Domesticating Smartphones

The recognition that users’ relationship with technology is an ongoing one is central to the domestication of media and technology approach. The use of media – and users’ handling of them – is continually changing as new practices, services and content are introduced and old ones fade from view, as technologies become “re-domesticated” and occupy new positions in the media repertoires of users – or are excluded from use. In few places is this ongoing and ever-evolving relationship more apparent than in the case of smartphones. These relatively open platforms are malleable; they are, in terms of the services and content they provide access to, infinitely reconfigurable by users. At the same time, the available symbolic resources, which form the basis of this configuration, are continuously changing as apps and services come, change and disappear, influencing mobile media repertoires and practices of users. This chapter will draw on examples from empirical data to show in greater depth some of the ways in which smartphones can be said to be associated with re-domestication of prior media forms and further considers how smartphones themselves and their functionality may be re-domesticated. It also examines some of the key challenges that smartphones pose to domestication theory and the continued relevance of the domestication approach in the current mediascape

Introducing the concept of re-domestication of prior media forms in relation to the use of smartphones Also examines some of the key challenges that smartphones pose to domestication theory