Paper Info
Title
Digital Touch For Remote Personal Communication: An Emergent Sociotechnical Imaginary
Abstract
This article makes legible emergent social imaginaries of digital touch for remote communication in personal relationships, with attention to digital touch interfaces. It draws on data from rapid prototyping research workshops with apprentice professionals embedded within digital communication. Touch is discussed with respect to four analytical themes: materiality, body, emplacement and temporality. We illustrate how participants' past and present experiences and future visions of remote digital touch thread through these themes and weave together to form a hegemonic, emergent sociotechnical imaginary of digital touch. The article contributes to social debates within digital personal remote communication by foregrounding touch, the material and the sensorial. The article's novel interdisciplinary framework (combining design-based rapid prototyping with a multimodal and multi-sensorial analysis within the frame of the sociotechnical imaginary) also contributes to methodology around future-facing phenomena, prior to the process of their solidification into material, political formations.
Year
DOI
Venue
2021
10.1177/1461444819894304
NEW MEDIA & SOCIETY
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Digital touch, multimodal, multi-sensorial, personal communication, rapid prototyping, remote communication media, sociotechnical imaginary, speculative research, touch
Journal
23
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
1
1461-4448
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Carey Jewitt1446.44
Kerstin Leder Mackley200.68
Sara Price302.37