Impacts of new technologies on media usage and social behaviour in domestic environments

Abstract

Technological infrastructure at home is changing continuously and is becoming increasingly interconnected. Media devices, including the TV set, provide access to the Internet and offer manifold opportunities to consume media on demand. Additionally, personal devices, such as smartphones, also enable flexible consumption and sharing of media. Questions about how these technologies change the user's media usage and how these changes affect the social structure of a household, however, remain largely unanswered. In order to gain insight into the adoption of new technologies into daily routines, we explored these changes in respect of people's media usage in a qualitative long-term Living Lab study. We will present findings regarding personal routines, flexible integration of new devices into existing practices, influences on households as social systems and related issues in device access and collective use. We will highlight potentials and conflicts regarding device shifts and roles; restrictions in device access; social influences in the living room; and individual changes in media consumption.

Keywords:

• Living Lab
• diary study
• television
• living room
• media usage
• long-term study

Acknowledgements

We warmly thank all the participants from our 16 Living Lab households for their attendance in this study. We also thank Dave Randall for his helpful comments and linguistic revisions.

Funding

The project ‘SocialMedia’ is funded by the Ministry for Innovation, Science, Research and Technology of the country of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany with resources from the European Union and European funds for regional developments (Ziel 2) (280411902).