Brazilian/American communication professor
Adriana de Souza e Silva is a Brazilian/American communication professor, information technologist, academic, and author. She is a professor in the Department of Communication at the North Carolina State University and Director at the Networked Mobilities Lab.
de Souza e Silva's research interest spans the fields of mobile communication and networked mobile studies with a particular focus on comprehending the socio-economic inequalities, power imbalances, and access issues in the Global South. She has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, several book chapters, and 7 books, including "Hybrid Play: Crossing boundaries in game design, player identities, and hybrid spaces" and "Dialogues on Mobile Communication".
de Souza e Silva is a co-editor of "Mobile Media &amp; Communication".
Education.
In 1996, de Souza e Silva graduated from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where she completed a Bachelor of Arts in journalism, Social Communication, authoring a research thesis titled "Functional Design in Brazil: An European Solution, or a Non-Solution?". Subsequently, she pursued research in the field of Communication and Image Technology, culminating in a Master's thesis titled "Design as Interface of Contemporary Times". She received a P.hD. from the same institution in 2004, with her submitted dissertation entitled "From Multiuser Environments as (Virtual) Spaces to (Hybrid) Spaces as Multiuser Environments: Understanding Nomadic Technology Devices and Hybrid Communication Places".
Career.
de Souza e Silva began her professional career in 1999 as a Graphic Designer for the VIP magazine in São Paulo, Brazil. She then transitioned to academia and was a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Design, Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 2005, she was appointed as an assistant professor of communication at North Carolina State University (NCSU), and in 2010, she held an appointment as an associate professor of Digital Culture and Mobile Communication at the IT University of Copenhagen in Denmark. At present, she holds the position of Professor of Communication at NCSU.
de Souza e Silva is the Associate Director of Communication Rhetoric and Digital Media (CRDM) P.hD. Program at NCSU. She is concurrently working as the Director at the Network Mobilities Lab (NML) and is the incoming vice-chair of the International Communication Association (ICA) Mobile Communication Division.
Research.
de Souza e Silva's research expertise is in the field of communication with a particular focus on location-aware mobile technologies and mobile phone use in developing countries. Her research has focused on understanding how the association between technology and urban environments is altering lifestyles, work patterns, and social interactions.
Location-aware mobile technologies.
de Souza e Silva has worked on the topic of location-aware mobile technologies which includes GPS-equipped cell phones. She has particularly focused on analyzing the ways in which location-based mobile games and location-based social networks facilitate individuals in coordinating their activities with others, acquiring information about their peers, and regulating their own privacy. In her book "Mobile Interfaces in Public Spaces: Locational Privacy, Control, and Urban Sociability", she has described how mobile phones have become a geographical mapping tool that people use to extract location-based information and how it has advanced the concept of public spaces, locational privacy, and networks of power. She evaluated that location-based technologies are capable of restructuring communication relationships and social interaction environments in public spaces and have the potential to enhance connection with locations, rather than isolating individuals from their surroundings.
de Souza e Silva's book "Net Locality: Why Location Matters in a Networked World" was the first book that covered the area of Net locality and highlighted the significant effects of accessibility of location-based technologies on individuals and societies. She has explained net locality as an emerging form of location awareness, and has warned about the threats that are associated with these technologies. Didem Ozkul, in her book review stated that "In employing such a perspective on the problematic of location awareness, the book fills an important gap in media and communications literature by analyzing how individuals and societies use this emerging form of location awareness." She also observed a gradual change in the traditional communication standards and use of mobile phones to avoid interactions in public spaces and the emergence of new ways of interacting among the urban population.
Urban mobility.
In several peer-reviewed articles, de Souza e Silva has talked about games and their role in enhancing urban mobility. She explored the playful mobilities of Pokémon Go in the Global South and revealed that players decide about their mobility based on risk perceptions and also mentioned that players in urban environments adapt to their material circumstances in order to engage in gameplay and support one another. In a study on urban mobility, she talked about taxi-hailing apps in Rio de Janeiro and suggested them as a source of security and that despite being accepted overwhelmingly, these applications are a part of a system that involves mobility politics, surveillance, data collection, and control that can go unnoticed by both passengers and drivers. Her early research also includes the usage of mobile technologies among the researcher and artistic community of Brazil.
References.
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