Rapid growth of mobile technology, integration of media channel, and growing use of multiple media change the concept of mobile phone. Consequently, many developments of new mobile phone related services are expected. And for these developments, it is important to understand in what form communication by mobile phone take place at present.
This research aims to develop a model for communication by mobile phone and, it is because of the advantages of a model as following. A communication model 1) shows the general aspects of communication that is hard to see without a model, 2)makes diverse and complex phenomena concisely and 3)in many cases, it gives help to predict communication process or its results. In this sense, a communication model for mobile phone could be a guide to find problems and chances of present system.
To develop a model, this research has undergone the following stages: Firstly, the concept of communication is defined and some other needed concepts are discussed. Secondly, established models for human communication and mass communication are introduced. Thirdly, revealed characteristics of new media including mobile phone are studied. Fourthly, possible communication types are analyzed by studying the functions of new models of mobile phone, and web sites that provide mobile phone related services. Fifthly, collected data are categorized based on the concept of communication and basic models for each category is developed. And finally, these models are integrated by stages.
By this process, three models are developed, and these cannot be integrated into one model because of the very various elements of each model, To verify the usefulness of these models, they are analyzed based on the communication theories and some particular phenomena of communication by mobile phone are predicted. These predicted phenomena are proved through some experiments.
