'Connected presence' in distributed family life

Abstract

Concurrent with the explosive pervasion of information and communication technologies in recent years, mediated communication has gained a strong position in the daily interaction between family members. Based on the results of qualitative interviews with families in Denmark, this article shows how the mobile phone is used by parents and children to mediate a feeling of closeness while they are physically separated. This practice of `connected presence' is based on frequent calls and text messages between parents and children as well as between parents themselves. The article also analyses families' use of the mobile phone in the context of modern family life, emphasizing the importance of the temporal and spatial dispersion of family members in explaining the form and content of intra-familial mediated communication. Finally, the dual role of media technologies (including the mobile phone) in both integrating and dispersing families is discussed.

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