“She’s the communication expert”: digital labor and the implications of datafied relational communication

Lai, Signe Sophus

doi:10.1080/14680777.2021.1998181

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Future research should further examine how mobile applications affect the division of care labor among institutions, like families and daycare centers, as well as within the family itself. This is especially pertinent as literature on digital parenting already suggests that transcendent parenting may disproportionately affect women, providing them with a new, digital, shift (Lai, 2021; Lim, 2019). These questions, too, will benefit from an approach that does not position care and technology as opposites and that focuses instead on the actual practices and care collectives (re)produced via mobile communication.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Going above and beyond? How parent–daycare mobile communication reconfigures the time and space dimensions of parenting

Andelsman Alvarez,

Meleschko

2023

Mobile Media & Communication

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How does the use of parent–daycare mobile communication applications reconfigure the emplacement and timing of parenting? In what ways, if any, do parents’ practices challenge the distinction between warm care and cold technology? Based on 35 interviews with 18 parents, we identified 4 ways in which Aula, Denmark's parent–daycare app, reconfigures the time-space dimensions of parenting. While parents and children are apart, mobile communication via Aula allows parents to “plan ahead,” and “synchronize” expectations and schedules with those of their children and the daycare center and “look back” on their children's time away. In addition, communication via Aula enhances co-presence. Overall, this paper's findings offer an alternative to views that oppose technology and care, showing how mobile communication may reshape responsibility for childcare in the welfare state.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Going above and beyond? How parent–daycare mobile communication reconfigures the time and space dimensions of parenting

Andelsman Alvarez,

Meleschko

2023

Mobile Media & Communication

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“…For example, Fast (2021) introduced the rhetoric of the Post-digital housewife who is intentionally gendered and "predominantly occupied with watching and manipulating the (imagined) boundaries of "the web" (2021: 1622). Similarly, through the concept of 'relational communication' and her notion of the 'digital shift', Lai (2021) showed the historical continuity of (gendered) social roles and expectations within digital labor, highlighting the unequally distributed digital care work necessary to maintain relations. Those that carry this responsibility may not even have the freedom to disconnect or may need to invest much more effort and resources to do so equally (Portwood-Stacer, 2013).…”

Section: Digital Disconnection As Care Work: a Gendered Responsibility?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given that just like any other form of well-being, digital well-being necessitates a type of care in order to maintain it, it is important to question whether digital disconnection is taking on the characteristics of care work, falling subject to the same logics (Beattie, 2020;Fast, 2021;Lai, 2021). In this study we examine how digital disconnection is represented and ideated in marketing discourses on websites selling a form of digital disconnection, as such discourses often reveals which underlying values are ideated in society (cf.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who cares about digital disconnection? Exploring commodified digital disconnection discourse through a relational lens

Van Bruyssel,

De Wolf,

Vanden Abeele

2023

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Med

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Digital disconnection has risen as a new and necessary act of care that individuals perform to counter the burdens associated with 24/7 connectivity. Resources to perform such caring tasks, however, are known to be unequally distributed. Leaning on feminist theory and digital disconnection studies, this study explores whether this unequal distribution also extends to the realm of digital disconnection by examining who is portrayed to care about digital disconnection in marketing communication of digital disconnection products and services. Through a critical discourse analysis, we find that digital disconnection is foremost presented as an individualized responsibility, meaning that the particular responsibility to (re-) gain control, focus and productivity, lies with the individual user. This responsible individual is feminized in most communications, except for highly masculinized, entrepreneurial-oriented forms of commodified digital disconnection. Overall, our analysis highlights how stereotypical gendered caring roles and processes of individual responsibilization are reinforced in commodified digital products and services. To breach this vicious circle, we argue that it is crucial to bring awareness to the essentialness of digital disconnection care work to ensure that disconnection opportunities and responsibilities are not dictated by social inequalities generated by neoliberal logics.

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“…While the study of gendered dimensions of digital labour has been established as a research agenda, the consequences of women's digital labour merit further attention (Lai, 2021). Specifically, we need more knowledge of how experiences of gendered digital labour interact with other experiences of the subjects performing such work.…”

Section: Onlife Experiences Of Women In Gamingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Onlife intersectionalities as flows of playbour: The case of women in gaming

Just

Storm²,

Bukuru

2023

Media, Culture & Society

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Digital capitalism troubles classical notions of contextual singularity and agential unity and destabilises delineations of online and offline realities. Following Floridi, this paper applies the concept of ‘onlife’ for the ‘new experience of a hypermediated reality’, and we contribute to the understanding of this experience by highlighting the socioeconomic entanglements of users’ self-expression and technological corporations’ profiteering. We introduce the notion of onlife intersectionalities, where intersectionalities are understood as the enactment of identities at the crossroad of gender, race, sexuality, class, etc., and add the dimension of commercial interest to better conceptualise dynamics of empowerment and exploitation. Thus, we suggest that onlife intersectionalities are enacted in and as flows of playbour that produce surplus value through playful activity. Seeking empirical substance for these conceptual relations, we turn to the case of women in online gaming. Focusing on three individual women gamers’ onlife trajectories and flows of playbour, we show how these interact differently for each gamer, leading to more play with higher rewards for some and more labour with less compensation for others. With this analysis, we illustrate the exploitation-cum-empowerment of human subjects under digital capitalism.

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“She’s the communication expert”: digital labor and the implications of datafied relational communication

Cited by 8 publications

References 43 publications

Going above and beyond? How parent–daycare mobile communication reconfigures the time and space dimensions of parenting

Going above and beyond? How parent–daycare mobile communication reconfigures the time and space dimensions of parenting

Who cares about digital disconnection? Exploring commodified digital disconnection discourse through a relational lens

Onlife intersectionalities as flows of playbour: The case of women in gaming

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