Lessons from our living rooms: Illuminating lockdowns with technology domestication insights

• Main Authors: LIM, Sun Sun, WANG, Yang
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: advocacy; China; COVID-19; families; online research; pandemic; public education; Singapore; Technology domestication; transcendent parenting; Asian Studies; Communication Technology and New Media; Public Health
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/80; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/cis_research/article/1079/viewcontent/Lessons_from_our_living_rooms__illuminating_lockdowns_with_technology_domestication_insights.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

With at least half of humanity under lockdown to arrest the spread of COVID-19 (Sandford, 2020), adults have been working from home and children engaging in home schooling for months on end. Competing for scarce resources such as digital devices, bandwidth, as well as physical and personal space, families have had to contend with rising tensions around the quality of digital engagement, children’s learning abilities, parent-child relationships and overall familial wellbeing. This fraught situation shone the spotlight on the household context of technology use but also enabled us to marshal academic insights to advance advocacy and public education. The pandemic also forced us to confront the limitations of our research approach and adapt our methods to evolving uncertainties. We share our experiences here so that the lessons we learnt may be of help to fellow CAM scholars.