Homes have undergone transformations and their
limits have changed with the introduction of new consumer technologies. The text
analyzed[1] here is based on the integration of television
viewing habits within a domestic framework that is characterized by time and
space. The text approaches household consumer technology[2] by drawing on a multifunctional perception of
TV and its consumption and as such proposes that research applied to television
has a wider field: capable of accepting the idea of the domestication[3]
[4] of technology which is “integrated into the structures, daily routines
and values of users and their environments” (Berket et al, 2006:2).
The reformulation of research must seek answers
related to technology consumption in a domestic context, along with the
repercussions of that consumption in social, political and economic realities. An
example of that relationship is regulation because the regulatory models
instituted by States penetrate the private sphere and create a domestic space
that is neither separate from nor opposed to the State.
The authors of the text analyzed here are
mainly concerned with the organization of communication technologies in a
socio-domestic context in that which Berker calls the “fabric of everyday life”
(2006:4). However, it is also based on Lindlof and Meyer’s affirmation that “the
selection and use of those messages will be shaped by the exigencies of those
local environments” (1987:2). The idea of consumption is present here and the
authors’ proposal aims to study these themes in an attempt to find results of
an empirical nature that influence the marketing of domestic technologies and
the compilation of programming schedules: “We have also to consider how TV
programming has itself been designed for the specific forms of (distracted)
spectator attention routinely in the home” (Morley. 2006: 27).
TV consumption has changed in the last five
years[5] and even in cases of joint programming,
reception factors vary from family to family. Families are not all alike, “they have their own histories, their
own lore, their own myths, their own secrets. They, and the individuals who
compose them, are more or less open, more or less closed to outside influences,
more or less pervious or impervious to the appeals of advertisers and educators
and entertainers to buy and learn from, and to be entertained by television
(Morley and Silverstone, 1990: 33).
The home is a space characterized by basic
reasons of truth and where an ontological security can be found (Giddens,
1984), but it is also linked to economic issues. For that reason, it is a
private space that reflects onto the public.
Considering TV as a consumer object and by
focusing on an economy of means, its entry into our domestic lives creates an
act of consumption that “transforms their status as commodities into objects of
consumption (Morley and Silverstone, 1990: 49), and as such there should be a
perception of the factors taken into account in the process of choice i.e. in
the nature and consequence of choices. What is created is a domestication of
objects.
All consumption involves meanings: “indeed all consumption
actually involves the production of meanings by the consumer” (Morley e
Silverstone, 1990: 47), and the positioning of consumption is understood as a
cultural position. This position, allied to the domestication of technology,
brings adjacent meanings to a specific type of consumption. It is a symbolic
space that makes each category become more or less appealing. It is not about
acceptance or non acceptance of a specific technology, but rather about the
creation of a specific domestic environment: “It’s not just about adapting technologies
to people, but also aboput people creating an environment that is increasingly
mediated by Technologies” (Berker et all, 2006: 3)
The aim of this paper is twofold: to draw attention
to TV studies within a “sociotechnological” space and to apply it to other
technologies.
The authors say that they offer what seems to
them to be a necessary change in the current conventions of media and cultural
studies so that they can understand the “place and significance of television
and other communication and information Technologies in the modern world”
(Morley and Silverstone, 1990: 51).
JB - Abril de 2013
Bibliography:
Berker, Thomas et al (2006). “Introduction” in Domestication of Media and Technology. NY,
Open University Press.
Giddens, Anthony (1984). The Constitution of society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Lindlof, T. and Meyer, T. (1987). “Mediated
Communication”, Natural Audiences. pp.
1-32. New Jersey: Ablex.
Morley, David (2006). “What’s ‘home’ got to do with
it? Contradictory dynamics in the domestication of technology and the
dislocation of domesticity” in Domestication
of Media and Technology. NY, Open University Press.
Silverstone, Roger and Morley, David (1990). “Domestic
Communication – Technologies and Meanings”, Media,
Culture and Society, Vol. 12, pp.31-55.
[1] Silverstone, Roger and David Morley
(1990). “Domestic Communication – Technologies and Meanings”, Media, Culture and Society, Vol. 12,
pp.31-55.
[2]Argument justified by the
citation: “we have already suggested that the use of television cannot be separated
from everything else that is going on around it. And in particular it cannot be
separated from the use of other Technologies (Morley and Silverstone, 1990:
35),
[3] Term normally associated to
animals.
[4] There are some authors that
consider domestication as a sphere of negotiation between space and designers.
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