The VCR, the computer and the telephone, each in their different ways provide (or fails to provide) a route for the consumption and articulation of publicly generated messages and exchanges that feed back into the household, and, of course, for privately generated messages and exchanges to be circulated in return. (Silverstone et al. 1992, p. 21):
. . . what of cases, such as online communication, where users do not bring technology in from the outside but act through it on the public world? (Feenberg 1999, p. 107)
The difficulty in researching the complexity and contingency of media use research in everyday life is clearly related to the very different characteristics, and growing diversity, of ICTs. Television is more easily
identifiable and thus analysable in terms of the `messages' it offers. How, however, should we interpret the `messages' of mobile phone conversa- tions? They exist (and are to some degree analysable), but they are mostly interpersonal forms of communication, their `content' is not meant to be public in the same sense as that of television.14 This
difference does not, however, relieve us from recognizing the impor- tance of the content in relation to the context in relation to the object. Similar questions and difficulties arise in terms of the internet, which offers an array of diverse applications, services, communication and information channels, and so on. What gets lost here (among other things) is the felt simultaneity of social experience that broadcasting ± and to some extent also print media ± still offered. This question of shared common time (Morley and Silverstone 1990, pp. 40±4) is not pre- given any more to the same extent. Thus the notion of publicness changes. So-called virtual communities might offer alternative spaces of communal identification ± potentially with stronger social ties than the still abstract social simultaneity of broadcasting ± but this needs an active commitment on the user side: a conscious effort to take part. All this is part of the research process.
One interesting approach to the complexity has come from Leslie Haddon (2001). In a paper on domestication and mobile telephony he suggests that a lot of what could be labelled `domestication theory' can actually be found in diverse existing research projects ± only it is not always called domestication. Haddon starts from the premise that indeed mobile technologies and social networks beyond the home pose a challenge to the domestication concept as it has been thought thus far. But the research he then finds on these issues seems to suggest to him that the continuation of this research tradition is already in place. Similarly, I would like to suggest that a first answer to the plea for a return to the double articulation ± as well as an attempt to understand an increasing array of media technologies ± could best be covered by bringing together existing research on the diverse aspects of use ± both in terms of technologies and texts. As a matter of illustration, I refer briefly to two examples (both of which actually use the domestication concept). The first comes from Rich Ling and Kristin Thrane (2001). In their research on electronic media in Norwegian homes, they begin from the premise that a more dynamic approach than the existing domestication concept is needed to analyse media research in the home today (Ling and Thrane 2001, p. 6). They thus extend what they perceive as too linear a model and add `physical zones' (for the display of technology), `personal spheres' (in which individual use management, often in temporal matters, comes into play) and `rules' (which guide the overall use and express family `ideologies' around ICTs) to the existing model. In
the analysis of their interview material, Ling and Thrane do not go much beyond the kind of descriptions and analyses that other domestication approaches have also provided, that is, there is no detailed analysis of the second articulation. However, through defining the zones, spheres and rules, they add new dimensions on how to organize research material. Different degrees or versions of the second articulation might, for example, become relevant in the personal spheres in contrast to the shared physical zones (and exactly where they do not overlap). Ling and Thrane also point to the combination of individualization and mobility (ibid., p. 35) that makes a more differentiated analysis scheme necessary. A greater challenge to the existing concept ± although still in reference to it ± can be found in a study of internet use in cybercafes by Sarah Lee (1999). She claims that there is no double articulation, since technologies in cybercafes are not seen as a possession, as `my' objects (ibid., p. 341). What she found instead was the consumption of a communicative experience and of standardized, non-tangible goods (timed access to the net). She thus finds only the second articulation. This picture might change if the customers are regular customers. Here, certain adoption processes could possibly take place (someone might choose the same computer every time, for diverse reasons). Things get more complicated also when we think of, for example, email folders that can be accessed from any computer (depending on the programme one uses). Their arrangement ± although it disappears when one leaves the computer ± can still suggest a certain `material' ownership of the technology, as non-tangible as it might appear. Lee does not provide an analysis of what this possible lack of a strong first articulation of the technology could mean for the engagement of the second level. Does it make a difference? Probably so. But that difference in an increasingly media-saturated world, might need to be explored more fully. The question that remains is whether the processes that are analysed here are then still `domestication' processes.
The above two examples are simply meant to indicate that the expansion to other, existing studies can indeed be fruitful for the reinvigoration of the domestication concept. If nothing else, it seems to underline the problems in researching digital media and their adoption into everyday lives. I want to close, however, with a suggestion that builds on the idea that the domestication concept actually provides a useful concept for analysis today ± especially if we take the double articulation seriously.