Perpetual contact as a communicative affordance: Opportunities, constraints, and emotions

Abstract

This paper draws on qualitative data collected as a part of a comparative study on children and teenagers' uses of smartphone in nine European countries to explore the meanings and emotions associated with the enhanced possibility of "fulltime" contact with peers provided by smartphones. It argues that full-time access to peers -which interviewees identify as the main consequence of smartphones and instant messaging apps on their interactions with peers -is a communicative affordance, that is, a set of socially constructed opportunities and constraints that frame possibilities of action by giving rise to a diversity of communicative practices, as well as contradictory feelings among young people: intimacy, proximity, security as well as anxiety, exclusion and obligation. Understanding the perceptions and emotions around the affordance of "anywhere, anytime" accessibility, therefore, helps in untangling how communicative affordances are individually perceived but also, and more importantly, socially appropriated, negotiated, legitimised and institutionalised.

Permanently online and permanently connected: Development and validation of the Online Vigilance Scale

“…In this new POPC environment, users have developed specific routines and cognitive structures concerning their mobile online device(s), their communication relationships, and the role of receiving and sending information in the course of their daily lives [ 9 ]. They can rely on their ‘always-on’ equipment to solve diverse problems, manage their mood, and create a “24/7 communicative bubble” (p. 317, [ 10 ]) that continuously connects them to relevant others.…”

“…Consequently, frequent monitoring maintains the sense of permanence in connectedness. This provides users with a sense of “perpetual contact” (p. 312, [ 10 ]) and of experientially sharing the social life of their online friends in (near) real-time [ 41 ].…”

Límites a la domesticación: usos obligados, reticencia y austeridad en la apropiación de la telefonía móvil

“…La comunicación familiar es una de las dos razones principales para la adopción inicial (la otra es el trabajo) y la respuesta invariable respecto al uso o función principal es la de comunicarse con los demás integrantes de la familia. 7 El teléfono móvil ha permitido la incorporación habitual de la presencia conectada (Licoppe, 2004) a las rutinas de muchas familias y se da por hecho su existencia y disponibilidad, lo que convierte en una necesidad subjetivamente percibida la conexión permanente (Hjorth, 2009;Mascheroni y Vincent, 2016). Sin embargo, el proceso de apropiación de los teléfonos móviles ha sido y es significativamente más conflictivo que el que se aprecia en el discurso publicitario de las operadoras y en otras textualidades que coinciden con este en el optimismo.…”

Homo prostheticus? Intercorporeality and the emerging adult-smartphone assemblage

“…In practice, Mascheroni and Vincent (2016) found perpetual contact to be constrained by time, space and ways of working around social norms: some participants described rules about phone use at school or during family meals, problems accessing WiFi, or decisions to leave phones in another room for a while. Moreover, fears about missing out and being isolated became less compelling as young people gained autonomy.…”