Going Digital: Digital tools and the study of everyday home life
Tjerk Timan and Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs
In uncovering everyday futures, the Internet is a potentially vital place to investigate the experiences and expectation of home life. The home is a key site to understand and intervene in futures-in-the-making, being a critical space of consumption and a place in which everyday practices and norms are
(re)produced. Notably, online methods allow a window into the privacy of the home (i.e. written and visual media) and ease the process of data collection for cross-cultural comparisons. We explore the utility of home improvement forums for understanding expectations of (near) future homes, comparing desired futures by householders in the Netherlands and UK. Importantly, this paper offers a methodological reflection of innovative online methods for studying everyday futures. Download full PDF