Active users and active objects: The mutual construction of families and communication technologies

Convergence

Volumn 7, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 38-61

  Caron, André H ^a,b   Caronia, Letizia ^c  

^a Department of Communications ^*

^b UNIVERSITÉ DE MONTRÉAL   (Canada)

^c UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA   (Italy)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61049360609     PISSN: 13548565     EISSN: 17487382     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/135485650100700305     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. This study was made possible with the financial support of Bell Canada. We would also like to express our gratitude to Dominique Meunier, Carole Groleau and Diane Raymond who coordinated with us this study, and to Micheline Frenette and Geneviève Mignault for their valuable comments
2. See, for instance, E.M. Rogers, Communication Technology. The New Media in Society (New York: Free Press, 1986)
3. and S. Livingstone, Making Sense of Television. The Psychology of Audience Interpretation (London: Routledge, 1998)
4. See, for instance, Jupiter Communications, User broadband : Differentiate beyond technology to drive user adoption (2000)
5. Yankee Group, A new world for traditional media (2000)
6. and R.I.S.Q. (Réseau d'Informations Scientifiques du Québec), Internet : Accès et utilisation au Québec (1998)
7. See R. Silverstone, Television and Everyday Life (London: Routledge, 1994)
8. R. Silverstone and E. Hirsch (eds.), Consuming Technologies. Media and Information in Domestic Spaces (London: Routledge, 1992)
9. A. Gras, B. Joerges and V. Scardigli (eds.), Sociologie des techniques de la vie quotidienne (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1992)
10. F. Casetti (ed.), L'ospite fisso. Televisione e mass media nelle famiglie italiane (Torino, San Paolo, 1995)
11. S. Livingstone, 'The meaning of domestic technologies: a personal construct analysis of familial gender relations' in Consuming Technologies. Media and Information in Domestic Spaces, eds. R. Silverstone and E. Hirsch (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 113-30
12. S. Livingstone, 'Mediated Childhoods. A Comparative Approach to Young People's Changing Media Environment in Europe', European Journal of Communication, 13, no. 4 (1998), pp. 435-55
13. S. Livingstone, 'Les jeunes et les nouveaux médias. Sur la leçon à tirer de la télévision pour le PC', Réseaux, nos. 92-93 (1999), pp. 103-32
14. D. Morley, 'Changing Paradigms in Audience Studies', in Remote Control, eds E. Seiter et al (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 16-43
15. D. Morley, Television, Audience and Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1992)
16. P. Bertolini (ed), Navigando nel cyberspazio. Ricerca sui rapporti tra Infanzia e Internet (Milano: Rizzoli, 1999)
17. R. Silverstone, E. Hirsch and D. Morley, 'Information and communication technologies and the moral economy of the household', in Consuming Technologies. Media and Information in Domestic Spaces, eds. R. Silverstone and E. Hirsch (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 15-31
18. and A.H. Caron and C. Berre, 'Diffusion de la technologie visuelle "Videoway" à l'aube de l'autoroute électronique', in Repenser la télévision, ed. F. Guglielmelli, (Paris: Association Télévision et Culture, 1995), pp. 321-44
19. Silverstone, Hirsch and Morley, 1992
20. Livingstone, 1992
21. P. Robinow and W.M. Sullivan (eds), Interpretive Social Sciences. A Second Look (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987)
22. and A. Duranti, Etnografia del parlare quotidiano (Roma: NIS, 1992)
23. Generally, this person was recruited through a course or other university activity
24. The acceptance rate of the families contacted was around 80 per cent
25. The tools were first verified in an exhaustive pre-test in the Spring of 1999
26. D. Desjeux, A. Monjaret and S. Taponier, Quand les Français demenagent (Paris: PUF, 1998)
27. I. Kopytoff, 'The cultural biography of things: commoditisation as process', in The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. A. Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 64-91
28. L. Haddon, 'Explaining ICT consumption: the case of the home computer', in Consuming Technologies. Media and Information in Domestic Spaces, eds R. Silverstone and E. Hirsch (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 82-96
29. Of course, the cascading adoption phenomenon occurs in a larger context that is also defined by the technologies that are available. This commercial context can be seen as offering a range of possibilities for, and constraints on, the individual's actions with respect to a given technology (eg access to the technology, choosing to buy it or not, or moving towards cascade adoption). Far from being a decontextualised action, cascading adoption depends also on the market, the technical and aesthetic features of the technology and the courses of action it makesavailable. However, this range of limitations and opportunities does not determine the occurrence of such a phenomenon or the kind of technologies individuals will adopt sequentially. Social actors make choices and decisions according to individual, social and cultural frames of reference that influence how they 'interpret' the commercial context in which they live
30. V. Iori, Lo spazio vissuto (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1996)
31. and G. Gumpert and S.J. Drucker, 'The Mediated Home in the Global Village', Communication Research, 25, no. 4 (1998), pp. 422-38
32. We may argue whether and to what extent the communication technologies we are talking about may all be considered domestic technologies. Of course we have to be careful in adopting these definitions with respect to computers and cellular phones (Haddon, 1992). However, the choice also depends on what perspective we adopt in defining them in one way or another. We may define a technology as domestic from an a priori point of view, for instance, referring to statistical criteria about technology's usual emplacement, or we may define them as domestic or not referring to industry and market perspectives. But if we take, as we do, a phenomenological perspective, we will suspend any ontological definition and rather adopt an a posteriori one that is intended to grasp our informants' point of view. From this perspective, 'domestic' refers to all technologies defined as such by our informants in and through both their practices and the ways they account for their practices. If people live with the cellular phone or the microcomputer as a piece of their home life they may be defined as domestic technologies, from the users' point of view. If, on the contrary, these objects stay at home but are described as 'belonging to work', they may be defined as belonging to the outside world. Of course this perspective assumes that these definitions are 'fuzzy' and dynamic, precisely because they depend on the users' point of view. Far from being a limit, this is rather an analytical resource. People's perception of technologies as belonging to their domestic or outside worlds, and the changes in these perceptions make sense: it is also through this practical categorisation that they establish, and eventually modify, the phenomenological boundaries of the household
33. Gras, Joerges & Scardigli; 1992
34. L. Balduzzi and L. Caronia, 'Internet nelle parole dei genitori', in Navigando nel cyberspazio. Ricerca sui rapporti tra Infanzia e Internet, ed. P. Bertolini (Milano: Rizzoli, 1999), pp. 35-104
35. and A.H. Caron and L. Caronia, 'Parler de télévision, parler de soi. Une étude sur la mise en discours des pratiques médiatiques au foyer', Communication et Information, 20, no. 1 (2000), pp. 123-154
36. Silverstone, Hirsh and Morley, 1992
37. E.M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (New York: Free Press, 1983)
38. See Haddon, 1992