‘The Internet Is Magic’: Technology, Intimacy and Transnational Families

Drawing on multi-sited ethnography and qualitative research, I argue that the visual register in particular modes of communication technology like Skype and Facebook ushers in a different quality of relationships for transnational families. Most participants in this study are undocumented immigrants unable to return to their families for long periods of time because of legal consequences that will ban them from coming back and working in the USA. On the other hand, their families in the Philippines cannot visit the USA without proper documentation. The economic necessity of working abroad and legal conditions deter family reunification. Consequently, since these families are separated their only means of sustaining their relationships is through communication technology. The new mediums of communication, given their innovations in visuality, frequency and access to one another’s digital lives, present complicated issues as well as different forms of intimacy for members in a transnational family

Feminist geographies of digital work

Feminist thought challenges essentialist and normative categorizations of ‘work’. Therefore, feminism provides a critical lens on ‘working space’ as a theoretical and empirical focus for digital geographies. Digital technologies extend and intensify working activity, rendering the boundaries of the workplace emergent. Such emergence heightens the ambivalence of working experience: the possibilities for affirmation and/or negation through work. A digital geography is put forward through feminist theorizations of the ambivalence of intimacy. The emergent properties of working with digital technologies create space through the intimacies of postwork places where bodies and machines feel the possibilities of being ‘at’ work

BabyVeillance? Expecting parents, online surveillance and the cultural specificity of pregnancy apps

The rapid proliferation of self-tracking pregnancy apps raises critical questions about the commodification and surveillance of personal data in family life while highlighting key transformations in the social experience of pregnancy. In the last 2 years, we have seen the emergence of significant research in the field. On one hand, scholars have highlighted the political economic dimension of these apps by showing how they relate to new practices of quantification of the self. On the other hand, they have focused on users’ experience and on the affective, pleasurable, and socially meaningful dimension of these technologies. Although insightful, current research has yet to consider the cultural specificity of these technologies. Drawing on a digital ethnography of the 10 most reviewed pregnancy apps among UK and US users at the beginning of 2016, the article will show not only that the information ecologies of pregnancy apps are extremely varied but also that users’ interaction with these technologies is critical and culturally specific. By discussing pregnancy apps as complex ethnographic environments—which are shaped by different cultural tensions and open-ended processes of negotiation, interaction, and normativity—the article will argue that—in the study of infancy online—we need to develop a media anthropological approach and shed light on the cultural complexity of digital technologies while taking into account how users negotiate with digital surveillance and the quantification of the self

Subjectivity 2.0 : digital technologies, participatory media and communicative capitalism

Drawing on observations and focus group material from pervasive drama project, The Memory Dealer, this article explores both the dynamics and the limitations of existing models of digital subjectivity. It interrogates, in particular, constructions of the digital subject within critical internet studies, focusing on the work of Jodi Dean. This model of subjectivity argues that participatory digital media are a conduit through which the subject is ‘captured’ and shaped to suit the needs of capital. It is suggested here, however, that framing subjective engagements with technology as inevitably being relations of capture, is dangerous in foreclosing scope for resistance and inter-subjective political action. The article ultimately argues that there is a need to reconceptualise the digital subject away from models of capture and towards a more situated, material analysis of the affordances enabled by subjective entanglements with technology

Friction-free authenticity: mobile social networks and transactional affordances

This paper contextualizes and critically examines the incorporation of transactional features into two popular mobile social media apps: Instagram and Snapchat. It examines how mobile social media acts as an interface between culture and commerce. We situate this interface within a larger political economic context in which tech companies are embracing ‘fintech’ to drive growth. We argue that mobile social media platforms play a unique role in monetising personal data and context awareness through their development of ‘transactional affordance’ – a term we develop to understand new features allowing users to connect content to forms of payment. We argue that the success of these affordances is tied to labour associated with the ‘performative authenticity’ of social-media influencers. Our first case study examines the recent development of ‘shopping’ and ‘checkout’ features on Instagram, and the significance of this feature for the economic growth of parent company Facebook. We then look at how the specific development of augmented reality features on Snapchat serve as the basis for new transactional affordances in everyday contexts. We conclude the paper by arguing that the contextual commerce these phenomena entail signals a shift to a transactional culture in which everyday interactions become opportunities for consumption

Crowdsourcing CCTV surveillance on the internet

This article provides an exploratory overview of crowdsourced surveillance of closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage over the Internet. Although the use of CCTV in both public and private surveillance is well documented, footage is now distributed over the Internet for large crowds to monitor. This article briefly introduces the concept of crowdsourcing and explains its shift from a quasi-communitarian mode of production to a business model and crime-fighting strategy. This is followed by a review of relevant scholarly literature that provides a theoretical basis for understanding crowdsourcing as it applies to CCTV surveillance online. This article then considers four case studies of crowdsourced CCTV surveillance on the Internet. These four UK-based examples provide an overview of an emerging phenomenon of how crowds can be integrated into CCTV surveillance, ranging from identifying suspects to designating suspicious behaviour in everyday activity. This article concludes by considering the broader social risks, extending from literature on CCTV, surveillance and crowdsourced labour

Social networks and cultural workers: towards an archive for the prosumer

The cultural worker is a key figure in social networks, producing the vast amounts of data which are integral to the profits sites of sites such as Facebook. This paper develops a conceptual framework that accounts for the contradictory ways in which user-generated data both extends networks of connectivity, while simultaneously renders subjects more productive within our information economy. By theorizing the digital profile as a personal archive I want to account for the ways in which digital archives of users on-line straddle the fine line between extension and domination, or rather between a desire for connectivity and the accumulation of surplus value based on the immaterial labour of those who frequent these socially networked spaces. The archive as a conceptual framework offers a theoretical paradigm to grasp the impact social media is having on the everyday lived experiences of users participate on-line and who are ultimately rendered productive as a very specific manifestation of the cultural worker – the prosumer