Consuming Digital Technologies to Enact Identities: An Exploratory Study Among Mothers

This manuscript explores mothers’ consumption of digital technologies to enact their individual, relational, and familial identities. Using multi-method qualitative research techniques including phenomenological interviewing, image- based auto-elicitation, and home visits, it finds mothers purposefully consume digital technologies to negotiate, construct, and enact identities. Specifically, mothers use a repertoire of four appropriation strategies: mastering, partnering, domesticating, and avoiding. Mastery is a multi- year project in which mothers enroll in digital educational programs, qualify, and create new professional identities. In domestication, mothers assert themselves on technology managing their inclusion/exclusion in the time and spaces of family life, thereby enacting parental identities. In contrast, partnering is collaborative; mothers consume those functionalities of technologies that help them enact their identities. In the strategy of avoidance, mothers enact their identities of being fiscally responsible, by refusing to engage with budget busting technologies. These findings offer compelling evidence for initiating further survey-based investigations into mothers’ consumption of digital technologies using larger and diverse samples to quantitatively test and expand on the results of this qualitative study

Consuming Digital Technologies and Enacting Identities: Mothers in Mundane Daily Life

This manuscript examines mothers’ consumption of digital technologies to enact their individual, relational, and familial identities. Using phemenological interviews it finds mothers purposefully consume digital technologies to negotiate, construct, and enact identities. Specifically, mothers use a repertoire of four appropriation strategies: mastering, partnering, domesticating, and avoiding. Mastery is a multi-year project in which mothers enroll in digital educational programs, qualify, and create new professional identities. In domestication, mothers assert themselves on technology managing their inclusion/exclusion in the time and spaces of family life, thereby enacting parental identities. In contrast, partnering is collaborative; mothers consume those functionalities of technologies that help them enact their identities. In the strategy of avoidance, mothers enact their identities of being fiscally responsible, by refusing to engage with budget busting technologies. The implications of these findings for marketing new Internet of Things technologies in the smart home are discussed