Abstract
The upgrade of existing houses -through renovation- is imperative to the challenging transition to a less carbon intensive society. At the same time, the extensive use of media and information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the household are building a new normality, in a way that the use of technology is imperceptible to their users. Within this context, renovation, as an ongoing activity can be examined as a mediatised practice, which suggests the interactive transformation of these practices which takes place with and through media and within a cultural setting that cannot be understood without media and ICTs. This paper seeks to understand the role of media and ICTs in home renovation practice as contributors to the low carbon imagining and shaping of homes. The chapter is based on an interdisciplinary empirical Australian study , drawing on theories of practice and mediatisation, to explore the mediatised renovation practices of 13 households. Through home tours and a participatory workshop, we conceptualise renovation as an ongoing homemaking practice, taking place routinely along other everyday activities at home and interwoven with householders’ everyday media practices. We identify media and ICTs as everyday informal intermediaries, who shape, incubate and accelerate the practices of renovation and homemaking, as meaning-making agents, materials and competences. By doing so, we argue that home renovation activities have moved into the digital realm. We demonstrate that new digital communities of renovation practice are replacing the face-to-face networks of informal interaction, and that the home renovators’ communities are now expanding into virtual co-creation platforms. Furthermore, we emphasise that these mediatised home renovation practices contribute to the development of new mediatised domains that could assist in the transition and domestication of low carbon practices and technologies.
Info
Book Chapter, 2023
UN SDG Classification
DK Main Research Area
Science/Technology
