Student nabs first PhD in texting

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A post graduate student has received what is believed to be the UK's first SMS-focused doctorate.

Text message on phone

The University of Birmingham has awarded what is believed to be the UK's first PhD in text messaging.

Postgraduate student Caroline Tagg studied people's use of SMS for more than three years to gain the academic accolade. The study involved the analysis of more than 11,000 text messages and just short of 200,00 words.

"Actually, not many people use abbreviations. People use playful manipulation and metaphors. It is a playful language. Not only are they quite creative, it is also quite expressive," she said in an interview with the Telegraph newspaper.

"It was interesting to be able to research a number of linguistic methods and frameworks and apply them to the text message, because the text messages were quite fun. It was enlightening."

Maggie Holland
Maggie Holland

Maggie has been a journalist since 1999, starting her career as an editorial assistant on then-weekly magazine Computing, before working her way up to senior reporter level. In 2006, just weeks before ITPro was launched, Maggie joined Dennis Publishing as a reporter. Having worked her way up to editor of ITPro, she was appointed group editor of CloudPro and ITPro in April 2012. She became the editorial director and took responsibility for ChannelPro, in 2016.

Her areas of particular interest, aside from cloud, include management and C-level issues, the business value of technology, green and environmental issues and careers to name but a few.