Colonizing the home as data-source: investigating the language of Amazon skills and Google actions

Hurel Silva Dias, Louise and Couldry, Nick ORCID: 0000-0001-8233-3287 (2022) Colonizing the home as data-source: investigating the language of Amazon skills and Google actions. International Journal of Communication, 16. 5184 – 5203. ISSN 1932-8036

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Abstract

Multiple domains of life and everyday routine interactions have been targeted as key sites for shaping individuals’ behaviors according to companies’ data extractive expectations, in particular the home. The introduction of Digital Personal Assistants (DPA) such as Alexa and Google Assistant has been one of the ways through which companies have sought to push the frontiers of data extraction into the most private and intimate spaces of everyday life. In this article, we look at how the home has been positioned as a space for data extraction through Amazon “skills” and Google “actions”—programmable apps within the DPA. We conducted a thematic analysis of documents from both companies and present different dimensions through which the home is opened up for data extraction, a process we call the “data colonization” of the home.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/19460
Additional Information:	© 2023 The Author(s).
Divisions:	Media and Communications
Subjects:	H Social Sciences H Social Sciences > HE Transportation and Communications
Date Deposited:	06 Feb 2023 12:30
Last Modified:	24 Oct 2024 22:01
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/118110

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