July 13, 2011

Ms Watson doing her presentation at DWU

Divine Word University (DWU) continues to encourage a culture of research among academics and students.

Adding oil to the wheel of research at the University was a bench mark presentation of a doctoral research finding on mobile telephony in Papua New Guinea recently. Former Communication Arts lecturer at DWU, Ms. Amanda Watson presented her research findings as a doctoral candidate on 11th July 11 at the Sir Peter Barter Auditorium.

She is a doctor of philosophy (PhD) candidate at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia.

Ms Watson also had a lecture and discussion with 10 doctoral students of DWU on 30 June where she shared handy tips on research and spoke about the challenges involved.

She also did a presentation to students in the Faculty of Health Sciences on the possibilities of using mobile phones in healthcare activities, such as health promotion, disease prevention, symptom management, and so on.

Ms Watson’s PhD thesis was based on mobile telephony in rural Papua New Guinea during the early days of phone adoption in these communities. Her study was conducted in 10 villages of Madang province. Ms Watson also visited and presented her research findings to people in two of her research sites: Orora village on Karkar Island, and Megiar village on the north coast.

Her findings revealed that mobile phones were generally viewed positively however several negative concerns were also strongly raised.

The research found that among the difficulties faced by rural mobile phone owners were costs involved in owning handsets, recharging of batteries and high costs in making phone calls.

Ms Watson’s findings also showed that people were concerned about the damaging effects of mobile phone communications linked to crime, sex and pornography. 

According to the research findings, despite the negatives associated with mobile phone use in these communities, the majority of rural phone users generally felt connected to the rest of the world in terms of communication.

Ms Amanda Watson (left) chatting with some of staff of Divine Word University who attended the presentation of her PhD research findings at the Sir Peter Barter Auditorium of the Madang campus.

The discussion pointed out how rapidly mobile phone towers had been set up in some rugged terrain, rolling out services to remote communities where other vital government infrastructure was largely absent.

Ms Watson’s research was the first independent research project on mobile phones in PNG and has opened up other possible research topics into mobile phones and the communication sector.

It is hoped that some of her policy recommendations will be taken seriously by the government and communications companies.

Ms Watson was in the country doing presentations of her research after submitting her thesis to examiners for marking in May. Both DWU and QUT gave the ethical clearance for the research.

Ms Watson was a lecturer at DWU for three years up to the end of 2007.