Tales from the police: Rhythms of interaction with mobile technologies

There is a need to understand and conceptualize the relationships between work activities, the context of work, and the use of mobile technologies because of the widespread diffusion of mobile information and communication technologies within organizational settings. The police have, since the advent of radio communication systems, deployed mobile technologies to support officers in conducting their jobs and offer an exemplary domain for studying the use of mobile technologies. This paper applies the theory of virtualization as a means to characterize the use of mobile technologies for operational policing. The paper suggests the concept of rhythms of interaction as a method of characterizing the alternation in intensity of communication through and with mobile technologies and the intricate relationships between physical and virtual contexts of work.