained through a semantic network analysis of open-ended responses varied according to the self-designated popularity of Facebook subscribers (Zywica and Danowski, 2008). With regard to teenagers and their relationship with cell phones, Aoki and Downes (2003) qualitatively analyzed the variety of purposes and meanings associated with cell phone use, while Campbell (2006) looked at how teenagers’ personal cell phone experiences reflect or contradict conventional discourses carried out by the media, advertisers and educators. Hundley and Shyles (2010) showed that US teenagers were aware of the capabilities of the digital devices, together with their social functions and the risks associated with them.
To the best of our knowledge this is the first study to analyze both what the attributes are and how the teenage users conceptually integrate several digital instruments. Without previously framing their reasoning, we allowed them to verbalize and then interpret the content/meaning of each attribute associated with each digital technology. Finally we looked to assess whether similar attributes link different digital tools. Some of those tools will be integrated since they share a common conceptualization. The following four aspects, taken together, make this research outcome unique: (i) the users are teenagers; (ii) the study is independent of situations or user-context; (iii) it focuses on digital technologies, and not exclusively on internet-based applications; (iv) it encourages respondents to openly express anything relevant associated with several digital technologies in contrast to a research design which imposes a pre-defined list of activities and attributes from which they can select by using a binary option; (v) it offers a European perspective.
Theoretical background
The research questions presented above imply the consideration of two theoretical areas: (1) cognitive psychology, which positions the process (of) the cognitive framing of the technology both theoretically and methodologically, and (2) adolescent psychosocial development, which helps (us) to understand personal use and social interaction with those technologies in the context of teenagers’ specificity.
(1) Cognitive psychology
Knowledge organization and knowledge representation are instrumental in our ability to make decisions. The best way to understand the content and implications of the mapping of concepts and the corresponding categories is to outline the category judgment process and the propositional relationship. In order to be used efficiently, knowledge needs to be organized into categories. Such a process conveys ‘cognitive economy’, informative richness and logical coherence of the stored knowledge acquired through experience (Collins and Quillian, 1969). The general evidence concerning the main features of categorization is presented below:
The first task of classification is to judge whether a concept or object is a member of a specific category or not. This process is made hierarchically, starting with a basic-level category, where the majority of the informational content in its attribute format is preserved, and proceeding to the higher-level categories, which are less informative but have more cognitive economic proneness (Rosch et al., 1976; Sloman and Rips, 1998).
Categories are described according to the degree of typicality of their members (Rosch, 1973) or based on the underlying rules and structure taken to define the concept (Armstrong et al.,1983). Those two modes of categorization may co-exist, depending on how the categorization task is presented (Smith and Sloman, 1994).
The fuzziness of category boundaries seems to be another trait of this mental construct and also contributes to the relative instability of categorization (Ross and Murphy, 1999). Considering that the type of context under which a subject is submitted determines which sub-set of the content relating to a category becomes active, the differing situations lead to the incorporation of distinct concepts (Barsalou, 1982).
Within an ecological perspective, categorization makes sense whenever it helps us to anticipate behavior or reactions of others (objects and people), i.e. to make inferences about causal relationships (Rehder and Burnett, 2005; Waldalmann and Hagmayer, 2006). In other words, we categorize in order to make predictions (Lin and Murphy, 1997).
Internal mental representation can comprise two formats: image/analogical and propositional. ‘Propositional representations are considered to be explicit, discrete, abstract entities, [language non-specific and modal] that represent the ideational content of the mind’ (Eysenck and Keane, 2000: 247). According to this definition, propositions can represent anything as long as the meaning underlying the symbolic content of each specific entity is fully captured. The flexibility of the propositional representation allows for the internal mapping and storing of attributes, thus activating class membership, spatial positions and concepts (Pylyshyn, 1984).
Generally knowledge representation is accessible or retrieved from memory by inducing semantic priming, which potentially activates a network of other related concepts or ideas (McNamara, 2005). The priming task and consequently the lexical activation can be initiated by spoken words and/or visual stimulus (Gaskell and Marslen-Wilson, 2002). In our investigation we assume that the categorization process has already been accomplished. Our goal is to dig out the set of attributes on which the object/concept was based (in order) to consummate that classification task. Cognitively, the categorization process is reproduced, but in the reverse direction: the underlying categorical nature of the specific concept/object is given and taken as a fact. The term concept, despite being quite abstract, covers the six digital technologies. They are more than mere objects or devices since they encompass concepts (Ariely and Norton, 2009). As those tools evoke experiences and feelings, the nature of the network of associations attached to them deserves to be analyzed. By conceptualization we not only mean the identification of the characteristics of an object/concept but also how those personal ideas (attributes) articulate with each other.
(2) Adolescent psychosocial development
The meaning as well as the nature of personal experience regarding the six digital technologies is subject-dependent. Therefore, the age cohort is instrumental in the way users explore and interpret those tools. Specifically, teenagers are known to use Internet Messenger (IM), mobile phone and other technologies in a way which is not only quantitatively but also qualitatively different from adults (e.g. according to reports from the Pew Internet and American Life Research Project in the USA). In order to understand the content of teenagers’ evaluation and meaning of digital technologies, their cognitive development and socialization process should be considered. The following psychological teenager traits are worth mentioning, since they shape their perceptions and assessment of these digital instruments:
Adolescent egocentrism (Elkind, 1979; Lapsley, 1993). Teenagers are too self-centered and consider themselves unique and special individuals. Such a condition causes them partially to distort their conception of what others might think.
Invincible fable and personal fable (Berger, 2006; Siqueira et al., 2001). Teenagers are convinced both that they are immune to any danger or harm and that nobody can beat or defeat them. In addition, they imagine themselves driven by a superior force/power embedded in a fable whose heroic and legendary star is themselves. Such a status is attained by a unique and exclusive set of experiences and talents which make them very confrontational towards their family members, teachers and some peers, who are blamed as being ignorant, stupid or selfish.
Imaginary audience (Goossens et al., 2002; Rankin et al., 2004). Teenagers fantasize that their appearance, behavior and ideas are the center of everybody’s attention. This psychological phenomenon stems from teens’ egocentrism associated with a sensitive self-consciousness.
Hypothetical-deductive thought versus intuition and emotion (Keating, 2004; Lutz and Sternberg, 1999). Although by the age of 14 teens have become capable of using logical reasoning to draw specific conclusions, such information-processing ability is counterbalanced by a more implicit, contextualized, unconscious and creative way of thinking.
Identity formation – ‘A consistent definition of one’s self as a unique individual, in terms of roles, attitudes, beliefs, and aspirations’ (Berger, 2006: 496) – is more a process than a state. The search for identity leads adolescents to position themselves in terms of vocation, sex, religion and politics. Sometimes, such a process gives rise to multiple selves striving to attain a coherent alignment of behavior, emotions and thinking (Chandler et al., 2003).
Peer influence. More than peer acceptance and popularity, teens value close friendship. The effects of friends teaching social skills and their effective contribution to emotional regulation lasts until adulthood (Bagwell et al., 2001). As children grow older friendships become more selective, intense, stable, intimate and also hurtful (Erwin, 1998). Close friendship among young people means the sharing of common interests, values and emotional needs, which involves choosing and being chosen by others with a similar socio-economic status and demographical characteristics (age and ethnicity) (Aboud and Mendelson, 1996; Reynolds, 2007).
To sum up all the above psychological aspects, the social arena, and more specifically the relationship with their peers, allows adolescents to experience and test their personal self-concept. That is the role friendship plays: trust, reciprocity, emotional support and the aiding of identity formation (Reynolds, 2007; Tarrant et al., 2006). The Social Network Sites are instrumental in locating old friends and in making new ones (Raacke and Raacke, 2008), but they are not qualitatively different from the offline social network approach (Bryant et al., 2006). Online dating is generally associated with an increasing incidence of email messages, showing that this technology speeds up emotional attachment and self-disclosure between partners (Rosen et al., 2008). The mobile phone assumes a symbolic role in the teenagers’ social environment and personal space since it is a private device providing autonomy and freedom from their parents’ and educators’ influence and control over them (Oksman and Turtiainen, 2004). Furthermore, the mobile phone is a very versatile tool. It allows sms, which is a thoroughly discrete communicational mode, minimally censored, and well suited for romantic interactions (Dietmar, 2005; Ito and Okabe, 2005). Similarly, the ringtones and the personalization options incorporated into a mobile phone turn it into a self-expression projection opportunity in the public sphere, communicating teens’ self-image (Katz and Sugiyama, 2005; Licoppe, 2008). Gaming is a social event: even when we are alone, we are together with (significant) others. While we are playing we may try and test different characters, which end up blurring with self/ourselves. In that projective identity we engage with fantasy and imagination, testing our superhero (Gee, 2003). Moreover, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (where millions of players all around the world are randomly assigned play with another unknown player) promote social ties among players, shaping a community built on cooperation (Cole and Griffiths, 2007). Finally, IM, ‘a near-synchronous computer based one-on-one communication tool’ shares some of the traits of other digital instruments, especially the normative influence of the peer group (Chung and Nam, 2007: 213).
Method and procedures
The participants were teenagers with 10 years of schooling. Four schools located in Porto, Portugal, agreed to collaborate, and these were responsible for recruiting the students. All students were voluntarily assigned and no reward was granted. The student selection criterion was that they should have some experience of using IM or SNS, at least once per week. That service was a proxy measure of the degree of their ‘digital’ involvement, since it requires a computer and internet access as well as a network of peers to interact with. As the mobile phone penetration rate reached 100 percent in the year 2005, the use of that digital technology was considered more broad-spectrum, especially among teens (ANACOM, 2010).
The data collection method adopted followed a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. In the first phase we collected personal data concerning demographics and digital technology use, covering several digital devices, as indicated earlier. The second phase was less structured and non-directive. The focus group allowed a more relaxed and detailed discussion of the meanings as well as the interpretations of the characteristics of the different digital technologies mentioned. The interaction between participants was enhanced and expressions of people’s experiences, feelings, opinions, wishes, views and concerns were encouraged. This method allows a researcher ‘to see reality from a client’s point of view’ (Krueger, 1994: 9). It was not enough to simply report participants’ positions in terms of a single sentence. The focus group offers a more detailed inspection of teenagers’ motivations and intentions. There are two techniques commonly used to elicit categorization: sorting task (Ross and Murphy, 1999) and property/attribute listing (e.g. Rosch and Mervis, 1975). The latter was considered more appropriate for freely prompting participants to generate ideas/thoughts linked to the objects and concepts under analysis. We asked them to describe the attributes/features/aspects/characteristics they associate with sms, IM, games, emails, internet and digital photos. Each digital service/device/technology was considered separately. After the first idea was presented by a participant, the moderator asked everybody to write down a sentence that fully captured that idea. Subsequently, the participant who proposed it was invited to explain his/her meaning of it. Following that explanation, everybody in the group was able to discuss, argue and present her/his point of view concerning that specific idea. Only after the research team had reached a consensus and a final semantic adjustment had been made was the definitive set of attributes/features/ aspects/characteristics written down. The social network sites (SNS) – e.g. Facebook or Myspace – functionally encompass several digital technologies. Similarly to email, an SNS user may send a message to one or more people privately or publicly. By focusing on IM, on email instead of SNS, we aim to capture the essential nature and meaning underlying those tools, since each one provides a single task in a simple and functionally unified way. Of course, the participants may express whatever attributes they want when they discuss the internet concept, which includes SNS.
From a pool of 126 students invited to join, 104 students volunteered to participate: age: 15.5 ± 0.5 years old (15 years old – 51%; 16 years – 47%); gender: 55% males. These 104 participants were divided into 13 groups with an average size of eight participants per focus group. Since the focus group sessions took place in the same school almost simultaneously the interference among and between the groups was rendered highly unlikely. Therefore, when distinct groups suggested similar attributes of the same device/digital service/technology, that particular attribute attained more significance. The incidence rate (IR) measures the proportion (percentage) of groups mentioning the same attribute/characteristic. It captures the extent to which an attribute is representative of, or makes sense to, a wider population.
Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) is the technique for scaling categorical data used in this article. Compared to other scaling techniques this one has the advantage of using binary data (Clausen, 1998). In this study the input data set only includes attributes that were associated with at least two digital technologies. The shortcoming of this exploratory statistical technique arises from the difficulty of interpreting between-set distance (Hoffman and Franke, 1986). Finally, a perceptual map will be obtained by applying the output of MCA. It allows the spatial relationship among attributes themselves and between attributes and digital technologies to be displayed graphically. Thus spatial proximity implies structural similarity. The richness and scope of that statistical output is to allow a visualization of the relationship among digital technologies. Being a 3D graphic the spatial position of the digital technologies reflects how close or distant they are in relation to each other as well as the identification of the attributes with which they are associated.
Results
Incidence rating analysis
The discussions within each group of teenage participants gave rise to 133 different phrases/words expressing the characteristics or attributes of the six digital technologies under analysis. Only 30 attributes were associated with two or more distinct tools. The sms and IM each constitute 20 percent of the total attributes (Table 1). At the other extreme, digital photos and electronic games amount to only 13 percent of the attributes mentioned. Among the common characteristics, ‘to share (pictures, videos, music, ideas)’ is associated simultaneously with five instruments. In the second position the attributes ‘cheap’ and ‘virus attack’ categorize four instruments. Email revealed the highest incidence rate (IR) in association with ‘virus attack’ – 92 percent – having a similar IR with electronic games in relation to the ‘addiction’ attribute, whereas the email instrument, along with ‘to share (pictures, videos, music, ideas)’ obtained an 85 percent IR value. This last characteristic was similarly attached to five digital solutions except for electronic games. Only two other attributes – ‘cheap’ and ‘virus attacks’ – were close enough to be conceptually connected to four digital technologies.
Incidence ratings of the attributes shared by several digital techniques simultaneously.
The respective incidence rates concerning the attributes exclusively linked with one digital instrument per se are presented in Table 2. Electronic games activated 22 percent of the entire set of attributes mentioned by the participants. The email instrument brought about 20 percent of attributes. The sms and internet congregated the lowest proportion of singular and unique characteristics, giving rise to just 13 percent of the attributes. ‘Search and access to global information’ appears to be one of the most typical and widely recognized internet attributes, exhibiting the highest incidence rate of all – 92 percent. sms and internet share the second highest IR with the attributes ‘easy way to communicate’ and ‘to buy/sell online’ respectively. Whereas in the electronic games situation 14 out of 22 attributes were suggested by a single group independently of and distinct from the other groups’ idea generation, in the www/internet context the opposite was the case. As regards that technology, only 11 out of 13 attributes were mentioned concurrently, at least in two separate groups. Such results show that the internet exerts a more general appeal over other digital technologies, and that there is more familiarity with it. In contrast, playing electronic games apparently stimulates more specific and psychologically intrinsic experiences.
Incidence rating of the singular attributes exclusively associated with one form of digital technology.
Multidimensional analysis representation
The 30 attributes associated with at least two different digital technologies were reduced to five factors subsequent to the statistical treatment of the multiple correspondence analyses. The first two factors accounted for 59 percent of variance (the eigenvalues of Factor/Dimension 1 and 2 are 0.351 and 0.242 respectively). When a third factor is added, the accumulated variance explained rises to 78 percent. The graphic representation of the attributes and the six objects (digital technologies) are shown in Figure 1. The seven attributes contributing to explaining 59 percent of the variance on axis 1 or dimension 1 (horizontal) are: (2) ‘Allows us to think before writing’, (8) ‘Ease of use’, (14) ‘Impersonal’, (16) ‘Intrusive’, (19) ‘One can be misunderstood’, (25) ‘Relaxed’ and (30) ‘Language misuse’. The axis/dimension 2 (vertical) is characterized by nine attributes which contribute to 70 percent of the variance explained: (1) ‘Addiction’, (5) ‘Cheap’, (9) ‘Educational’, (10) ‘Entertainment’, (12) ‘Fast (to send and receive files)’, (20) ‘Online group games’, (23) ‘Practical’, (27) ‘To share (pictures, videos, music, ideas)’ and (29) ‘We can manipulate them’. The following six attributes constitute 56 percent of the explained variance of the axis/dimension 3 (diagonal): (3) ‘Annoying ads’, (11) ‘Expensive’, (18) ‘Monotonous’, (21) ‘Paperless’, (22) ‘Portable’ and (28) ‘Virus attacks’.
MCA output of representation of the attributes and the six digital technologies.
This method depicts the binary results – yes (dashed arrows) and no (bold arrows) – attached to each attribute. The visual representation allows assessment of the relationship among the six digital technologies as well as the relationship between each digital technology and the several attributes. Conceptually digital photos were the most distinct and distant of all digital technologies. Email only shared some similarities with the internet but remained more widely spread in regard to the rest of the digital technologies. A symmetrical effect occurred within sms and IM. Electronic games were the most centrally interconnected digital technologies. Such a condition means that in teenagers’ minds it is closely related to both internet and IM.
Discussion
Concept of digital technologies
We use the term ‘attributes’ to accommodate every sentence or word associated with digital technologies and intended to characterize that object/concept. For the sake of simplicity that option has been assigned a more general and abstract terminology in order to avoid any previous classification. The semantic content of the generally labeled ‘attributes’ is more complex than simply conveying a factual statement. The so-called ‘attributes’ may evoke attitudes towards the digital technologies, feelings or consequences either negative or positive, as well as opinions concerning relative cost and activities performed with those digital technologies. More than 60 percent of teenagers’ comments related to digital photos and email fall into the category of technical features. Most of them express benefits – such as ‘quality’ or ‘to remember special moments’– while others merely articulate neutral or factual features exemplified by ‘write in a letter format’ or ‘digital photo book’. Those two attributes may fall into the descriptive groups of attributes associated with the conceptual metacategory tool view (Orlikowski and Iacono, 2001). More precisely, that conceptualization of technology labeled it as an information-processing tool, whereas in relation to email technology attributes such as ‘efficient’ or ‘do not have to check it daily’ rather express a productivity tool perspective. IM technology inspired a significant proportion of negative or at least not very positive characteristics. Some technical features that represent more inadequacies than benefits are: ‘connectivity problems’ or ‘non-portable’. This is the case with some negative psychological effects such as ‘tiring’. Not all social interaction involving IM is rewarding, as is exemplified by the following expressions: ‘uninvited guests’, ‘unknown participant’, or ‘teasing and mockery’, which obliquely encompass some cyberbullying content and practices (Vandebosh and Cleemput, 2009). Teenagers use cameras built into their mobile phones as their primary device for taking digital photos. Therefore, the two digital technologies, digital photos and sms, are mobile phone technologies. Applying Shao’s (2009) framework to our investigation, we found that most of the sms and digital photos’ attributes match the three mobile service classifiers: producing, consuming and participating. Electronic games generated the most diversified set of attributes. Most of these attributes rely on content encompassing the richness and intensity of experiences associated with that digital technology. According to Orlikowski and Iacono (2001) the proxy view conceptualization of technology is particularly well described by these attributes. Among them three categories should be pinpointed: social interaction dimension, psychological positive impact and activities performed with that digital technology. Teenagers establish a clear link between their social life and electronic games, made explicit in phrases such as ‘enhance socialization’, ‘induces quarrelling’ or ‘virtual interaction’. Psychological wellbeing, emotional traits and cognitive processing were represented by ‘having fun’, ‘we get to think’ or ‘fantasy’. Regarding the activities that electronic games may perform, teenagers mentioned ‘gambling’, ‘watching movies’ and ‘playing’. Again those attributes illustrate the social relations tool conceptualization belonging to the tool view metacategory of technology (Orlikowski and Iacono, 2001). Both IM and games seem to be instrumental in teens’ identity formation, specifically in their role of fostering peer interaction and the expression of feelings.
Nature of attributes
Teens’ concepts attached to each digital technology conveyed a preference for personalization, and an emphasis on communication and on the instrumental dimension of digital technologies rather than on social interaction and emotional expression as other authors had described (e.g. Raacke and Raacke, 2008; Tarrant et al., 2006). The internal psychological focus regarding the effects was centered on teenagers (sustaining their adolescent egocentrism profile mentioned above), assuming to a certain extent a critical approach by depicting the drawbacks of each digital technology. In our study teens did not forget to emphasize the required psychomotor abilities and consequences inherent to texting (sms) expressed by the attributes: ‘Moveable/handy’ and ‘Hurts fingers/tiring.’ In fact, text composition requires linguistic and manual dexterity (Ling, 2007). The perspective of teenagers represents more of a utilitarian than hedonistic orientation regarding digital technologies (Okada, 2005). Texting is a very discreet communicational mode, hardly censored and ideal for romantic interactions (Dietmar, 2005; Ito and Okabe, 2005). All the same, we would expect more intimate disclosure attributes. They seem to be aligned with the extensive list of problems associated with those digital technologies and voiced by their parents and educators (Willard, 2007). Just as other studies have found, our teenagers also disclosed the topic of online risk (Bond, 2010; Hundley and Shyles, 2010). Their extensive knowledge and familiarity with digital technologies very likely had a dual implicit antecedent: developed skills and a sense of power.
Quantity of attributes
The number of attributes stimulated by each digital technology, and then verbalized, reflects the size of the mental construct generated by that tool, thus revealing their importance, the extent of familiarity and degree of experience in using digital technologies. Each specific digital technology induces semantic priming strong enough to activate a network of interrelated attributes. The propositional representation of each digital technology was reinforced by the abstract/general nature of the articulated attributes (Eysenck and Keane, 2000). Within this age cohort, electronic games triggered the highest proportion of attributes, encompassing, according to teenagers, entertainment, learning and socialization dimensions.
Relationship among digital technologies
At least two digital technologies shared 22 percent attributes. By using those attributes activated by two or more digital technologies as an input to multiple correspondence analysis, it was possible to infer the extent to which teenagers perceive and evaluate them as similar or distinct. Visual verification of the perceptual map representing both the six digital technologies and attributes made it easier to identify the relative (spatial and therefore conceptual) proximity and distance among those tools. The fuzzy nature of this categorization process was translated into partial overlapping among digital technologies concepts (Ross and Murphy, 1999). The role of IR has been to measure the degree of appropriateness or adjustment of a specific category in relation to a given digital technology. Hence those attributes more frequently associated with a specific digital technology express a broader acceptance of the underlying concept. The empirical task behind this study drawing on cognitive psychology theories was based on obtaining the propositional representation (Eysenck and Keane, 2000) linked to each digital technology and rooted in teenagers’ internal mapping.
Conclusions
Overall teen conceptualization of digital technologies consisted of a set of attributes whose content and format were diverse and complex. The methodology used to collect data allowed one to obtain both an individual perspective and a social scrutiny of attribute listing. Parallel to each group dynamic taken separately, several groups engendered their own list of attributes. Since there was no interference among groups of participants whenever they came up with similar ideas concerning the digital technologies, this proved the broad spectrum of the teenagers’ conceptualization.
Our research question was not ‘Why do teenagers verbalize those attributes?’ or ‘How have they developed them?’ – aiming for an explanation or modeling, but instead ‘Which characteristics are commonly shared and which attributes are distinct and specific to each digital technology?’ Such a phenomenological approach did not pre-impose a logic or structure, but it stimulated teenagers’ minds to express freely whatever they thought or felt about those objects.
For product developers the multidimensional integration of some digital technologies was highlighted. Some digital technologies functionally overlap with each other, at least partially. In contrast, other digital technologies, such as digital photos, were quite isolated. Although the majority of devices – such as mobile phones and computers – incorporate cameras, it seems that digital photos are not part of the system. This finding calls for further research in order to understand the context and usage conditions of digital photos by teenagers. Within the perspective of teenagers electronic games play a central role in their lives, making them instrumental in several aspects such as communication, entertainment and social interaction. Chang and Chen (2009) analyzed the effect on customer satisfaction in relation to customized products when cues compatible with product categories were provided. Particularly among search products, if managers know in advance that specific intrinsic cues work as quality indicators, for instance, their message will be more effective in influencing consumers’ decisions. Our study identified those intrinsic cues in a group age cohort known to be heavy users of digital technology.
One limitation of this research was the sample size and framing. The balance between the qualitative and quantitative approaches favored the content generation technologies, thus affecting the generalizability of our finding. The schools were chosen by convenience. The participants’ choice procedures privileged the techno-savvy students who tend to have better internet skills (Cheong, 2008) excluding those who had less socially confident and competent technological profiles. Apparently, according to teens, internet did not completely cover all activities. The terms ‘internet’ and SNS either did not overlap or the latter were included in the former. Therefore, we assumed a broader conceptualization of internet, distinct from that more restricted and narrow teen perspective. In future research SNS should be analyzed as an autonomous digital technology per se. What teenagers did not verbalize also counts as evidence. Our result does not mean they are unaware of responses that they have not verbalized. Their knowledge representation and knowledge organization may possibly accommodate some of the technical or functional attributes analyzed and conceptualized by Feijóo et al. (2009) and Bouwman et al. (2011).
Focus group procedure produces a rich and realistic amount of data which is not free of constraints. The tendencies towards normative discourses such as socially desirable, politically correct issues and avoidance of privacy matters illustrate this (Smithson, 2000). This research has applied a rather qualitative approach in order to obtain the meaningful attributes. Those attributes having been listed, it will be easier to measure their relative relevance, applying a self-evaluation scale questionnaire format or alternatively capturing object-attitude association under automatic cognitive processing by measuring memory retrieval time span (Fazio, 2001). Although treated in a conceptual manner, the same methodology can be used in the context of real digital/online brands. Given such a scenario it will be helpful to learn which brands’ attributes influenced or at least were connected with the conceptualization of each digital technology. It would be interesting to replicate and compare the results under cultural settings other than that of the western or European environment. Gender differences should also be assessed. Smartphones are still not so widely available among teenagers. As they become more popular – that is affordable – and due to their hybrid nature, it would be interesting to analyze how teen conceptualization of digital technologies has evolved under their influence (Westlund, 2010). Similarly, the multimedia opportunities of the digital TV platforms, which incorporate internet functionalities, will probably impact teenagers’ digital technology conceptualizations (Evens et al., 2010).
Footnotes
Author biography
Pedro Quelhas Brito is Assistant Professor at University of Porto, School of Economics and researcher at LIAAD-INESC Porto. His research focuses on consumer psychology applied to new media, tourism and retailing.