Digital Culture & Society (DCS)

Modern mundane life is brimming with a variety of data-driven technologies that are supposed to augment the practices they are involved in. As humans bring these technologies into their lives in a process of domestication, they tame them and are simultaneously influenced by their presence. In combining domestication research and an empirical analysis of current, digital, and interconnected media, this issue examines the process of taming with an emphasis on practices. The contributions in this issue explore the use of digitally connected media such as vacuum robots, smart speakers, drones, and kitchen appliances with reference to the domestication paradigm from interdisciplinary perspectives including media studies, sociology, anthropology, and human-computer interaction.

Tim Hector (M.A.) works as a research assistant at the Collaborative Research Center »Media of Cooperation« at Universität Siegen and is a PhD-candidate in applied linguistics. His research interests lie in the field of media and conversation research with a focus on ethnomethodological conversation analysis, media linguistics, domestication theory, and human-machine interaction.David Waldecker (Dr. phil.) is a sociologist and researcher with the Special Collaborative Research Centre 1187 »Media of Cooperation« at Universität Siegen. His research focuses on the sociology of media and technology (esp. of acoustic and digitally networked media), music sociology, cultural sociology, methods of qualitative research, and social theory, esp. critical theory.Niklas Strüver (M.A.) is a PhD candidate at the Collaborative Research Center 1187 »Media of Cooperation« at Universität Siegen. His research is focussed around the sociology of technology and his dissertation explores the sociotechnical relations of voice assistants.Tanja Aal is a research assistant at the Collaborative Research Center 1187 »Media of Cooperation« at Universität Siegen. Here she works in the project A05: »The Cooperative Creation of User Autonomy in the Context of the Ageing Society«. In her doctoral she focusses on (digital) inclusion of vulnerable human and non-human actors by using the Design Justice Framework.