Digitization and Memory: Researching Practices of Adaption to Visual and Textual Data in Everyday Life

Abstract

Purpose

To discuss two research projects, illuminating the ways in which digital technologies are both enfolded into people’s lives and open up new possibilities for practice that, in turn, have to be managed. To revisit this material to reflect on the benefits and limitations of in-depth interviewing for understanding the dynamics of new textual and visual forms of data in everyday life.

Approach

A broadly relational approach to technology and practice was employed, pursued through in-depth interviewing in two research projects about digitization and memory making.

Findings

In employing the qualitative method of in-depth interviewing to focus upon what people regularly do, the chapter shows how the material and mediating capacities of networked digital technologies such as cameras and smartphones are enacted and actively negotiated in relation to expectations and conventions about the temporality and visibility of personal life through diverse memory practices. These can be considered multiple ‘practices of adaptation’.

Value

The research reported on provides some novel ways of thinking about devices and data in relation to practice.

Citation

Hand, M. (2014), "Digitization and Memory: Researching Practices of Adaption to Visual and Textual Data in Everyday Life", Big Data? Qualitative Approaches to Digital Research (Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Vol. 13), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 205-227. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1042-319220140000013013