The Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University is the world’s first academic unit to focus solely on social aspects of mobile communication. Since 2004, it has become an international focal point for research, teaching, and service on the social, psychological, and organizational consequences of the burgeoning mobile communication revolution. The founder and director of the Center, James Katz, is one of the leading scholars in social consequences of new communication technology, especially mobile communication technology.
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Mobile communication technologies are the fastest adopted information and communication technologies to date (Castells, Fernandez-Ardevol, Qiu, & Sey, 2006; Green & Haddon, 2009). Compared with the well-developed Internet studies, studies on mobile communication technology impacts have received less scholarly attention in 1990s (Katz & Aahkus, 2002; Green & Haddon, 2009). Two of the earliest studies on social aspects of mobile communication technologies were done by Jarratt and Coates (1990) and Rakow and Navarro (1993) in the U.S. In the mid-1990s, a few European researchers (e.g., Hans Geser in Switzerland, de Gournay in France; Leslie Haddon in U.K; Tmo Kopomaa in Finland, Rich Ling in Norway) began to research on how and why the mobile phone was used by different age groups. Bull (2000), Kopomaa (2000), Brown, Green and Harper (2001), Kasesniemi (2003), Ling (2004), Glotz, Bertschi, and Locke (2005), Hamill and Lasen (2005), Haper, Palen, and Taylor, (2005), and Ling and Pedersen (2005) have published their books on social aspects of mobile communication research in the early 2000s.