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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Deborah ChambersORCiD
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Nomos, 2020.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
Smart home networked systems promise a mode of comfort, efficiency and convenience that infers the easing of housekeeping chores. They impact on the moral economy of the home in ways we barely understand. Drawing on feminist technology studies and domestication theory, this article investigates how gendered relations are assigned and legitimated in smart home marketing reports and advertisements to enquire whether men and women are invited to participate equally or unequally in smart home technology. This raises questions about hoe promotional texts might influence and circumscribe domestic adoption. An interpretive content analysis of marketing reports and advertisements explains the pedagogic role of smart scenarios in coaxing and coaching households to domesticate I-o-T operated technology. The concept of "agency scripts" is employed to explain how smart actions are conveyed and assigned by promotional texts to activate smart adoption. This enables an enquiry into the values and ideals conveyed in smart home discourses at the commodification stage of domestication and their implications for later stages. We might assume that smart technology democratises the home by fostering gender equality in the organisation of homemaking routines. but a critical study of the narrativization and assignment of smart agency reveals significant gender disparities.
Author(s): Chambers D
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: M&K Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft
Year: 2020
Volume: 68
Issue: 3
Pages: 304-317
Print publication date: 19/08/2020
Online publication date: 18/08/2020
Acceptance date: 08/07/2020
Date deposited: 26/08/2020
ISSN (print): 1615-634X
ISSN (electronic): 1615-634X
Publisher: Nomos
URL: https://doi.org/10.5771/1615-634X-2020-3-304
DOI: 10.5771/1615-634X-2020-3-304
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