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New Media & Society
http://nms.sagepub.com/content/11/3/433
The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/1461444808101620
2009 11: 433New Media Society
Toke Haunstrup Christensen
'Connected presence' in distributed family life
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433
‘Connected presence’ in
distributed family life
TOKE HAUNSTRUP CHRISTENSEN
Aalborg University, Denmark
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.
Key words
everyday life • mediated communication • mobile phones •
modern family life • presence
INTRODUCTION
The use of information and communication technology (ICT) has increased
greatly since the early 1990s, and communication by email, the internet,
mobile phone and Short Message Service (SMS; ‘texting’) has become an
integral part of society and everyday life. By 2007, 95 percent of Danish
new media & society
Copyright © 2009 SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC
Vol 11(3): 433–451 [DOI: 10.1177/1461444808101620]
ARTICLE
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New Media & Society 11(3)
434
families owned one or more mobile phones and the number of text
messages sent by people in Denmark was 10.1 billion in 2006 – an average
of approximately 1850 messages per inhabitant (Statistics Denmark, 2007).
Modern ICT is being integrated into an increasing number of social practices,
contributing to changes in both their symbolic and practical content. Several
studies have focused on these changes and have shown how, for example,
relationships are being maintained increasingly through multiple media such
as the mobile phone, email and the internet in combination with face-to-face
interaction (e.g. Baym et al., 2004); the studies also show how adoption of
the mobile phone has changed the way in which people organize everyday
activities (e.g. Ling and Yttri, 2002).
On the basis of qualitative interviews with families in Denmark, this
article explores the connections between modern family life and mediated
communication between family members. Special attention is devoted to
voice calls and SMS, as the interviews showed that family members preferred
to use the landline telephone, and particularly the mobile phone. The
analytical focus is on the parents, their mediated communication with each
other and with their children, while the communication between children –
and between more distant relatives such as grandparents and grandchildren or
cousins – is not considered. The analyses and discussions are directed by two
questions: what is the form and content of mediated communication between
family members? How is mediated communication related to changes in
modern family life?
To address these questions, knowledge of the symbolic and practical
dimensions of the everyday life of families is essential. Without this
knowledge, analyses of families’ use of mobile phones are decontextualized,
and it becomes difficult to establish an adequate understanding of the web
of interrelated meanings and practices into which mobile telephony is
integrated. As with other technologies, the integration of the mobile phone
into the everyday life of individuals and families involves a double-sided
process of domestication (Silverstone et al., 1992) in which technology
is adapted to everyday life at the same time as everyday life is adapted to
technology (Aune, 1996). Following this line of thinking, this article explores
how mobile phone use for communication between family members is part
of families’ (especially parents’) attempts to manage the increasing temporal
and spatial dispersion of family members and their (individual) activities. A
more detailed description of the ‘distributed family’ is provided later in this
article in order to set the context for the analysis of mobile phone use for
intra-familial communication.
Since the 1990s, much literature has appeared on the use of mobile phones.
It covers a wide range of interrelated subject fields such as the diffusion of
ownership and mobile phone use, studies of the symbolic aspects of mobile
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Christensen: ‘Connected presence’
435
phones and their ‘social history’, the micro-social aspects of usage (especially
mobile phone use in ‘public space’, e.g. Humphreys, 2005), and the changing
experience and organization of activities and interpersonal relations in
everyday life related to mobile phone use (see Brown et al., 2002 and Katz
and Aakhus, 2002 for a comprehensive presentation of studies on mobile
phone usage).
Quantitative studies such as those of Baym et al. (2004) and Wei and Lo
(2006) show how the mobile phone is used to maintain intimate relationships
and to stay in contact with one’s family. According to Wei and Lo, the
mobile phone enhances the ties between family members, with women in
particular relying on ‘extensive use of cell phones to show affection to their
families while on the move’ (2006: 68). The results from Baym et al.’s and
Wei and Lo’s studies are supported by others (including the present study),
indicating that the mobile phone generally plays an important role in relation
to family members’ management of their interpersonal relations.
While quantitative analyses bring important insights into the distribution
and frequency of practices related to mobile phone use, qualitative analyses
based on detailed interviews or field studies help to illuminate the social
dynamics in which these practices are embedded. Based on 17 semistructured
interviews with nine families in Denmark, the aim of this study
is to provide a detailed description of the practices related to intra-familial
communication and how these are integrated into modern family and
everyday life. Drawing on these empirical findings and those of other
researchers, this article shows that frequent mobile phone use creates an
experience of ‘closeness’ or ‘presence’ between family members who are
together physically for only a few hours on a typical day. Thus, mediated
intra-familial communication is part of a continuous affirmation and
reaffirmation of close relations within the distributed family. Licoppe’s (2004)
concept of ‘connected presence’, which emphasizes these phenomenological
implications of mobile phone usage, is introduced and contextualized
within the setting of modern family life. The role of gender differences is
downplayed deliberately, as these have been explored by several other studies
(e.g. Chesley, 2005; Frissen, 1995, 2000; Navarro and Rakow, 1993; Rakow,
1988; Vestby, 1996). Instead, this article focuses on the practices of intrafamilial
mediated communication shared by males and females (fathers and
mothers, sons and daughters).
Before analysing the conditions of modern family life and the practices
of mediated intra-familial communication and how these are interrelated,
a brief literature review of studies on mobile phone use for intra-familial
communication and some methodological reflections are provided in the
following sections.
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436
LITERATURE REVIEW
While much literature has appeared on mobile phone use, there is far less
literature that focuses specifically on families’ use of mobile phones for the
communication and organization of their everyday life. Some studies focus on
the spatial and temporal organization of family members and their activities,
and how this organization is coordinated and recoordinated continuously
through the use of mobile communication technologies (e.g. Frissen, 2000;
Ling, 2004; Ling and Yttri, 2002). Ling and Yttri call this practice ‘microcoordination’,
which is associated closely with mobile phone use for ‘nuanced
instrumental coordination’ (2002: 139).
While these studies emphasize the instrumental dimension of families’
mobile phone use, others broaden the perspective to include the expressive
dimension, i.e. the emotional content of calls and text messages. Studies on
remote parenting appear to be particularly important for an understanding of
parents’ use of communication technologies for ‘taking care’ of their children
while away from home. This concept was developed originally by studies on
the use of landline telephones, and is sometimes called ‘remote mothering’
to indicate that the practice of remote parenting is highly gendered (Navarro
and Rakow, 1993; Vestby, 1996).
According to a Norwegian study on families’ landline telephone use
conducted in the early 1990s by Vestby (1996), the practice of remote
parenting includes elements of both control and care. Parental control is
exercised through calls between parents and children about whether the
children can obtain parental approval for something, while parental care is
practised through what Vestby terms ‘positive control’. An example of this
is a mother phoning her children to find out if they are ‘safely home from
school and if everything is all right’ (1996: 76). As the term ‘positive control’
indicates, the elements of care and control are closely interrelated. Also,
Vestby notes that the expressive dimension is often embedded in calls that,
on the face of it, appear to be entirely instrumental. Therefore, it is important
to recognize the ambiguous content of mediated communication and not to
distinguish too strongly between instrumental and expressive calls.
Families’ mobile phone use also relates to issues or concerns other than
micro-coordination and remote parenting. Most importantly, mobile
phone use provides a general sense of security, which is stated as one of
the strongest motives for purchasing a mobile phone (Ling, 2004; Røpke,
2003). As suggested by Mante-Meijer and Haddon (2001), the issue of
security is probably a part of widespread mobile phone use for handling
the contingencies of everyday life: the occurrence of unplanned and
uncontrollable incidents such as accidents or emergencies, delays or externally
enforced changes in planned activities.
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These studies on micro-coordination, remote parenting and security
contribute important insights into the different dimensions of intra-familial
communication mediated by the mobile phone and landline telephone.
However, the following sections emphasize the importance of studying
not only the single dimensions, but also the broader phenomenological and
micro-social implications of mediated intra-familial communication. It is
argued that each call or text message – whether instrumental or expressive (or
both) in content – contributes to the creation of a general sense of closeness
between family members while they are physically separated.
METHOD
The study is based on qualitative and semi-structured research interviews
conducted during 2004–6 as part of a research project on families’ use of
modern ICT in everyday life. Compared to the questionnaires used in survey
studies, qualitative research interviews are more open to pursue new themes
and ideas that appear during the interview. In the words of Kvale, the semistructured
interview:
has a sequence of themes to be covered, as well as suggested questions. Yet
at the same time there is an openness to changes of sequence and forms of
questions in order to follow up the answers given and the stories told by the
subjects. (1996: 124)
Due to this openness, qualitative interviews are especially suitable when the
intention is to explore everyday practices that are not well understood, and to
uncover new connections that the researcher has not considered beforehand.
Nine families with children living at home participated in the study. They
were selected to ensure a large variation with regard to the family situation:
four of the families were nuclear families, two were single-parent families
and in three families, the parents were in their second relationship with joint
custody of the children from their first relationship. Except for one mother,
all the parents were employed at the time of the interviews.
Seventeen interviews were conducted, as each family (except for one) was
interviewed twice. In the first interview, only one of the parents (the main
participant) was interviewed, while in the second interview both parents (if
a couple) were interviewed. Whenever possible, adolescents also participated
in the second interview, contributing their experience of their own and their
parents’ use of ICT. Each interview lasted between 1.5 and 2 hours and the
participants were questioned about their use of ICT in general. To illuminate
the complex relations between ICT use and the partipants’ everyday life, the
interviews also included more general topics such as how the family organizes
everyday life, the relation between work and family life and the parents’
experience of time at work and at home.
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Although the choice of interview themes was prepared deliberately in
order to include as many ICT technologies as relevant, depending on what
kind of ICT technologies each family and family member used on daily basis,
the use of the telephone (landline phone and particularly the mobile phone)
for communication between family members kept recurring as a main issue
across all families. Therefore, long stretches of the interviews dealt with the
family members’ intra-familial communication through telephone calls and
text messaging.
The empirical analyses presented in this article are based on repeated
readings of the transcribed interviews and condensations of the interview
transcripts into narratives (‘family stories’) that describe the everyday life of
the families and their use of ICT.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The distributed family
The previously mentioned dispersion of family members and their activities
is partly a result of the increasing specialization and spatial distribution of
activities and services in modern society:
[A] characteristic of contemporary society is that we often have a variety of tasks
and appointments spread around a city. One child may be at day care, a second
several miles away in an elementary school. Shopping is off in one direction,
your job is in a second and your dentist appointment is in yet a third. (Ling,
2004: 61)
This distribution of activities in time and space not only results in an
increased need for coordination of family members and their individual and
shared activities (as showed by mobile phone use for micro-coordination),
it also exerts pressure on families’ attempts to build family unity into their
everyday life. Furthermore, spatial dispersion of activities and services is
related closely to the process of individualization, which seems to be one of
the strongest explanations for the emergence of the distributed family as the
modern form of family life. This process can be seen in that ‘each individual
is integrated in more and more as well as stronger and stronger non-familial
activities and organizations or institutions as a representative for himself
or herself only’ (Holter et al., 1975: 76; author’s translation). Each family
member participates in a number of separated domains, of which home and
family is just one: other domains include work, school, daycare, peer groups,
volunteer work, leisure interests and other activities outside the home. At
the individual level, the division of everyday life into separate domains results
in fragmentation and experiences of domain-conflicts, such as imbalances
between work and family life (Røpke, 2001).
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The dispersion of family members and their activities also takes place at
home. This is probably most visible in relation to the trend of privatization in
children’s access to and use of media technologies: in an increasing number
of dwellings, children’s bedrooms are equipped with a wide range of media
technologies, and they spend many hours alone occupied with different
activities such as playing computer games, surfing the internet, watching
television or communicating with their friends through phone calls, text
messaging and instant messaging. Livingstone (2002), who has described this
trend of privatization in detail, concludes that:
The long-term trend clearly involves moving new screen-based media – the
television in the 1960s, the VCR [videocassette recorder] in the 1980s,
the computer in the late 1990s – away from the main family space of the
living room where they generally start their domestic career, towards more
individualised spaces, particularly the bedroom/play room. (2002: 137)
Thus, growing stocks of individual media technologies, in combination
with the diversification and specialization of consumption (e.g. more
television channels targeting specific segments such as young children,
adolescents and adults), support the individualization of activities at home
(Røpke, 1999). Consequently, the individualization of activities creates a
spatial and temporal distribution of domestic life similar to the dispersion
outside the home. In the words of Gergen: ‘Even within the family,
geographic propinquity now means little. In large measure, each family
member lives a psychologically separated life’ (2003: 105).
Several of the interviewed parents were well aware of the possible
disadvantages of the privatization of their children’s use of media
technologies. For example, one father feared that allowing his teenage
daughters to have their own computers would separate the family members.
Another example was a mother of a 14-year-old girl from a previous
relationship explicitly complaining about her daughter, who spent most
of the time on visits to her mother in front of her laptop, communicating
with friends through instant messaging. The mother felt that it was almost as
though her daughter ‘wasn’t there’ with the rest of the family.
Creating closeness through mediated communication
In order to show how mediated communication between family members
is related closely to how they manage the conditions of modern family
life in Denmark, the following empirical analyses are based on a detailed
presentation of two of the interviewed families. In this way, it is possible
to give a more thorough description of the communicative practices that
involve mobile phone and landline telephone use, and to relate them to the
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way in which these families organize their everyday life and manage their
interpersonal relations.
With regard to family situation and occupation, the selected families differ
from the other interviewed families in two respects: first, they are both
nuclear families and second, all the parents are professionals with demanding
careers. However, these two families’ communicative practices are very
similar to those described by the other families, therefore the following
description is illustrative of how families in Denmark use voice calls and text
messaging in their daily communication.
Nuclear families are still the most widespread family arrangement in
Denmark. By 2008, 73 percent of Danish children (aged 0–17 years) lived in
nuclear families, while 18 percent lived with a single parent (typically their
mother), and eight percent with one parent and their new partner (Statistics
Denmark, 2008). Also, dual-career families are fairly common in Denmark;
by 2004, both parents were employed in 78 percent of all families with
parents aged 25–49 years and with at least one child younger than 13 years
(Statistics Denmark, 2005). Thus, the selected families’ situation – nuclear
families with working parents – is similar to the majority of families in
Denmark.
In this study, the selected families are named the Hansens and the
Paulsons (pseudonyms in order to protect anonymity). Patrick Hansen (the
main participant) is married to Helen. Both are in their early forties and they
have two sons aged 10 and 13. Tina Paulson (main participant) is married to
Jim. Both are around 50 years old, and they have two daughters aged 14 and
17 who participated in the second interview with the family. The table
below summarizes some of the main characteristics of the two families, and
• Table 1 Main characteristics of the interviewed families
THE HANSEN FAMILY THE PAULSON FAMILY
• Live in the countryside, about 100km
from their work in Copenhagen, and
commute by two cars
• Full-time management positions in
private companies, including much
travelling
• Much communication by mobile phone
between the parents themselves and
between the parents and their children
during the day and while the parents
drive home from work
• Patrick and Helen share most of the
domestic work
• Live 30–40km from their work in
Copenhagen. Tina commutes by train and
Jim by car
• Tina works part-time (30 hours per
week) as a journalist; Jim has a full-time
management position in a private trade
organization, which includes some business
travelling
• Tina communicates much by phone and
mobile phone with her daughters during
the day
• Tina has main responsibility for domestic
work
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shows some of the main differences and similarities in their conditions of
everyday life.
Patrick Hansen works from home one or two days a week, supported by
ICT such as the landline telephone, mobile phone, computer and broadband
internet connection. From home, Patrick participates in ICT-mediated
meetings with colleagues of the multinational company for which he works.
While Patrick and his wife Helen often work from home in the evenings
and the weekends, the parents of the Paulson family rarely work from home.
The following goes into further detail about the families’ use of the telephone
(mobile and landline) for intra-familial communication. (All interview
excerpts have been translated from Danish to English by the author.)
Mediated communication between family members
Each member of the two families has their own mobile phone, which is used
daily. None of the families use email for intra-familial communication on a
regular basis. Only occasionally does one parent send short notes by email
about work-related issues that might be of interest to the other. The rare
use of emails for intra-familial communication is in accordance with most of
the other interviewed families; in only one family do the parents send short
email greetings such as ‘how are you?’ to each other on a daily basis and
while at work. The interviews point to several reasons why internet-based
media such as email and instant messaging are seldom used for intra-familial
communication: first, communication by email and instant messaging implies
easy access to computers and the internet, which is only the case for parents
with much screen-based work. Second, some of the interviewed parents
(e.g. Patrick and Helen Hansen) associate email with work-related and
formal communication, and therefore find the mobile phone more suitable
for family-related contact. Finally, the choice of the mobile phone for intrafamilial
communication should be interpreted in light of the parents’ and
children’s different media preferences; whereas email is used predominantly
by the parents (and almost never by the children interviewed), the opposite is
true with regard to instant messaging.
Both the Hansen and Paulson families use their mobile phones for frequent
communication between parents and children. The two Paulson daughters
call their mother several times a day while she is at work. More rarely, they
send her text messages (both Tina and Jim find text messaging inconvenient
and often forget to look for new messages). The two Hansen sons call their
parents several times during the workday or send text messages. In both
families, it is the youngest of the children who makes most of the calls,
which is in line with the observations made by Ling and Yttri (2002) that the
frequency of calls between parents and children is highest when the children
are young and decreases as they grow older and become more independent.
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Indeed, some of the adolescents participating in the interviews explained
that to some degree they found calls and text messages from their parents
annoying, which indicates that parental calls can be interpreted by adolescents
as interfering and challenging their desire for independence.
Patrick Hansen explains how the children often call him and his wife about
‘just ordinary everyday things’. Most of his examples are about situations
where the children ask for permission to do something:
If he [Albert] can have a piece of chocolate, if they [Albert and his brother] can
make themselves a cup of cocoa. It can also be about things such as whether
they can invite their school friends home. It’s a lot of these just ordinary
everyday practical things. The most exotic thing I have experienced was that he
[Albert] had seen something in a sales brochure – [and] he couldn’t explain [to
me] what it was. So I asked him to take a picture of it [with his mobile phone]
and send it to me. He did so and then I could see what he was talking about.
Patrick and Helen often call their children to ensure that everything is fine.
They call them in the afternoon ‘just to hear whether they have had a safe
journey home’ and to ‘check that everything is all right’, as Patrick explains.
These examples are in accordance with the earlier-mentioned studies, which
demonstrate security to be one of the strongest motives for mobile phone
use. On a more general level, frequent calls help to establish relationships
of ‘mutual accountability’ and trust through ‘gathering information about
the physical, social and psychological conditions’ of the interlocutor (Green,
2002: 32).
That calls between parents and children include elements other than
security and mutual accountability can be seen in Patrick and Helen Hansen
often calling their children about ‘practical things’: while driving home from
work in the afternoon, they call their children to hear ‘if there is anything
that is needed’ and that they should buy. Besides the practical dimension of
coordinating the afternoon shopping, these calls illustrate how parents use the
mobile phone to express their concern for their children’s needs and desires at
a distance. Similar examples of both instrumental and expressive calls are found
in Tina Paulson’s description of her daughters’ daily calls while she is at work:
They call me about, now they’re on their way home [from school] or, ‘Can I
go home to so and so’s house?’ All sorts of practical things – ‘Will you buy this
and that’ – all such small things, right … Especially when they were younger,
they also called me if they were miserable or if they had problems or things
like that. If I’m in here [at the office] in the evening, then I call them and say
goodnight, of course [laughs]. Things like that, right … That is something I
appreciate very much.
They call me if something has happened, ‘Now, listen to this, I got 10 [grade in
school, comparable to the B grade in the USA] in this or that exercise’ – they
can’t wait until I get home. Or, if something has gone haywire – they have
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fallen out with someone, or the mobile phone has been stolen or – so many
things happen.
That calls between parents and children cover a wide range of issues is
shown by the youngest daughter Linda Paulson’s account of the calls that she
receives from her parents during the afternoon on a typical weekday:
Mum is the first who calls, ‘Hi, I’m still at work – I’ll be at home about six
o’clock’, and then a little later Dad calls, ‘Hi, have you had a nice day [in
school]? I’ll probably be at home about seven o’clock’. And then a little later
Mum calls again, ‘Hi, I’m coming home in a half hour’ and then Dad calls, ‘I’ll
be home in 20 minutes’.
Linda and Tina Paulson’s stories illustrate the numerous elements
comprised by landline telephone and mobile phone communication between
parents and children: the parents’ expressive calls showing attentiveness
to their children (e.g. ‘Have you had a nice day’ and ‘saying goodnight’),
securing mutual accountability through information about the physical and
psychological conditions of the interlocutors (e.g. ‘I’m still at work’ and
‘Have you had a nice day’), sharing exciting or disturbing experiences (e.g.
‘I got 10’ or ‘if something has gone haywire’), parental control (e.g. children
asking for their parents’ permission to visit friends) and micro-coordination
(‘I’ll be home in 20 minutes’).
The parents in the two families also call each other regularly. Patrick and
Helen Hansen often have long conversations on the mobile phone in the
afternoon while driving home from their workplace in Copenhagen. Patrick
explains that they talk about ‘everything, from practical things to work’.
They use each other as ‘sparring partners’, as they both hold management
positions and therefore experience similar types of situations and management
problems. As a result, they often discuss how to deal with specific conflicts
and problems at work while driving home. Their conversation usually
continues after arriving home at more or less the same time.
Tina Paulson and her husband also call each other during the daytime.
Their calls can be about recoordinating schedules (if something unexpected
has happened to one of them) or to give ‘important news’, as exemplified
by the following excerpt from the interview with Tina. Jim had been at a
medical examination and Tina had to work overtime:
My husband called. He had been at a medical examination and he told about
how it went. And a little later he called [again] and told me that he would go
on a golfing trip in April. No, it was me who called him ... and that [her phone
call to her husband] was in relation to this thing that I would be late, and who
should buy food [go shopping] and things like that .... He said that he was [still]
at work. And then I said, ‘Well, couldn’t we just take something or other [to
eat] at home’ and he said that he would get a Chinese takeaway.
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• Table 2 Situations and issues related to calls and text messages between family members
CALLS BETWEEN PARENTS AND THEIR CHILDREN CALLS BETWEEN PARENTS THEMSELVES
• Asking for permission: the younger children in
particular often call their parents to ask for their
permission for something (e.g. to invite friends
home)
• Solving unexpected problems: children call their
parents if something unexpected happens (e.g. if
they miss the school bus). Also parents call their
children if something unexpected changes their
plans
• ‘How is it going’: a number of calls are made for
apparently no reason other than ‘just to hear how
it’s going’
• ‘Exciting news’: children sometimes call their
parents if something exciting has happened to
them
• Daily planning: calls related to the planning and
coordination of the everyday life of the family
and its members (e.g. children who want to be
picked up by a parent)
• ‘Personal problems’: children calling their
parents if they are miserable, angry, frustrated or
emotionally shaken
• Greetings: parents away from home in the
evening or at night call their children to say
‘goodnight’
• Daily planning: calls related to
planning and coordination on a
day-to-day basis (e.g. coordinate
dinner and shopping)
• Work-related calls: calls related
to the parents’ professional
occupations and interests
– primarily done by professionals
with similar occupations or job
situations
• ‘Exciting news’: some parents call
each other if something exciting or
extraordinary has happened
• Greetings: calling each other to
say ‘goodnight’ or ‘good morning’
(if one of the parents is away
from home). Three of the seven
interviewed couples also send daily
text messages explicitly expressing
their mutual love and devotedness
(e.g. ‘I love you’)
In summary, mediated communication between parents and between
themselves and their children covers a wide range of issues. To show this
great variety, Table 2 summarizes the situations and issues related to calls by
mobile phone and landline phone as well as text messages, as represented
in the interviews with the families in Denmark. Some of these calls or text
messages are clearly instrumental (e.g. ‘daily planning’) or expressive (e.g.
‘greetings’) in content, while others seem to be both (e.g. children ‘asking for
permission’ and ‘solving unexpected problems’). The table is not an attempt
to create a typology of calls between family members, as it does not show
the full complexity of communicative practice between family members. In
addition, each call often involves several of the listed elements within the
same conversation.
Transcending physical separation through ‘connected presence’
In their book, The Social Construction of Reality, Berger and Luckmann note
that the face-to-face situation forms the basis for social interaction and
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social relations; it is the ‘prototypical case of social interaction’ (1966: 28)
from which all other forms of communication can be derived. With the
proliferation of personal and portable communication technologies, the
question arises as to what degree this challenges the position of the face-toface
situation as the prototype of social interaction. According to Fortunati
(2005), ICT use undermines the role of face-to-face (or body-to-body)
communication as the primary mode of social interaction and blurs the
boundaries between mediated and non-mediated communication. Fortunati
also points out various dynamics in modern society that intensify this process,
including the growing fragmentation of sociality in the shape of an extension
of the individual’s social network, and the increasingly separate paths of
individuals.
As shown by the previous section on family members’ mobile phone
use, the adoption and use of new ICT technologies changes intra-familial
communication by integrating mediated communication as an inseparable
part. However, the interviews also indicate that physical co-presence remains
the bedrock on which close relationships are built. In the Danish context,
dinner situations in particular play an important role in the everyday life
of families. All the interviewed families keep their daily evening meal as a
significant institution and individual activities are coordinated so that the
family members can manage to gather around the table. Similarly, for some
of the participants (for example, Tina Paulson), morning situations play an
important role and the parents (most typically the mother) rarely leave home
before their children. Also, holidays are regarded as valuable by most of the
families; for example, the Hansen parents regard holidays as an opportunity
to escape their hectic and tightly planned everyday lives and experience an
intense feeling of togetherness.
Thus, evening meals, morning situations, holidays and other more or less
regular situations of physical co-presence during weekdays and weekends
still form the basis for vivid and close family relationships. This said, the
interviews also show that mobile phones play a decisive role in families’
daily communication, and that mediated and non-mediated modes of
communication are highly intertwined. Therefore, it is necessary to include
mediated interaction in our understanding of family members’ management
of their interpersonal relations.
Working from an interactionist and constructivist perspective, Licoppe
(2004) describes relationships as basically grounded in constantly recurring
interactions which, besides physical co-presence, also include mediated
interaction. With regard to the latter, Licoppe notes that ‘[each] of these
mediated interactions reactivates, reaffirms and reconfigures the relationship’
(2004: 138). In total, the recurring interactions – co-present or mediated –
assume the metaphoric form of a ‘continuous conversation’, and in a ‘partly
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446
autonomous private sphere, strong bonds are reaffirmed and experienced
through series of interactions’ (2004: 145).
Thus, mediated communication plays an increasingly important role in
contributing to the continuous production and reproduction of the close
and intimate relations of the family. Modern families adopt new technologies
such as the mobile phone and use them intensively for intra-familial
communication while they are physically separated during most of the day.
Mobile phones are used for practising micro-coordination, remote parenting
and parental control, expressive conversations, sharing experiences with other
family members or merely seeking personal contact with those absent (e.g.
the children of the Hansen family who call their parents to hear what they
are doing). However, more importantly: whether instrumental or expressive
in content, mobile phone use creates an experience of presence or closeness
between family members, which transcends their physical separation.
Although there are important exceptions, frequent and short calls with a
seemingly instrumental content dominate the mediated communication of
the families interviewed. Exceptions include expressive conversations such as
Tina Paulson’s daughters, who occasionally make longer calls to their mother
if they feel miserable or have had a quarrel with their sister or best friend.
The flow of short calls corresponds to what Licoppe denotes as ‘connected
presence’ or the ‘connected mode of interaction’:
It is through the frequency and continuity of this flow – in which the fact of
calling counts at least as much if not more than which is said, and in which a
presence is guaranteed by expressing a state, feeling, or emotion rather than
by constructing a shared experience through relating past events and giving
one’s news – that the strength of the interlocutors’ mutual engagement in the
relationship is guaranteed. (2004: 152)
Thus, even the shortest and most instrumental call contributes to the
continuous flow of interaction that keeps intimate relations between family
members alive, and the concept of connected presence helps to draw
attention to the experience of interpersonal closeness engendered by families’
landline telephone and mobile phone use. Connected presence is related
as much to the form (characterized by frequent and mostly short calls and
text messages) as to the content of the conversations conveyed by these
technologies. Taking into account the empirical findings from the interviews,
connected presence seems to consist of two core elements, which are closely
connected and to some extent indistinguishable:
• presence at a distance – carrying the mobile phone means at least
in principle having closest family continually within reach. In using
the mobile phone, family members keep each other up-to-date with
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changes in their individual plans and to some extent also share their
individual experiences; and
• continuous reactivation and reaffirmation of strong bonds – whether
instrumental or expressive in content, each call or text message
reaffirms the close relations between family members and contributes
to the continuous conversation that is the foundation of close and
meaningful relationships.
Although mediated communication has for many years played an important
role in the maintenance of family interpersonal relations (as shown by earlier
studies on landline telephone use for remote parenting), the introduction of
the mobile phone has brought a significant rise in the frequency of mediated
interactions between family members; today, the communicative practice of
connected presence plays an important role for the continuous reproduction
of the family’s intimate relations.
Connected presence and the distributed family
To contextualize the communicative practice of connected presence, it is
important to note that creating a feeling of closeness through mobile phone
use is just one of several strategies employed by parents to manage the
conditions of modern family life, produce and reproduce strong bonds and
maintain the family as a unit. Busy parents in particular, such as the Hansens
and Paulsons, seem to be attentive to the latent tension between, on the one
hand, devoting considerable amounts of time and energy to a professional
career and, on the other, being an attentive and caring mum or dad as well
as wife or husband. The domain of work with its long hours and, as in the
case of Patrick and Helen Hansen, many business trips, contribute to the
fragmentation of family life. For Helen Hansen, these work-related activities
challenge her idea of what it means to be a family:
It’s very much like ‘when Mum gets home, Dad is leaving’ [refers to a popular
Danish tune from the 1970s] and vice versa … Some times are even worse
than others … We can have up to three weeks where we [Patrick and Helen]
virtually don’t see each other, except on weekends.
The diversity of strategies employed by parents to create a feeling of
presence or closeness between family members who are not physically
gathered or occupied in a shared activity can be illustrated by the following
example from the Hansen family. When working in the evenings, Patrick and
Helen prefer to sit with their laptops at the kitchen table while their children
often sit on the sofa in the living room watching television. A hallway with
opposite doors separates the kitchen and the living room. Shortly before the
interviews, Patrick and Helen had deliberately repositioned the furniture
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448
in the kitchen and the living room to create a visual link between the two
rooms. Now, they can work at the kitchen table and have visual contact with
their children watching television in the living room.
By establishing a visual link, Patrick and Helen tried to develop an
experience of presence even when several metres and different activities
separate them and their children. Similar examples of presence mediated by
material objects, visual links between rooms or the use of communication
technologies can be found in all the interviews. However, these strategies are
most prevalent among families with career-oriented parents, who typically
have irregular working hours and spend more time on work than other
parents.
The scattered distribution of family members and their individual activities
in time and space creates tension between the everyday life conditions of the
distributed family, the ideology of the family as a unit, and parental injunctions
that prompt parents to engage continuously and extensively in their children’s
upbringing and everyday life. Establishing a sense of togetherness and unity
through the communicative practice of connected presence represents one
way of managing this tension. Vestby (1996) reached similar conclusions in her
study of Norwegian families’ landline telephone use:
Members of modern families spend considerable time and resources outside the
home, making lots of appointments and arrangements. Thus, the ‘appointment
family’ … has to construct social gatherings and to build family unity into their
everyday lives. As a consequence, interaction between the family members
is characterized by independent actions and unifying processes, in which the
telephone plays an important role. The telephone has a function in the unifying
processes because its incorporation into family life facilitates the capacity of the
family to sustain itself as a social entity. (1996: 78)
Dual-career families in particular experience this tension, and Vestby’s
study shows how the landline telephone was employed by these families as a
means to manage this conflict through the practice of remote parenting. The
adoption of mobile phone use has enhanced this practice dramatically and
developed it into a generalized practice of keeping the close relations between
family members active throughout the day. Today, the communicative
practice of connected presence is grounded in numerous calls and is not
restricted to the cross-boundary communication between parents at work and
children at home; voice calls and text messages criss-cross the distinct domains
of children and parents as well as of the parents themselves.
CONCLUSION
This article suggests that we are witnessing the emergence of new ways of
managing interpersonal relations within the family that would have been
inconceivable 10 to 15 years ago. First and foremost, these new ways are
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449
enabled by the mobile phone; second, they are prompted by the general
trend of spatial and temporal dispersion of family life and by parents’
perpetual attempts to juggle the conflicting ideals imbued in our modern
understanding of parenthood, family life and individuality. Mobile phone
use has become an integral part of the everyday life of modern families and a
central element in parents’ attempts to create a ‘good family life’.
The main aim of this article has been to explore how a new practice of
mediated communication, which constitutes a feeling of presence-at-adistance
between family members, seems to be emerging. As mentioned
previously, based on frequent calls and text messaging, this practice
of connected presence contributes to the continuous reactivation and
reaffirmation of the strong bonds between family members and comprises
elements of parental care and control, security and mutual accountability
and micro-coordination. Although not an entirely new practice, the
massive diffusion of portable and personal communication technologies
seems to enhance dramatically the significance of mediated communication
between family members, resulting in an intertwinement of mediated and
non-mediated interaction. However, the question arises as to whether
mobile phone use to create connected presence enables in the end further
intensification of the very same conditions of modern family life to which
it is a response. Could it be that in the long run, the omnipresent possibility
of creating a feeling of presence-at-a-distance actually assists a continued
dispersion of family life? It would be interesting for future studies to explore
the possible existence of this kind of mutual relationship between the use
of personal and portable communication technologies and the changing
conditions and forms of modern family life.
Interestingly, the interviews showed how this kind of dialectical
relationship is embedded in the family members’ use of media technologies.
At the same time that ICT use helps parents and children to create an
experience of closeness through the practice of connected presence, the longterm
trend of individualized access to and use of these technologies distributes
family life and separates family members, even at home. This tension between
ICT ‘bringing together the family’ versus ‘distributing family members’ was
expressed by the participants’ ambivalent attitude towards children’s use of
media technologies. It would be interesting if future studies could explore this
tension in greater detail.
Finally, it is important to note that the results and analyses presented in
this article are based on qualitative interviews with a limited number of
families in Denmark. Although the patterns of family life and ICT usage in
Denmark probably resemble other occidental countries, national differences
in, for example, gender roles, ideological understanding of a ‘good family
life’, the labour market and employment conditions (e.g. the extent of
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450
women’s or mothers’ participation in the workforce) and ICT infrastructure
might influence families’ communicative practices. Therefore, future studies
aimed at transferring the ideas and findings presented in this article to other
countries should observe carefully the role of cultural and national differences.
Acknowledgement
The author thanks the editors and anonymous reviewers for their detailed and useful
comments on the manuscript.
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TOKE HAUNSTRUP CHRISTENSEN is a researcher at the Danish Building Research Institute,
Aalborg University. His research interests focus primarily on media use and the interplay
between new technology, social change and the environment.
Address: Danish Building Research Institute, Aalborg University, Dr. Neergaards Vej 15,
Hørsholm 2970, Denmark. [email: thc@sbi.dk]
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