Digital Culture and Sociology

Everyday Life and IT

• Theme: technology meets everyday life

• Focus: Experiential Stories• Lister et.al. 2003. New Media: A

Critical Introduction. London: Routledge.

• Mackay, Hugh. 1997. “Consuming Communication Technologies at Home”. In Mackay, Hugh (ed.) Consumption and Everyday Life. London: Sage.

• Method: Storytelling• Studying an object: Furby

about today

break theme

method

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complementary bibliography BAUDRILLARD, Jean. 1997. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor:

University of Michigan Press DE CERTEAU, M. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley:

UCLA Press. HARAWAY, Donna. 1991. “A Manifesto for cyborgs: science,

technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980’s, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York; Routledge.

MACKENZIE, D and WAJCMAN, J. (eds.). 1985. The Social Shaping of Technology. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

MICHAEL, M. 2000. Reconnecting Culture, Technology and Nature: fron society to heterogeneity. London: Routledge.

MILLER, DANIEL & SLATER, DON. 2000. The Internet: an ethnographic approach. Oxford: Berg.

REEVES, BYRON & NASS, CLIFFORD. 1996. The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

STERNE, J. 1999. “Thinking the Internet: cultural studies versus the millenium” in JONES (ed). Doing Internet Research: critical issues and methods for examining the Net. London: Sage.

+ bibl. In Mackay

theme: everyday life

• Definition of everyday life, discuss (220), also how it relates to space (222)

• Chapter as introduction to a lot of theories• Key questions (p. 222) similar to those for this

course• Chapter structure:

– The Domestic Shaping of New Media– New Media, Identity and the Everyday– Gameplay

• The “cases”: as examples for project topics

Lester et.al.

text goals

• How the intersection of media technologies with the spaces and relationships of the home has been theorised

• The “newness” of media vs the routines and relationships of households

• New media as commodities (and not as products of science fiction)

• How normal people understand them

Lester et.al.

some ideas

• Problematize assumption that introduction of new media won’t change homes (223-26), for example by looking at telecommuting. DISCUSSION: Is it good or bad to have an office at home?

• Symbolic status crucial for success of new products (226-228), i.e. Black Box

• Difficult to distinguish between qualities of objects: instrumental, play, symbolic (i.e. mobile phones, 233) DISCUSSION: Why have objects become more playful?

Lester et.al.

some ideas

• Objects have to be understood in context, for example: location of computer in the home (237)

• The problem of edutainment (239-244)

• Draws a lot on cultural studies perspective, Mackay, whose text we have next.

Lester et.al.

theoretical mapping: new media

Lester et.al.

POPULIST POSTMODERNISM (+/-) - Consumption & leisure define us (not production)- Hyperrealism (Baudrillard), objects are not functional any more, become symbols.

CULTURAL + MEDIA STUDIES (+/-)

- Opposition old / new media (construct identity through choice / ownership vs. use) i.e. Poster

- Power issues (i.e. feminism)- Problems: cultural approach can downplay instrumental nature of new media; if hardware is text, what is software?

Hard toseparate

CYBERCULTURE (+) - Celebration of “newness”

NEO MARXISTS (-) - Culture subordinated to capital

- New Media even worse

-Themes of control and domination.

Eco

(p.228-231)

theoretical mapping: identityidentityLester et.al.

POSTMODERNIST CYBERCULTURE (+) - Change is good (Turkle)- Identity play in cyberspace

POSTMODERNIST politics of identity (+/-) - Media only one factor more (migration, gender...)- Reviews marxism (Hall)

POSTMODERNISM AS CRISIS (-) - Hyperreality (Baudrillard)- We canot access world- Subject dazzled (Jameson)

POSTMODERN MEDIA SUBJECT (+/-) - Identity shaped through media culture (Jensen)

SUBJECT CONSTRUCTED BY DISCOURSE (-) - Althusser, Foucault- Cyborgs (Haraway), next sessions

- The posthuman (Hayles) vs.

CYBERPUNK (?)- Breaking free- Romanticism (sometimes used by CMC + cyberculture

Related

“opposed”

(p.247-260)

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What did you note down as you read the text?

Interesting?

Controversial?

Dated?

Mackay

text goals

• explore communication technologies in the home (how they affect this space and are themselves domesticated, used and made sense of)

• consumption and production related• social shaping of technology is explored,

including problematic technological determinism theories

• technology is not only utilitarian or material, but also symbolic

• note link to our storytelling exercise in the chapter (i.e. activity 3, p. 279), about personal impact of technology

Mackay

points for discussion

• Activity 1, p. 264. Discussion: progress and democracy vs. Withdrawal from community

• Technology is social = physical artifact + surrounding human activity + human knowledge behind it (265), example home computer

• criticism of technological determinism (266 + reading A), but also of social determinism

Mackay

points for discussion

• Technologies are encoded with preferred meanings, but they can be resisted/transformed (269-271)

• Appropriation and gendering of new technologies (telephone, radio, tv, mobile), where use is not limited to function

• p. 285-287, about reading B. How good is the ethnographic approach?

Mackay

experiential storiesMike Michael

“The anecdote acts as a focal point in which a described event adds some flesh to what might otherwise have been the dry bones of an arbitrary example. As a fairly detailed episode, it allows us to glimpse mundane technologies in use, in particular time and place, and to witness how the meanings and functions of these artefacts are ongoingly negotiated.” (14)

What is the point of all these cases and method?

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storytellingAnn Gray

• people in control: tell what they want / feel, freer than questions

• self-comment reveals their social position

• people are more complex than just gender or class statistics

Gray, Ann. 2003. Research Practice for Cultural Studies. London: Sage.

sociology of storiesAnn Gray

• What is the nature and content of the story? Textual question. Structure of the narrative, repertoires, codes, how the teller positions herself.

• What is the social process of producing and consuming stories? Is it an own story or somebody else’s? Can it be told socially? Censorship? Rules?

• What social roles do stories play? Are some narratives dominant and others on the margins?

Ex.: Mary Ellen Brown on soap operas

Furby

• Personal Story: “I” throughout

• Beyond opinion by using sales data + media coverage

Marc Pesce

Furby

• What kind of interaction is that? (p. 21)

• Related to the topic of affection and machines: The Media Equation

• Why all the craze?

Marc Pesce