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Communication
European Journal of
DOI: 10.1177/0267323109345521
2009; 24; 421European Journal of Communication
Maren Hartmann
The Changing Urban Landscapes of Media Consumption and Production
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The Changing Urban Landscapes of
Media Consumption and Production
j Maren Hartmann
A b s t r a c t
j Questions of change have always been at the forefront of the social sciences.
The article addresses the question of the adequacy of media and communication
studies theories through looking at change in both a concrete environment
and more generally in terms of linking this example with wider
debates concerning social changes in the world of work. The example
stems from a study on Wi-Fi cafe environments, in which work does play
an important role. To introduce this topic, the article begins by discussing
cafe environments overall and Wi-Fi cafes in particular, as well as the
seemingly old-fashioned concept of telework. It then briefly presents the
study as such, before discussing possible frameworks: the question of
the public sphere on the one hand and of concpets such as ‘digital bohème’
to describe emerging work forms on the other hand. The latter is taken to
be the more appropriate framework. This is also the answer to the question
of which media and communication studies theories appear to be adequate
for analysing such changes. j
Key Words  digital bohème, media appropriation everyday life, media
use environments, Wi-fi cafes, work forms
Introduction
Any academic discipline should ideally be self-critical and reflective
about their theoretical approaches and empirical studies, since a renewal of
421
European Journal of Communication Copyright © The Author(s), 2009.
Reprints and Permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
Vol 24(4): 421–436. [10.1177/0267323109345521]
Maren Hartmann is Assistant Professor of Sociology of Communication at the
Department of Communication for Business and Society, University of the Arts,
Mierendorffstraße 30, D-10589 Berlin. [email: hartmann@udk-berlin.de]
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frameworks might become necessary. A delicate balance between stability
and change often emerges. This obviously also applies to media and communication
studies. Therefore this special issue of the EJC asks whether
the concepts of amateur and professional media on the one hand and production
and consumption on the other hand are still appropriate markers
for our theoretical and empirical reasoning. The timing for these questions
is indeed fitting, since in recent years there has been both a rise of so-called
new (digital) media as well as in approaches (with many new labels).
This particular article aims to question the new on yet another,
albeit related level: it will address the question of the appropriateness of
existing concepts by asking about their relationship to other frameworks.
More concretely, the focus here is on the question of media use environments
and on work forms and their interrelationship.1
Another focus of
this study is in terms of the media being studied: it is the Internet, and more
specifically wireless access thereto. This again is looked at in specific
environments: WiFi cafes. All of this will be used to reflect on the appropriateness
of the frameworks we currently use to study media and communication
and whether they are still adequate for the changing environments
and phenomena at play.
The specific approaches used here stem primarily from media use and
appropriation studies. Therefore the analysis firstly assumes that everyday
life is the time and place to research media appropriation processes. This
also implies that media use is seen as embedded in diverse aspects of social
life and should therefore be researched therein and not seperately.2
Secondly,
another concern is with the discursive environment that certain media appropriation
processes and uses are embedded within and shaped by. Thirdly,
the following arguments are based on the assumption that the everyday is
a spatially constituted field of practice with a special focus on the meeting of
city and virtual spaces.3
This follows a line of studies that Stephen Graham
calls ‘urban ICT studies’ (2004: 3) or what Gumpert and Drucker tend to
label ‘urban communication studies’ (see Burd et al., 2007). These combine
theories and empirical evidence of the urban with concerns about information
and communication technologies and their current developments
(both on the theoretical as well as the empirical level).4
The article comprises of several parts: the first part introduces the
context of the study in question (i.e. the general phenomenon of Wi-Fi;
the cafe and the question of telework). The second part introduces the case
studies (Wi-Fi cafes in Berlin) and presents some of the findings with an
emphasis on the question of work in such places. Last, but not least, the
article will close with a more general assessment of the work question in
relation to wider shifts in media and communication research.
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H artmann : T he C han g in g U r b an L an d s cape s
Context of the study: Wi-Fi, cafes and telework
Wi-Fi and Wireless LAN (WLAN) have become common terms in our
everyday language. While not quite the same (Wi-Fi is a specific standard
of a Wireless LAN), they both tend to connote access to a wireless network.
In everyday life terms this suggests easy (and wireless) access to an
Internet connection. In recent years these kinds of connections have risen
in use both in private homes as well as in more public places. Despite their
relatively remarkable rise, they have not seen any sustained public debate
about either desired forms or possible consequences. Instead, what has
risen is the pressure on politicians and policy makers to implement (free)
Wi-Fi in their constituencies (cf. Jassem, 2007). Many cities, for example,
tried to get the ‘Wi-Fi city’ label first. Even whole countries have tried to
compete for such a description.5
In other places, such as Berlin, Wi-Fi is
still much more scattered and left to private business to develop.6
Whether
‘this new information superhighway will have the potential to change
communities, careers, education, livelihoods, cultural transmission, and so
on’ (Jassem, 2007: 222) is questionable. But the belief in its power is
widespread. Alongside simple marketing effects, for example, cities are
hoping to gain economic value through these projects.7
Many argue that
properties increase in value in areas with Wi-Fi provision, that the qualityof-life
is getting better and that society will profit when, for example, the
education system benefits from the free Wi-Fi. Whether this is, (a) true,
and (b) enough to uphold such services in the long run remains to be seen.
Additionally, there are attempts to provide free access by wireless
enthusiasts (e.g. NYC Wireless8
or the Germany-wide initiative called
Freifunk).9
Freifunk is asking their users to each share their resources.
Through open source software and basic sharing of existing access lines,
meshed networks are being developed and users participate in an, eventually,
city-wide Wi-Fi network. The proclaimed aim is a democratization of
communication media and better local social networks through the sharing
of Wi-Fi resources that further the development of more open networks.
On a rather different scale, one finds commercially oriented endeavours,
which have also increased radically in the last few years. These are
mostly based in individual cafes or coffeeshop chains such as Starbucks.
Additionally, hotels, airports, train stations or some organizations have
also begun to offer their own services. Next to the differences between the
‘ideological’ background of different services, the level of access (to whom
access is given and at what cost) as well as their uptake, appropriation and
visibility differ substantially. Freifunk, for example, is rarely detectable
in public city-spaces.10
The commercially-oriented schemes, on the other
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hand, are beginning to change public city life simply through the visibility
of Wi-Fi use that impacts on non-users and users alike.
As an academic subject, these Wi-Fi projects have received some, but
not much attention. Quite a bit of it deals with the more technical aspects.
One of the exceptions on the social studies side is the work of Susan Drucker
and Gary Gumpert, who have repeatedly sought to combine the forces of
urban and communication scholars (e.g. Burd et al., 2007; Gumpert and
Drucker, 2004). Prolific writers and fighters for the cause of urban
communication studies, they repeatedly refer to Wi-Fi as one of the current
phenomena, but their overall aim is wider. Therefore they have delivered
little in terms of actual Wi-Fi studies. Another noteworthy exception is
Laura Forlano, who has been both a member of NYCWireless and wrote
her PhD on the subject, primarily in relation to the question of how these
networks and political advocacy relate (e.g. Forlano and Dailey, 2008).
Another prolific writer in the field is Adrian Mackenzie (2005), who asks,
for example, how the image of movement comes together with the movement
itself (of both technologies and people). More specifically in relation
to coffeehouses, examples of research are few and far between. The work
comes once more from the US, where Keith Hampton and Neeti Gupta
have conducted a first systematic study (Hampton and Gupta, 2008).
Their findings will be referred to below.
Another reference point concerns the notion of the cafe as a particular
environment. The idea of a cafe contains notions of sociality (meeting with
friends, being seen, seeing others, engaging with outsiders), but also very
much of individuality.11
Cafes (or coffeehouses as they are called in other
contexts) have always been spaces where people go alone or to meet others.
Those by themselves have often used cafes to access different kinds of
media: newspapers (often provided by the cafe), books, less often television
(mostly in sports bars). Nowadays, mobile phones are also often used in
these environments. Cafes have also always been places of social interaction,
with people both known and unknown. Early cafe culture has inspired
ideas about public life, public opinion formation, democratic sociability
(e.g. Habermas, 1990; Oldenburg, 1991). The main reason behind this was
a certain levelling of social class, i.e. in a coffeehouse everyone could in
principle participate in the debate (Ellis, 2004: 59; Sennett, 1994: 112–14).
The cafe has therefore always been seen as a place for intellectuals to meet.
French existentialist philosophy, for example, is difficult to imagine without
cafe culture. Related to this is the emphasis on the artistic audience.
Painters, actors, as well as writers were all important figures in cafes,
so much so that there was a genre called the ‘coffeehouse literature’
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(Rössner, 1999; Weigel, 1978: 54). But alongside having been places of
liberation and artistic endeavours, cafes were also seen as places of danger,
since they combined play with resistance.12
Hence there was an always
present possibility of political unrest. Early party politics, for example,
took place in cafes (cf. Rössner, 1999: 117) and also managed to easily
enter the public sphere thanks to those journalists present.
The overall attraction of the cafe can be explained by its image as a
place of freedom, where nothing in particular had to be done (but much
could be done).13
Hence the cafe is not a place for work as such, but it has
always been a place for the exchange of ideas – and thereby work was often
indirectly present (Thiele-Dohrmann, 1999: 142). For some, however, the
cafe was indeed their actual workplace, since the environments in which they
lived did not allow for work (too crowded, too cold, etc.). This aspect is
currently revived in the Wi-Fi cafes – as is the broader question of what kind
of work is permissible in this environment without its freedom being threat-
ened.14
This is often embedded in talk about the decline of cafe culture,
fuelled by the fear of an increasing lack of spaces to productively encounter
the stranger and of a growing lack of spaces not dominated by work.
Although it represents a very different context, similar debates have
dominated discourses around a related (1990s) phenomenon: telework.
The main similarity lies in the idea of work outside of its ‘expected’
context and the resulting debates taking place. In telework, this includes
negotiations with the employer, but also with the local environment (e.g.
about what is legitimate work and when – see Laegren, 2008) and especially
within the home itself (and oneself).15
The hopes attached have also
not changed much: that new forms of work might allow more flexibility
in arranging different aspects of one’s life; that independence will increase;
that one can choose one’s place of home and work (Laegren, 2008). In
many ways, work in Wi-Fi cafes could therefore be described as a current
interpretation of telework.
The study
The study actually consists of two case studies. Neither is presented in
detail here, since the concentration is on a sub-set of questions that have
emerged from the research.
I begin with a brief summary of the overall project. Since 2006 (with
prolonged periods of no engagement in either place), I have studied two
Wi-Fi cafes in Berlin. They are both based in districts in inner-city Berlin,
in places that are well liked by tourists and the student population alike
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(since they provide lively environments with other cafes, shops, galleries,
etc., close by). Nonetheless, the two environments also differ substantially.
One cafe is based in the former West, in Kreuzberg, a well-known part of
the city that has a long history of slight political unrest and catering for
youth culture. Kreuzberg has changed relatively little in recent years (at
least in the area around the cafe). The other cafe is based in the former East,
in Mitte, one of the parts of town that have seen many substantial changes
in the last 20 years. Massive gentrification has taken place and the neighbourhood
has exchanged much of its earlier population for a relatively
young and ‘hip’ crowd. The cafe in Kreuzberg is a cafe-bar that opened in
the 1980s. It was one of the first to introduce free Wi-Fi access in their
establishment. This was in 2003, albeit with some restrictions to prevent
Wi-Fi dominating the cafe (Anon, 2005). The cafe in Mitte only opened
in 2005 and was, from the beginning, labelled as a Wi-Fi cafe (not in its
name, but in its function), and also provides Wi-Fi for free. Both cafes have
served as places for observations and interviews in this study. Additionally,
the study includes a selective analysis of the media reaction to both, i.e.
the discursive environment. The material still needs to be fully examined,
but some preliminary conclusions can be drawn. The focus in this paper is
on the cafe in Mitte, since it has provoked and dominated a certain debate.
The Mitte cafe – thanks to its location at a busy square with lots of
public transport – is a clearly visible place (and at the same time allows its
customers to observe the street life). Nonetheless, there is no visible suggestion
of a particular linkage to the neighbourhood.16
Instead, it seems to
thrive on those transient places in its immediate vicinity (several hostels
and hotels, its closeness to major tourist attractions and nightlife, etc.).
The busy intersection makes it difficult to have outside seating, but there
are some tables outside nonetheless. Inside, the cafe stretches across two
floors with several differently and stylishly designed corners (stylish in a
laid-back fashion). There is a large bar in the middle of the ground floor,
which offers snacks and cake as well as beverages. The principle is based
on self-service (most cafes in Berlin have a waitressing service, but the selfservice
supposedly helps users to feel more at home). The place also serves
as a bar in the evening, but its busiest time is during the day.
The free Wi-Fi service in this cafe was there from the beginning. It
soon made name for itself as a Wi-Fi cafe, where taking your laptop was
not only not frowned upon, but rather expected.17
This was further underlined
by the cafe’s widespread appearance in the media in the year after its
opening and its prominent depiction in a widely read book (more about
this below). Its clientele consists of a mixture of regulars and passers-by.
Many visitors are students, some are tourists (sometimes for a prolonged stay
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in Berlin), others are self-employed. It was an ‘early adoption locality’ – not
as one of the first to offer Wi-Fi, but the first to become known as a place
where Wi-Fi was a near-must.
The study: appropriation processes
While the appropriation of Wi-Fi usage into the patterns of the existing
cafe culture has proven to be rather problematic in the Kreuzberg cafe
(with many different rules established and then changed again and with a
clear restriction in time and space of use),18
this kind of difficulty – at least
at a more visible level – has not occurred in the Mitte cafe. This was, from
the beginning, helped by the way the tables were placed, allowing laptop
use.19
What remains a problem is the lack of power sockets for recharging
(although this cafe does provide a few).20
Users can be found to negotiate
with other users about sharing the sockets (often the beginning of at least
short communication intervals). Next to single users, many people sit
together, either working on their laptops next to each other with only brief
interactions or as groups (students, friends or business partners) using one
laptop to discuss certain materials in a group.
In Mitte, there is no clash between the idea of the cafe and the Wi-Fi
environment – quite the opposite. Without Wi-Fi and its users, this cafe
would clearly lose an important aspect of its character (and selling-point).
It offers the commercial face of Wi-Fi, but is not perceived as such. Rather,
it is perceived as offering a kind of community. This is also the projected
media image: commentators mention the fact that one does indeed feel
rather alone without a laptop;21
others proclaim it to be ‘the unofficial
headquarters of the digital bohème’22
(see below); yet others underline that
many people are returning customers.23
Overall, the cafe is perceived as an
open-plan office with living-room qualities. Work is where the Internet
can be accessed. At the same time, at least in this specific place, it is
important to see and to be seen. On this discursive level, the Wi-Fi and
the related practices have been adopted as a natural progression of development,
as a chance for new work environments (and forms) to emerge.
Framework 1: public sphere
In their work on Wi-Fi cafes in the US, Hampton and Gupta asked themselves
whether the eventual ubiquitous availability of wireless Internet
access will lead to ‘greater participation in public spaces’ as well as ‘increased
public interaction and possibly diversify the composition of people’s social
networks’ or whether it will create ‘private cocoons of interaction’ instead,
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which only underline already existing close ties, do not further the exchange
with others present and thereby further the ‘trend toward privatism’
(Hampton and Gupta, 2008: 836). The authors locate the Wi-Fi cafe
customers empirically between ‘placemakers’ and ‘true mobiles’, both of
which they found examples of in their study. The true mobiles use the
Wi-Fi coffeehouses for the sole purpose of work. Many live close to the cafe
and use it simply to have a break from their usual environment; only a few
were actually on the move. Their behaviour is characterized by the kind of
civil inattention that Goffman already described.24
‘Placemakers’, on the
other hand, go to Wi-Fi cafes to be sociable. While they, too, sometimes
take work there, this is not the primary reason to enter the cafe. Instead,
they hang out in the cafe, to make contact. They might also allow people to
have a look at their screens, for example, and generally do not shield themselves
off. Instead, they offer sociality to both other guests and staff. They
are looking for the encounters that are possible in such a place.
Hampton and Gupta’s conclusion is that it is too early to say which
of the two types is going to dominate in the future. They plead for public
access places to offer as open an access as possible to attract the placemakers,
which they interpret as much more valuable for a possible enhancement of
the public sphere. While their research fits well with many of my own
findings, their overall question concerning the potential for broader
participation in a public sphere (or the demise thereof) seems to repeat a
well-rehearsed media and communication studies framework. It adds little
to the understanding of this situation as a potentially new social environment
with new challenges. I rather want to introduce the concept of work
as a framework that might help to see the new emerging (which appears
prominently in Hampton and Gupta’s definitions, but not in their analysis).
Framework 2: ‘digital bohème’?
The Mitte cafe has managed to attract a particular kind of clientele that is
more specifically work-oriented than that in the Kreuzberg cafe and cafes
in general. This clearly does not apply to all visitors in Mitte, but to a
considerable number. It is also what has shaped the overall image of the
place (and potentially vice versa, i.e. the place gradually built up a reputation
that then attracted those kind of people it was supposedly catering for).
Next to sizeable media coverage for the cafe itself, one book in particular
has helped this process: a book with the (freely translated) title ‘We call it
work: the digital bohème or life beyond the permanent job’ (Friebe and
Lobo, 2006). In this book, the authors describe the lives of those who have
otherwise been labelled the ‘creative class’, i.e. those people who perform
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project-based work on short-term contracts, mostly in media- and arts-related
professions (Florida, 2002). Many of these have now come to rely on the
Internet as their primary communication and information tool as well as
to promote themselves, etc. In the German context, the term ‘digital bohème’
was happily taken up to describe this growing group of the self-employed.25
The book itself is popular non-fiction and rather playful (as well as
subjective), nonetheless it provides some food for thought and presents
some dominant discourses.
The authors describe the digital bohème as a new kind of working
lifestyle that is actually well worth pursuing. According to Friebe and
Lobo, the bohème aspect applies particularly to the freedom in their work,
which differentiates their lives from the usual middle-class patterns.
The new media play a particular role in terms of the independence from
specific spaces and other material resources. Plus it allows a networking
beyond the usual patterns.26
The Internet is the digital bohème’s lifeline.
It is where most of their business contacts happen, it is where they can
easily produce and distribute their product or content, it is potentially
even the subject they deal with. The examples given by Friebe and Lobo
range from Ebay powersellers to bloggers (who earn some money from
blogging), to people designing concepts for marketing or someone selling
homemade clothes online, as well as journalists, artists or computer scientists.
‘Creative’ is understood in a wide sense of the word (but not as wide
as Florida defines it). It could refer to the marketing of something (and less
the production of content) or it could refer to the ‘product’ that someone
offers. A necessary part of the work, however, is the networking, the
collaboration with others. Social capital is hence a necessary asset to have – or
at least to build up. Friebe and Lobo claim that new group and collective
structures emerge that function differently (and away from) traditional
offices. These would then be the work environments that combine the
best of both worlds (social life at work and collective structures, but also
independence and freedom).
All the kinds of work and ways of working mentioned above make
it very difficult to place the ‘digital bohème’ on an axis of amateur and
professional. Much of what they produce or do is self-made or at least selftaught.
Since much of the information and material used is available at
little or no cost, the production structures change. Additionally, traditional
forms of education no longer have the same importance.27
As Friebe and
Lobo outline, it is not so much ‘attention’ that is the new currency in
online jobs but ‘respect’. This is obviously more easily gained when a job
is professionally executed. But what would a professional web designer, for
example, do differently from an amateur? Where is the line between these
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two? The professional might have a longer list of clients and completed
projects – as well as more important clients – to begin with. But this is
something that can quickly change. Thanks to many of these skills being
easily acquired, the distinction between amateur and professional is blurring.
It gets more complex (and more interesting) when we turn to the idea
of production and consumption. In principle, these work processes would
belong to the sphere of production. In media and communication studies,
however, we tend to talk about the production and consumption of media,
i.e. only one part of the overall production and consumption process. Even
in this more limited sense, production takes place in many of the cases of
the creative workers discussed here. The emphasis can be on different kinds
of media production or simply on the creation of their own publicity. More
indirectly, other important aspects of their work (contacting clients or
producing prototypes, etc.) take place online. This is not necessarily media
production in any traditional sense – but it is not simply media consumption,
either. Consumption, however, is also an important aspect of their
work, especially in terms of information acquisition. Where consumption
begins and production ends (or vice versa) is again difficult to define.
The framework of work brings with it another problematic: as playfully
as the term ‘digital bohème’ might have originally been used, it
implies a certain lightness that the actual working life of the people in
these cafes rarely contains.28
Hence Berlin’s claim (started in late 2003 by
its mayor), that the city was ‘poor, but sexy’ is only half of the story. Soon
after, another term was introduced into the public debate: the precariat,
elsewhere also described as the ‘urban bums’. Both terms put a clear
emphasis on the precarious financial, maybe even social, situation most of
these people find themselves in, i.e. the terms suggest a more dystopian
interpretation of the same phenomenon.29
These are forms of work that
might be nicely independent, but not necessarily adequately paid and with
a high-risk (high-insecurity) factor. These kinds of jobs contain the risk of
not being able to plan, of being ‘desynchronized’ with the rest of society.
They are closely related to risks concerning qualifications, employment
and career (certain privileges do not apply; certain steps are not offered) as
well as obviously to income. Ultimately, they also carry a health risk. In
contrast to the positive image created by Friebe and Lobo, this sounds
rather more problematic.
Apart from the terminology, one major difference between the two
ways of portraying what seems to be the same situation is the question of
lifestyle. In Friebe and Lobo, being part of the digital bohème seems to be
a lifestyle choice. It is the choice to choose freedom over security, to choose
independence over a regular income, to find new ways of networking
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rather than the old schemes. However, the more negative aspects of such
precarious employment structures seem to suggest less of a lifestyle and
more of a workstyle. The lifestyle (the bohemian aspect) has become a
brand used to sell the workstyle. So the people we find in the cafe described
above could instead be described as precarious digital workers.30
This already
sounds less attractive. Instead, this can be seen to be part of the new spirit
of capitalism, as pronounced by Boltanski and Chiapello (2006). Within this
new spirit, project-based work is key and network structures predominate.
This also implies, for example, that time has now become the major
resource and needs to be used ‘efficiently’ (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2006:
206). Ownership, too, is now less material, but more based on the person
him/herself. While this is the new basis for work, it also implies the emergence
of an industry which serves primarily to aid processes of selffulfilment
(Boltanski and Chiapello, 2006: 208). This leads to an increasing
blurring of the boundaries between work and private life. In contrast to
earlier times, when self-fulfilment was meant to take place exactly through
the clear distance from work (thanks to some extent to the movement of
the 1960s), self-fulfilment is now meant to take place within the work
environment. While it is surely not a bad idea to find some fulfilment in
work, Boltanski and Chiapello (as well as other authors) also underline the
problematic aspects. These can lead to new forms of oppression, i.e. the
new spirit leads to old problems in new shapes. The potentially precarious
work situations described above fit well into this pattern.
Outlook
This analysis might be particularly suited to Berlin at this moment in time,
but the general trend towards a renewed focus on creative work is not
limited to this city alone.31
Neither is the phenomenon of work entering
public places only happening here. While many cities (including Berlin) are
keen to sell a new image as ‘city of the cultural industries’ (alongside the
‘Wi-Fi city’ label), this contains hidden strands of developments that politics
should equally consider. In opening up their field to these questions, media
and communication research might help to contribute to the debates.
The emphasis on the problematic aspects of these kinds of work does
not automatically assume that the cafe environment that fosters Wi-Fi use
is in itself problematic. Rather, the emphasis here was on the problematic
aspects of its discursive framing and the general social development
expressed therein. And yes, cafe culture is surely different in such an environment
than in a traditional cafe. The difference itself is not negative per se,
but the question whether this makes the traditional third place suddenly
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into a second place (a work place – cf. Oldenburg, 1991) does remain
prevalent.32
The above seems to point to a fourth place instead – a new
kind of interaction sphere.
For media and communication studies, these environments and the
blurring of the axis of production/consumption as well as the axis of
amateur/professional indeed provide a challenge and require at least new
emphases (maybe not new approaches). If ‘professional’ use, for example,
moves into more visible public spaces, this has consequences for both the
user and the production taking place therein, as well as for the surrounding
environments, i.e. other users. In the long run, the border between
work and free time might be challenged even further than has already
happened (private and public are obviously also involved in this). And, as
underlined here, some security is replaced with insecurity, while some
freedom might be gained, i.e. work itself is changing.
At the same time, we need to continue thinking about the wider
consequences of such changes. Is there a mediatization of cities taking
place, of which this is only one small fragment, that we should take a
closer look at? And if yes, the existing frameworks need reinforcements
from elsewhere, since in this kind of analysis the role of the media is suddenly
diminished – and changed. Most media-centric analyses would only
cover small aspects of the overall phenomenon. Any media appropriation
concept – although in principle interested exactly in the embedded nature
of media use – is, therefore, not enough to be able to describe the wider
processes at stake here.33
If media and communciation studies find an
adequate framework for this, combining existing approaches from elsewhere
with its expertise on media and communication, it will be able to
adequately contribute to the analysis of the new.
Acknowledgment
I am grateful to the European Journal of Communication (and especially its editors)
for both inviting my contribution and providing such a stimulating environment
to discuss the papers in Padua in April. All the people present there gave very
valuable feedback on an earlier draft of the article.
Notes
  1.	Work forms in particular reflect social processes that are often media-related,
but rarely limited to media. This underlines the need for media and communication
studies to always take a look beyond the media themselves.
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  2.	This brings with it many methodological challenges, which, however, cannot
be discussed in the framework of this article.
  3.	The everyday is the point where structure and agency meet, where the microand
the macro-perspective converge, where the tension between change and
stability most clearly finds an expression.
  4.	Graham argues that ‘the hybrid concept of the “cybercity” is used … to denote
the inseparable fusion of relations that are mediated by ICTs with those that
are mediated between human presence, and movement, within and between
urban places’ (2004: 22).
  5.	Estonia is an often-quoted example of a whole country that early on began to
embrace (mostly) free Wi-Fi access in public places (Boyd, 2004).
  6.	Only very recently, i.e. in February 2009, the city government announced that
it would finally implement free Wi-Fi access in one part of the city centre –
three years after the plans were initially discussed (cf. www.welt.de/berlin/
article3260217/Berlin-macht-das-Internet-kostenlos.html).
  7.	In the US, for example, many cities set up Wi-Fi networks to bridge the socalled
digital divide, i.e. to provide access to those who could otherwise not
afford it and thereby include them in public life. In order for business to be
attractive, the networks additionally need to be secure. Other plans have
included a combination of the city providing free access to the spaces where
routers can be set up, while the Internet providers would build the infrastructure
and provide an inexpensive service. However, fully municipal programmes
seem to be more successful, especially when they can come up with something
like a guaranteed base number of subscribers through their city services.
  8.	www.nycwireless.net/about/
  9.	berlin.freifunk.net
10.	This is quite in contrast to NYCWireless, which initially concentrated on
public parks.
11.	The choice of cafe, therefore, also represents a choice for a specific self-image.
In this context, coffeehouse chains are sometimes regarded as problematic
(more similarity than individuality).
12.	Even coffee itself – as a potential drug – has been seen as a great danger, while
others praised it for its ability to enliven thought processes (see e.g. ThieleDohrmann,
1999: 7–10).
13.	On top of this, cafes have always been diversely-gendered places, which offer
both sexes ‘a home away from home,’ albeit in sometimes dissimilar ways (e.g.
with the additional offer of prostitution).
14.	In Berlin in particular, the cafe culture emerged later than elsewhere, i.e. in
the late 19th, early 20th century. At that point in time, however, it emerged
with a force. Not surprisingly, one of its most favourite haunts was then
referred to as the ‘Cafe Größenwahn’, i.e. ‘cafe megalomania.’
15.	Next to telework conducted more or less exclusively from home, other kinds
included visits to so-called telecottages or telecentres. These were centres
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established mostly in rural areas, which were meant to provide communal
access to facilities that supported certain kinds of office work conducted
remotely. They first emerged in the 1980s and often included computer (later
Internet) access, printing and copying facilities and similar services. Different
kinds of schemes for running them were developed. Many first emerged in the
Scandinavian countries, but they have spread far since. At the same time,
many original centres had to close. While more rural than Wi-Fi cafes, many
basic questions are shared.
16.	On its website, one gets to know that there is actually a tradition that the cafe
is building on: one of the Aschinger beer bars was based in the same premises
from the late 19th century into the 1920s. This particular one was referred to
in a famous novel about Berlin by Alfred Döblin.
17.	There is a clear dominance of Macs vs PCs.
18.	Hampton and Gupta (2008: 846) found very similar rules and attempts to
keep use at bay in their project. Their interpretation of these attempts, however,
differs from mine, since they proclaim these to be problematic. Instead,
they want access to be as openly designed as possible for as many ‘placemakers’
(see discussion below) to find their space. I, on the other hand, would argue for
the value of these rules in certain places, where other kinds of sociability are
otherwise slightly threatened (this applies to the Kreuzberg cafe in my study).
19.	On the ground floor, there is one row of high seats against a wall with equally
high tables in front of it, which offers itself to users sitting next to each other
without having to negotiate a space for their laptops and other materials.
While the rest of the cafe has more traditional seating arrangements, these
also differ in size, i.e. there are quite a few tables that can easily be used by
one person and their laptop.
20.	The same kind of ‘power plug interactions’ have been noted by Hampton and
Gupta in their research (2008: 843).
21.	www.neon.de/kat/kaufen/reise/berlin/119097.html
22.	www.taz.de/index.php?id=archivseite&dig=2006/11/13/a0151
23.	www.berliner-akzente.de/jobs_karriere/artikel_86340.php
24.	Additionally, the time that they spend waiting for their coffee is the time used
for the mobile phone (mostly as a tool for distraction). They also sometimes
appear in pairs, but this then tends to be for settling business. Hampton and
Gupta (2008) relate these behaviours to the concepts of public privatism and
networked individualism.
25.	Another prevalent terminology has been ‘digital nomads’.
26.	Friebe and Lobo go as far as speaking of a new pattern across the city that is
based more on where WLAN is available than other resources.
27.	However, as outlined elsewhere, many of the people engaged in this type of
work are rather well educated on the formal level.
28.	This concept has been widely debated in the German context – and widely
disputed. Many of the concept’s critics see the two authors supporting a
neo-liberal framework that does not accept responsibility for the working
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population. It is also about the idea of self-exploitation as well as the question
of whether this is not limited to a particular kind of elite.
29.	This has also been described by Rambach and Rambach (2001) in their book
on the precarious intellectuals. It is a heterogeneous group of people, but the
main characteristic is that they are well educated while earning rather little
for the work that they do and having hardly any job security.
30.	In a conference presentation on the same study, I once used the term ‘branded
digital nomad community’ to describe the group of people in the Mitte cafe.
It does not draw out the work aspect as well, but it emphasizes that they have
mostly been labelled from the outside, while this again furthers a kind of
identification. None of this, however, is partiuclarly stable.
31.	Alongside the ‘creative class’ and the ‘precarious intellectuals’ we also have the
‘freeter’ in Japan and the ‘yetties’ (young, entrepreneurial, tech-based, twentysomethings)
in the US.
32.	A move to nonplace or omnitopia would indeed be problematic (Wood, 2009).
33.	One such theoretical-empirical reinforcement would need to address the
interrelationship between specific spaces and the virtual (this is also a methodological
question).
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