Agency in the Digital Age: Using Symbiotic Agency to Explain Human–Technology Interaction

Abstract

This chapter introduces the authors' symbiotic agency theory and shows how it can address the problems around agency theories developed by communication and media studies as well as in science and technology studies. Communication theories tend to focus on exploring how users construe meaning through reflective and symbolic manipulation of technologies. As such, communication and media scholars have made real progress in moving beyond the former simplistic views of human–technology interaction in which humans are always in control and technologies do not exert influence over their users. Albert Bandura, one of the most influential social–cognitive thinkers, considers human agency a central force in human functioning. The chapter argues that symbiotic agency can be considered as a form of soft determinism encompassing both how technology mediates our experiences, perceptions, and behavior, and how human agency affects the uses of technological artifacts. Symbiotic agency also helps scholars better capture the intimate linkages between human and technical agents.

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