Special Issue: Methodological innovations and challenges of research on digitally connected homes

Abstract

The past few years have seen a rapid increase in the number and variety of technologies embedded in and passing through home environments. Researchers increasingly recognize the distinct nature of the home as a site of research. The past four decades have seen a significant shift in the technology environment from the ‘media home’ (Spigel 2001) to the ‘smart home’ (Woods 2021). We have seen significant additions to the abundant digital ecology of the home, increasing the number of digital access-points and available services, and intensifying the data-circulation in connected homes. The home is a site of mundane, private, usually hidden but highly significant everyday practices (Pink et al. 2017). Yet it is also increasingly becoming a part of national healthcare infrastructures through the deployment of welfare technologies, and energy policy through smart meters. During the ‘global lockdown’ caused by the Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic, technologies took a prominent role as the home transformed itself into a site in which activities such as learning, parenting, work, entertainment, and remote medical care intermingled. The increasing complexity of the digital infrastructures and the experiences, spaces, visions of the home in a current era of connected homes and connected living pose particular challenges for conducting research in such an environment. This also calls for methodological innovations that shape how we see the home as a research site and how we engage with it. For this special issue, we invite contributions that make a strong methodological contribution by highlighting the innovations and challenges of conducting research on technology in home environments. Papers could, for example: