News.blog: Phones a problem in lectures, says study

Although few university students actually take mobile phone calls in class, sending and receiving text messages during a lecture has become an acceptable part of mobile phone culture, according to research from James Katz, professor of communications at Rutgers University and director of the Center for Mobile Communications Studies, and Jing Wang, a professor of Chinese language and culture at MIT.

Only 4 per cent of Rutgers students surveyed considered it okay to talk on a phone in lectures. While that's good news for professors, the downside is that 45 per cent considered exchanging text messages permissible while 33 per cent of students thought it acceptable to play games on a mobile phone during lectures.

Katz, however, also found that the concept of territoriality -- i.e. where it's acceptable to talk on the phone and where it is not -- is gaining ground. Restaurants are still contested spaces where the societal customs have yet to be firmly cemented, but designated 'quiet' carriages on commuter trains and places like museums and theatres have largely become mobile-phone free. Veteran actor Richard Griffiths received a standing ovation recently when he ordered an audience member to leave the theatre after her phone went off three times during a performance.

Wang, meanwhile, studied mobile phone and consumer electronic device behavioural norms in China. In China, for instance, the iPod is very popular among children. Few, however, have credit cards so they don't buy songs from iTunes. Instead, they fill up the music players with pirated music.