30229 - Critical Studies of Technology at Home

Description

Domestic life is intimately linked to the ubiquity of personal media, communication technologies, and digital platforms, as well as the unprecedented scale of information flowing in and out of homes through these devices, screens, and interfaces, and its associated opaque data collection, storage, profiling, and analysis. This panel will focus on critical approaches to understanding the sociotechnical assemblages of families, media, technology, and the domestic sphere across public, private, and hybrid spaces, and how the risks and benefits of such mediation, digitization, and datafication are unequally distributed among children and caregivers and across generations. This session will aim to cover various social, political, economic, and health-related stakes for families, attentive to differences that emerge across age, race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, disability, and geography. The panel will consider critical aspects of media and communication technology through the lens of the family as a social institution from within, as well as institutional forces such as education, employment, and healthcare from without.

Sub Unit

• Special Session

Presider

• Matt Rafalow, Google

Individual Presentations

• Digital Assistants, Generative Artificial Intelligence, and the Rhythm of Family Life - Tawfiq Ammari, Rutgers University

• Classed Dynamics of Family Media Use in the U.S. - Annaliese Grant, University of Nevada-Las Vegas

• Using Media to Deal with an Unfair World: Representation for U.S. Marginalized Youth and Their Families - AnneMarie McClain, Boston University

• Children’s Gender and Parenting around Technology Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic - Stefanie Mollborn, Stockholm University

Session Organizer

• Meryl Alper, Northeastern University