Invisible Whispers: Accounts of SMS Communication in Shared Physical Space

Abstract

The use of short message services (SMS) on mobile phones has gained huge popularity in most western and many developing countries — so much so that it has become established as the preferred medium for mobile communication especially among young people. This article explores SMS as used for discreet communication between people in the same physical space (‘shared physical space SMS’ — or ‘SPS-SMS’). Drawing from semi-structured interviews with young people in Norway, 10 different scenarios of SPS-SMS use are explored and analysed within an interactionist framework. These sites of SPS-SMS are presented here as ‘communicative affordances’. It is concluded that the mobile phone, by the application of SPS-SMS, affords communicative layers of transparency, by which various SMS users maintain semi-synchronous communication, both for care and coordination. Although a qualitative study of this nature does not lend itself to generalizations about SPS-SMS communication, it does demonstrate how detailed studies of extraordinary uses of mediated communication may be used to widen analyses of social interaction.