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ABSTRACT
This article investigates the remediating effect of bio-sensing technology on touch practices in the context of parent-infant interaction. We examine how the entry of a biosensing technology into the social, sensory and technological ecology of family homes interacts with the ways in which parents and babies know each other and communicate through touch. The paper centres on an exploratory case study of the Owlet Smart Sock (OSS), a bio-sensing baby monitoring device. We bring the social critical and experiential lenses of multimodality and sensory ethnography to studying the OSS as a socio-technological probe across a range of research encounters, including focus groups, home visits and video re-enactments with parents. In doing so, we provide an account of the ways in which the technology affects how babies and parents’ bodies are (re)imagined, assessed, controlled, interrelated, experienced, and cared for and move beyond generic social debate around the quantified-objectified baby and fears of touch deprivation in contemporary digital culture.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Notes on contributors
Kerstin Leder Mackley
Kerstin Leder Mackley is a Senior Research Fellow on IN-TOUCH, at UCL Knowledge Lab. Her research interests are in sensory and visual ethnographic research approaches as applied to the study of everyday experiences and activities, emerging technologies and design futures. She has been a Research Associate on a number of projects, recent publications include Making Homes: Ethnography and Design (2017) with Pink, Moroşanu, Mitchell and Bhamra.
Carey Jewitt
Carey Jewitt is Professor of Learning and Technology at UCL Knowledge Lab. Her research interests include technology-mediated interaction, touch communication, multimodality, and methodological innovation. She is Director of IN-TOUCH and has led a number of large research projects on methodological innovation, most recently MODE ‘Multimodal Methods for Researching Digital Data and Environments’ (MODE.ioe.ac.uk). Carey is a founding Editor of the journal Visual Communication (Sage), and her recent publications include Interdisciplinary Insights for Digital Touch Communication (2020) with Price, Leder Mackley, Giannoutsou and Atkinson, and Introducing Multimodality (2016).
Sara Price
Sara Price is Professor of Digital Learning at UCL Knowledge Lab. Her research interests focus on the design, development and evaluation of emerging digital technologies for learning, teaching and training with attention to embodiment, how sensory and bodily interaction can be mediated through digital technology, and the role of this in supporting new ways of thinking and meaning making. She has led a number of research projects, and is Co-I on ‘WeDraw’ (EU) and ‘Move2Learn’ (Wellcome Trust, ESRC, NSF). Sara’s recent publications include Digital Bodies: Creativity and Technology in the Arts and Humanities, with Sue Broadhurst (2017).