Abstract
This study explores the media imaginaries surrounding home smart cameras in China and how new imaginaries are reflected in individual usage through interviews with parents and analyses of camera advertisements and news stories. Through a sociocultural lens of media imaginaries and local familism, our qualitative analysis identifies five key themes across media discourses and individual practices: tracking risks, maintaining connections, capturing familial affections, disciplining children’s behaviors, and exposing family tensions. We observe a direct alignment between the technological affordances of smart cameras and the cultural values of local familism. We propose the concept of “capturing familism” to encapsulate family life under cameras. This concept underscores that home smart cameras not only reinforce local traditional familistic values but also introduce a reflexive gaze into family life, prompting new reflections on family relationships.
Introduction
State governance in China is intricately intertwined with surveillance capitalism (Huang and Tsai, 2022). According to DataProt (2023), there are 14.3 Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras per 100 citizens in China, fewer than the United States (15.28 per 100), yet significantly more than the United Kingdom (6.18 per 100). While primarily used to maintain public order, such as enforcing traffic regulations, smart cameras are expanding rapidly into family life. More than 20 million home smart cameras were sold in China in 2023 and are increasingly used in households (Shi and Xu, 2024).
This expansion of home surveillance unfolds within a distinct sociocultural context, particularly local familism. Familism refers to “the strong identification and attachment of individuals with their families (nuclear and extended) and strong feelings of loyalty, reciprocity, and solidarity among the same families” (Sabogal et al., 1987: 397–398). It is shaped by local historical and cultural conditions. Chinese familism is characterized by strong familial bonds, obedience to elders, and the prioritization of responsibilities toward the family's collective interests (Yan, 2016, 2021). The convergence of an extensive surveillance infrastructure with a familistic cultural orientation makes China a salient case for examining how surveillance technologies are normalized and integrated into everyday family life.
As surveillance technologies become increasingly embedded in household settings (Dereymaeker et al., 2024; Liu, 2025; Mols et al., 2023), existing scholarship on surveillance capitalism and family life has primarily focused on issues of data security and user privacy. These studies provide valuable insights into capitalist and political forces that drive the proliferation of household surveillance (e.g., Barassi, 2017, 2020; Hasinoff, 2017; Holloway, 2019). However, they pay less attention to how surveillance technologies are culturally imagined and woven into intimate family relations.
The notion of home extends beyond the physical space, as it is also constituted through symbolic and affective meanings (Finch, 2007; Morgan, 2011). Media imaginaries, the symbolic meanings of media technologies, influence how people imagine, adopt, and integrate technology into everyday life (Chambers, 2016). Contemporary media imaginaries of connected families increasingly promote a vision of the “mobile home,” in which family members continuously communicate, access, and share information through mobile technologies (Chambers, 2016). Such imaginaries help construct a sense of belonging and at-homeness (Cabalquinto, 2018).
Through the theoretical lens of media imaginaries and local familism, this study examines the media imaginaries surrounding home smart cameras in China, focusing on how these imaginaries are shaped by social media and reconfigured in local family culture. We analyze smart camera advertisements (ads) and news coverage, alongside users’ surveillance practices within the home. The findings advance understanding of the sociocultural interplay between new technologies and family culture. We propose the concept of “capturing familism” to synthesize these findings, highlighting two interrelated dimensions: the reinforcement of traditional familistic values through surveillance practices, and the growing reflexivity embedded in mediated family affections and relationships.
Media imaginaries and surveillance capitalism
Imaginaries encompass “the creative and symbolic dimension of the social world” as manifested in everyday life (Thompson, 1984: 6). Media imaginaries refer to the sociocultural meanings that surround media technologies, particularly as articulated in popular discourses (Chambers, 2016). Media imaginaries function on two levels. First, they shape public perceptions and facilitate the early adoption of technologies by constructing semiotic meanings around commercial products. Second, as technologies are integrated into everyday life, users adapt and reinterpret them within specific contexts, often generating practices that diverge from their original design and promotional narratives (Chambers, 2016).
Media imaginaries thus shape visions of a mediatized future through the representations embedded in product design, marketing, advertising, and policy discourses. Chambers (2016: 171) coins the concept of “domestic media imaginaries” to describe how media representations of home technologies shape dominant discourses about family life. This concept invites an analytical distinction between media imaginaries as constructed in promotional discourses, such as advertising and news.
Recent household media imaginaries emphasize a global vision of the mobile home, characterized by openness, connectivity, and surveillance (Chambers, 2016). Lyon (2001) defines surveillance as the gathering and analysis of personal data with the aim of influencing or managing the individuals. Surveillance imaginaries refer to the impressions people hold about surveillance and their responses to it (Lyon, 2018). The rise of surveillance culture has its roots in various political and economic factors. For instance, in the early 1990s, the UK government implemented public CCTV systems to combat crime, while media discourse framed surveillance as a means of enhancing safety (Hier et al., 2007).
A feature of surveillance culture is what Lyon (2018) describes as “watching as a way of life.” Across both state governance and household management, surveillance is framed as necessary for ensuring security and optimizing efficiency, often by minimizing risk (Andrejevic, 2005). In China, pervasive public cameras under state surveillance have become an integral part of daily life (Huang and Tsai, 2022; Trevaskes and Bernot, 2023). The surveilled individuals are encouraged to participate in surveillance practices themselves in the name of collective safety (Ollier-Malaterre, 2023).
Surveillance capitalism refers to an economic logic in which personal data are transformed into valuable commodities, with mass surveillance underpinning this process (Holloway, 2019). China represents a prominent case in which surveillance capitalism is closely intertwined with state governance (Huang and Tsai, 2022). In 2010, government initiatives such as Safe Cities (pingan chengshi) and the Skynet Project (tianwang gongcheng) promoted public camera surveillance through discourses of national security, social stability, and public safety. These initiatives established a “digital surveillance infrastructure domestically” (Huang and Tsai, 2022: 26) and aligned with the broader vision of a “Safe and Peaceful China” (pingan zhongguo) (Trevaskes and Bernot, 2023: 331).
Since 2010, a vibrant surveillance technology industry has emerged, with corporate creativity exceeding the state's initial focus on public safety (Huang and Tsai, 2022). The Brightness Project (xueliang gongcheng), launched in 2016, was a key initiative that embedded surveillance technologies across both urban and rural areas, aiming to achieve comprehensive monitoring coverage by 2020 (Huang and Tsai, 2022). This project installed cameras in public areas such as roads, sidewalks, and storefronts, realizing “cross-regional and cross-departmental co-construction, co-governance and sharing” (Trevaskes and Bernot, 2023: 331). It advanced cooperation with state-owned enterprises, such as China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom, and private tech companies, such as Tencent, Xiaomi, Hikvision, and Dahua (Huang and Tsai, 2022). These companies have increasingly targeted consumer markets, promoting home smart cameras as tools for ensuring family safety and maintaining connection (Liu, 2025).
Driven by commercial interests and state agendas, smart camera use has expanded from security-oriented functions to broader applications, including institutional management, home safety, and family communication. Surveillance technologies have also extended into educational settings, with over 90% of primary and secondary schools equipped with surveillance systems by 2021. While initially introduced for safety purposes, these systems have rapidly evolved into instruments of behavioral discipline (Shi and Xu, 2024). Moreover, market imaginaries have shifted from an emphasis on public security to home surveillance, positioning cameras as tools for monitoring children, elderly family members, pets, and domestic workers (Huang and Tsai, 2022; Shi and Xu, 2024).
Parental surveillance in Chinese familism
State forces and commercial advertising shape public desires for technology by shaping media imaginaries. These imaginaries are often intertwined with broader sociocultural values and contribute to the process of “enculturation” (Chambers, 2016: 124). It is therefore essential to analyze not only the functions of technologies, but also how they are integrated into family culture, where they may extend or transform existing family values (Chambers, 2016).
Morgan (2011) emphasizes that family practices are constituted by the fluid interplay of historical and biographical family life. Within this framework, elements such as household time and space, family members, relationships, and everyday activities form the fundamental structure of family life. Similarly, Yan (2021) identifies several key dimensions of family life, including intergenerational relationships and communication, individual identity, familial emotions, and the pursuit of family prosperity. The values attributed to these aspects vary across contexts, shaping different forms of familism.
Familism, as a value system, is prevalent in many cultures and serves as a foundational basis for cultural and political structures, establishing intergenerational and gender-based hierarchies (Yan, 2021). Local familism refers to culturally specific variations shaped by particular historical and social conditions, through which different societies develop distinct forms of familism. In the Chinese context, familism prioritizes collective family interests over individual autonomy, emphasizing loyalty, obligation, compromises, and obedience (Yan, 2021). This familist variation contrasts with individualism, which foregrounds personal rights and self-fulfillment.
In contrast to Western societies, where family intimacy is understood as mutual trust and equality, Chinese cultural understanding of intimacy emphasizes the integration of individual boundaries to achieve a state of undivided closeness (Yan, 2016). For instance, the intensive child-rearing responsibilities foster highly involved parent-child relationships (Chao, 1994). Even in adulthood, children are regarded as “always a child” in the presence of their parents or elders, and are often expected to follow parental guidance in major life decisions, such as career choice or marriage (Naftali, 2016).
Leaver (2015: 153) defines intimate surveillance as “the purposeful and routinely well-intentioned surveillance of young people by parents, guardians, friends, and so forth.” Parental surveillance practices often navigate a tension between care and control (Liu, 2025). Care is frequently seen as a motivation for intimate surveillance. For example, parents may monitor their children to ensure safety and well-being (Dereymaeker et al., 2024). In Western contexts, as scholarship has noted, intimate surveillance technology typically targets infants and young children (Barassi, 2017; Leaver, 2015, 2017). In China, however, such surveillance practices often extend into adolescence, reflecting local sociocultural dynamics.
Parental surveillance in China is closely related to the concepts of kanhu and guan. Kanhu, which means watching and protecting, refers to keeping a close eye on someone to ensure their safety. A common example is, “When children are little, parents watch them in case they fall down” (Hjorth et al., 2020: 71). On the other hand, guan, literally has the dual meanings of “to govern” and “to care for.” It is a parenting style that characterized by discipline, alongside parental support, sacrifice, and care (Wu, 2013; Zhou, 2024, 2025). Children may perceive this approach as an expression of love and warmth, while simultaneously being expected to obey and respect their parents in return (Wu, 2013; Zhou, 2024, 2025).
Under neoliberal constructions of familyhood, increasing responsibility for childrearing is placed on parents rather than on social institutions. In China, this shift has been intensified by the expansion of private education and consumer markets for children, contributing to class-based stratification in educational opportunities (Meng, 2020). Mass media further amplify parenting anxieties by framing childrearing as a domain filled with ambiguity, risk, and constant change. Within the context of surveillance capitalism, the use of surveillance technology in childcare has been legitimized through influencer endorsements and public discourses, normalizing intimate surveillance as a vital component of responsible parenting (Leaver, 2015, 2017).
As noted in the previous section, media imaginaries involving smart cameras in Chinese family settings have become increasingly prevalent. Framed through the theoretical lens of media imaginaries and local familism, this paper addresses two questions: (1) How do ads and news on social media represent imaginaries of home smart cameras? and (2) What new imaginaries emerge in people's everyday use of the cameras? In addressing these questions, this study examines how surveillance imaginaries become embedded in family life and how they reflect, reinforce, or challenge traditional values in Chinese family culture.
Methodology
The data of this study include interviews with parents who used smart cameras at home, as well as ads and news about cameras from a social media platform, Douyin (Chinese version of TikTok, the largest short-video platform in China). Between November 2021 and February 2022, the first author interviewed 12 rural-to-urban migrant parents (two fathers and 10 mothers) who lived in Jiangsu and Shanghai. These participants had installed cameras in their rural homes to monitor their left-behind children (liushou ertong, children who remain in rural areas while their parents migrate to cities for work). One participant was a single parent. These working-class participants were born after 1980, had a high school education or less (except two having attended junior college), and earned less than 100,000 yuan (approximately 14,202 USD) annually.
From February to April 2023, the second author interviewed 12 middle-class parents (two fathers and 10 mothers) in Shanghai who had installed smart cameras in their homes. Most participants (except four) were also born after 1980, held at least a bachelor degree, and reported an average annual household income exceeding 400,000 yuan (approximately 56,810 USD). All middle-class participants lived with their children. We broadly define working-class and middle-class status based on participants’ educational attainment and annual household income. All participants were recruited through the researchers’ social networks and snowball sampling. All participants were between 26 and 50 years old. The profiles of participants are provided in Appendix 1. To protect privacy, pseudonyms are used and participants’ exact ages are not disclosed.
The two interview datasets were derived from separate research projects and did not use the same research protocol. Both studies received approval from the ethics committees of the authors’ respective institutions. The first project examined how migrant worker families use digital technologies in parenting communication, within which home cameras emerged as a relevant practice. The second project focused specifically on parental uses of home smart cameras. Both projects employed semi-structured interviews covering motivations for camera installation, usage practices, user experiences, reflections, and parent-child relationships. Each interview lasted between 40 and 120 min and was conducted in Mandarin. With participants’ consent, we collected over 30 screenshots of smart camera applications.
In July 2024, we collected 15 video ads from Douyin using the keywords “home surveillance” (jiayong jiankong) and “home camera” (jiayong shexiangtou). These ads featured various smart camera brands and were posted by different types of accounts, including company accounts, individual users, and livestream sellers. We selected the first 15 ads that appeared for different brands. These ads averaged 59 s in length, yielding approximately 6000 words and 60 screenshots.
We also gathered 15 news videos from Douyin using the hashtag #A_Scene_Under_Surveillance (#jiankong xia de yimu). These clips depicted diverse family scenarios, which includes different family backgrounds (urban and rural locations) and varied family affections, such as spousal dynamics, parent–child interactions, gender discrimination, intergenerational conflicts, and domestic violence. The selected videos featured footage from within ordinary households. The accounts posting these videos included everyday users, local media outlets, and content-aggregator accounts (yingxiaohao, accounts that re-edit and repost existing materials to attract views). Much of the footage was originally shared by residents and subsequently curated by media and content-aggregator accounts. These news videos averaged 47 s in length and generated approximately 7000 words of data. All ads and news data were manually transcribed in Chinese, with key screenshots captured.
For all four datasets, only the examples and quotes presented in this article were translated into English by the authors. Although the sample size is limited, our extensive fieldwork provides rich contextual insight. This is particularly the case of the news data, which were purposively selected to reflect recurring tensions in Chinese familism as represented in widely circulated news narratives. Using thematic analysis (Creswell, 2013), we systematically examined datasets through iterative coding. Initial codes derived from smart camera functions (Liu, 2025) and core dimensions of family life (Morgan, 2011; Yan, 2016, 2021).
In the first dataset, themes among working-class parents included safety assurance, discipline, evidence recording, elder health monitoring, and alleviation of familial longing. The second dataset revealed middle-class parents focusing on safety, risk mitigation, coordination of care for multiple children, alleviation of anxieties associated with remote work, joint monitoring with spouses, documentation of family moments, reflection on past behaviors, and discipline of children and domestic workers. The third dataset include themes of risk tracking, real-time surveillance and communication, the capturing of familial affection, and spatial management. The fourth dataset focused on the capturing of family moments and discussions of family relationships.
Synthesizing these findings, we developed five overarching themes: tracking risks, maintaining connections, capturing familial affection, disciplining children's behaviors, and exposing family tensions, which informed a comprehensive re-coding of all datasets. Each theme corresponds to a core dimension of family life, including family safety, communication, affections, roles, and relationships.
Findings
Table 1 summarizes the prevalence of different media imaginaries. While limited sample size may introduce randomness, the data suggest potential differences in how surveillance imaginaries are constructed and enacted. Imaginaries that are prominent in ads, such as tracking risks, maintaining connections, and capturing affection, also frequently appear in parenting practices. Conversely, disciplining children, a relatively newer imaginary, was less common in ads and news but more prevalent among middle-class and working-class families. This suggests that disciplinary use is an localized appropriation of surveillance imaginaries, shaped by culturally specific forms of parental surveillance within the Chinese familist context.
Number and percentage of media imaginaries across datasets.
Note: The unit of analysis is the individual case (e.g., media text, interviewee). Numbers in the table represent the total count of cases where a theme appears, while percentages show the proportion within each dataset.
We also observe that media coverage typically emerges after the adoption of home cameras, as user-generated footage is circulated, re-edited, and amplified on social media platforms. This process contributes to the formation of new imaginaries, particularly those related to exposing family tensions. The following sections present our analysis of these themes. We further develop the concept of “capturing familism” to encapsulate our findings in the discussion section.
Tracking risks and maintaining connections
The themes of tracking risks and maintaining connections often appeared together, as both ads and parents consistently referenced them. Smart cameras, typically priced around 200 yuan (approximately 28 USD) each, are marketed with features such as human detection, identification of risky actions (e.g., an elderly person falling), fire detection, and remote access. Some ads highlight intelligent motion tracking, particularly in scenarios involving potential intruders. These systems are equipped with smart alarms designed to deter unwanted entry. This surveillance imaginary frames continuous visual monitoring as crucial for managing risks and ensuring safety, grounded in a vision of absolute visibility (Andrejevic, 2005; Ball, 2009). For instance, influencer Brother Xiaoyang endorsed a 360 AI smart camera during a TikTok live streaming (Figure 1) alongside the CEO of 360 Security Technology Inc, who explained: I’ll give you a few examples: if a child climbs onto a windowsill, which is dangerous; or if an elderly person falls or remains still on the sofa for a long time; or if a pet is running around the house; or if a stranger enters the home, the camera can immediately detect it, alert you, and connect to your phone.
An advertisement of Brother Xiaoyang’s livestreaming with the CEO of 360, promoting a smart camera.
Surveillance capitalism intertwines monitoring practices with notions of care and moral obligation, heightening concerns about modern societal risks (Leaver, 2017). Advertising slogans and news footage depicting moments of danger contribute to imaginaries in which surveillance technologies are seen as capable of preventing accidents and ensuring safety. Children, in particular, are constructed as sites of vulnerability, reinforcing parental obligations to monitor them. In news videos, the footage often captures danger moments involving children, such as a child being left unattended while a mother cooks in the kitchen, leading to near accidents. This media imaginary is also reflected in practice, as evidenced by Yangmu (middle-class mother): If we leave the room or are busy in the adjacent room, we worry about whether she (1-year-old) is safe alone in her room, whether she might cry, or if she could accidentally cover herself with her blanket. As she grows older, I also worry that she might fall off the bed. Therefore, I installed a camera next to her crib so that we can monitor her through the camera when we are away from the room.
An advertisement of smart camera featuring children.
Similarly, influencer Li Jiaqi promoted smart cameras: “A new mother who has recently returned to work may feel a sense of longing for her baby while at the workplace,” reinforcing the idea of consistent presence despite physical separation. In a mobile society where work and home life are often dispersed, discourses of controlling space and time are leveraged to promote surveillance technologies (Hasinoff, 2017; Holloway, 2019). Liangmu (middle-class mother) was an entrepreneur. While their youngest son was 13 years old, she still felt that “When my child is alone at home, the camera serves as a form of companionship.”
Capturing familial affections
Beyond risk mitigation and connectivity, a prominent surveillance imaginary in smart camera ads is the idea that cameras can capture touching familial moments. Advertising slogans such as “divine eye, let love be seen” (shenyan, rang ai kandejian), “preserve the beauty of life” (liuzhu renjian meihao), and “see the everyday, capture touching moments” (kanjian richang, buzhuo gandong shunjian) reflect this orientation.
In an advertisement for Xiaomi’s smart camera (Figure 3), the device is anthropomorphized, narrating its perspective as it watches over the safety of “25 million households.” The camera recounts scenes of familial affections: Every time I open my eyes (camera’s perspective), I always see so many interesting people. I see a master of imitation (scene of a little girl mimicking an adult by putting on lipstick), who loves to look good and act cool (scene of the girl and her parents sharing a warm moment). But when she gets serious, she does it with style (scene of the girl washing clothes, shown in Figure 3). I see this goofy one (a dog), always giving its owner a moment to relax amidst the busyness. I also see them (elderly parents) dancing through life with their ever-young hearts. (A white-collar worker in an office looks at the smartphone and, through the camera, says) “Mom and Dad, you’re amazing!”
An advertisement for Xiaomi’s smart camera.
A news video of a big family hug captured by the camera.
Media representations also highlight the emotional challenges of separation, particularly among left-behind children in rural areas. For instance, a scene showed a young girl repeatedly calling for her migrant mother in an empty yard. This news video captured a touching moment, which evoked sympathy and emotional comments.
In both ads and news, surveillance is framed as a means of preserving and sharing family affection. The ability to record, replay, and share footage ensures that moments of child development are not missed, thereby intensifying familistic values. Parents actively participate in this process by sharing recorded content. Yangmu (middle-class mother) remarked: When friends have babies, I recommend they use these cameras. An unexpected benefit is that the app has a feature for capturing special moments. It regularly captures adorable scenes of the baby, including both videos and photos.
Disciplining children's behaviors
Originally framed around safety and connection, surveillance imaginaries have evolved into tools of disciplinary power (Foucault, 1995; Shi and Xu, 2024). By incorporating smart cameras into home, families create a “digital panopticon” that reconfigures the home into a site of constant behavioral correction. Within the context of Chinese familism, such practices reflect the persistence of traditional family values, specifically the parental obligation to guan children’s behavior (Zhou, 2024, 2025). This form of discipline operates through the monitoring and regulation of everyday routines, often supported by systems of rewards and punishments, such as restricting access to television and smartphones. One advertisement (Figure 5) in our samples depicts a father reprimanding his child through the camera, saying, “All you do is play. Have you finished your homework?” Such representations align with empirical findings that parents frequently use smart cameras to supervise children's study habits and ensure compliance with household rules (Hjorth et al., 2020).
An advertisement of XiaoTun smart camera.
As discussed earlier, the concept of guan reflects parental authority and the expectation of children's obedience (Wu, 2013; Zhou, 2024, 2025). Among both middle-class and working-class parents, this practice of guan within familism frequently manifests. In Confucian parenting, there is a strong emphasis on moral discipline and academic achievement (Lieber et al., 2006). For example, Zhoumu (middle-class mother) remarked, Installing a camera is necessary. For instance, when she (the child) comes home from school and we haven’t returned from work, and the grandmother lacks the authority to guan her, I’ll check in through the camera.
Yanfu (working-class father) similarly relied on surveillance due to perceived limitations in grandparents’ authority. He stated, “If the child doesn’t take his studies seriously now, it will be a problem later.” Reflecting on his own experience of dropping out of school due to insufficient parental discipline, Yanfu expressed concern that his son’s smartphone use might lead to similar outcomes. Yanfu’s purposeful and highly involved parenting reflect a cultural imperative in China that prioritizes educational success across class lines (Gu, 2021). It is also driven by neoliberal notions of parental responsibility, which place the burden of children’s development on parents rather than on public schooling (Meng, 2020).
However, disciplinary cameras also ignite family tensions. For example, Feimu (working-class mother), who worked far away from home, installed a camera to ensure that her daughter returned home safely each day and to alleviate feelings of longing. Once she noticed her child watching television for hours, she reminded her to go to bed. This remote monitoring led to her daughter's dissatisfaction and triggered conflicts. Due to her daughter's strong resistance, the camera was eventually removed.
Exposing family tensions
Family life is not always as harmonious as the affectionate scenes depicted in ads. The popularity of smart cameras has brought many previously concealed family issues into public visibility, contributing to the emergence of new watching cultures (Lyon, 2018). The theme of exposing family tensions reflects emerging practices that diverge from the commercial narratives. This represents an unintended byproduct of camera recording and circulation: a new imaginary of home surveillance as gaze and reflection. Our news data shows that many displayed scenarios involve a scrutinizing gaze on family dynamics, including discussions on spousal relationships, parent-child interactions, gender discrimination, intergenerational conflicts, left-behind children’s problems, and domestic violence.
For instance, one news video shows an older sister attempting to place her younger brother on the sofa but losing her balance and falling to the ground while still trying to protect her brother. The father, upon hearing the noise, rushed over to comfort the brother without caring for the sister. Subtitles in the video read: “The pain on the body cannot compare to the pain in the heart. In this family, I (the girl) am just a burden.” The contrast between the father’s neglect of the older sister suggests underlying gender discrimination. News about domestic violence also frequently triggers public debate and outrage. A content-aggregator account shared a video in which a husband physically assaults his wife in front of their child, accompanied by commentary questioning whether such a family should be preserved (Figure 6). This questioning challenges familist ideals that prioritize stable spousal relationships and the preservation of the family unit. The accompanying caption further intensifies the critique: “The worst part is that the mother-in-law, upon seeing the situation, indifferently picks up her grandson and leaves.”
A scene of domestic violence recorded by a smart camera.
While such cases of domestic violence were not encountered during our interviews, the prevalence of these mediated representations indicates the growing visibility of familial tensions within digital public spheres. This emergent gaze contributes to a broader reconfiguration of surveillance imaginaries, in which cameras are not only tools of care and discipline but also instruments of exposure and critique.
At the same time, surveillance footage can prompt reflexivity within families themselves. Linfu (middle-class father) noted that the camera had unexpected effects. For example, it served as a means of verification, enabling family members to revisit past interactions. He mentioned, “We often use the camera to verify past events. It's not just about enforcing rules for my children, but also about holding myself accountable.” This example illustrates how camera capturing can reshape family dynamics by introducing a retrospective gaze.
Similarly, Xumu (middle-class mother) reflected on her parenting practices after observing her daughter’s stress during online classes: “I saw through the camera how stressed and exhausted she was”. Such reflections align with findings that middle-class parents are more likely to engage in reflexive or “transcendent” parenting practices (Lim, 2020), combining control with self-examination.
Ball (2009) emphasizes the importance of examining how individuals attach meaning to the images captured by surveillance technologies. Our data shows that advertising discourses commodify familial experiences to promote camera products. The video footage makes familial emotions more visible and shareable, while also manifesting invisible tensions. It reveals that displaying the family is part of doing family practices (Morgan, 2011). Moreover, news outlets have further mined visual materials from household surveillance, uncovering controversial family issues, to provoke public resonance or critique. This process updates imaginaries of home smart cameras.
Discussion
Surveillance capitalism in China promotes the idea that home smart cameras enable adults to express love for their children, echoing findings in other countries (Barassi, 2017; Holloway, 2019; Leaver, 2015, 2017; Mols et al., 2023). Our findings further illustrate how surveillance culture becomes popular through both top-down and bottom-up processes in the formation of home camera imaginaries. While ads and news disseminate top-down imaginaries to consumers, parents as users generate bottom-up reinterpretations through everyday practices, which are subsequently circulated and amplified on social media. Through this recursive process, we identify three main actors shaping the imaginaries of smart cameras: commercial marketers, news sharers, and camera users.
We identify five key imaginaries of home smart cameras: tracking risks, maintaining connections, capturing familial affections, disciplining children’s behaviors, and exposing family tensions. The first three are common in media and user practices, while the latter two emerge more distinctly within the Chinese familist context. The imaginary of tracking risks is enacted through maintaining around-the-clock visual access to the family, ensuring safety and connection. This aligns with the global imaginary of the mobile home, characterized by continuously connected at-homeness (Cabalquinto, 2018; Chambers, 2016). Within the logic of surveillance capitalism, monitoring is tied to efficiency and risk minimization (Andrejevic, 2005; Huang and Tsai, 2022). In the Chinese context, this takes the culturally specific form of kanhu, understood as a parental obligation to safeguard children through vigilant watching.
The imaginary of capturing familial affections shows a fundamental thematic consistency between media representations and everyday practices. This alignment underscores the socially constructed nature of technological meaning: advertising embeds cameras within culturally resonant narratives, while news circulation amplifies their emotional significance. Together, these processes normalize surveillance as everyday familial practices (Andrejevic, 2005; Barassi, 2020; Dereymaeker et al., 2024; Lyon, 2018).
The imaginary of disciplining children’s behaviors is rarely advertised, suggesting a gap between commercial narratives and home practices. While surveillance technologies were initially framed in terms of safety, they have rapidly become instruments of behavioral regulation (Shi and Xu, 2024). In China, this shift aligns with familism rooted in Confucian philosophy, which prioritizes obedience and collective interests (Yan, 2016, 2021). Our findings reveal a clear surveillance hierarchy where parents assert authority through guan (Chao, 1994; Zhou, 2024). In this sense, disciplining children constitutes both a culturally specific expression of familism and a new appropriation of media imaginaries.
While the first four imaginaries emphasize capturing family life, the fifth imaginary, exposing family tensions, reveals a different dynamic. Here, the visibility and gaze enabled by camera footage destabilizes traditional familist values, exposing tensions between individual interests and collective familist ideals. Our findings indicate that media coverage plays a role in encouraging families to reflect on their relationships. Camera footage brings to light the underlying family politics, such as domestic violence or gender inequality.
It is crucial to recognize that family is not a static entity but is constituted through ongoing practices among its members, as Morgan (2011) suggested. Smart cameras become integrated into family life by aligning with familist elements such as safety, communication, affections, roles, and relationships. This integration legitimizes surveillance imaginaries, reinforces and reshapes familism. The new family trend is characterized by a growing reflexivity toward one's position within the household and a heightened attentiveness to the relational gaze among family members.
Synthesizing the key elements, we develop a model to illustrate our key findings (Figure 7). We observe an enculturation process where the camera’s technical affordances align with and incorporate into the cultural values of local familism. We use the term “local familism” rather than “Chinese familism” to emphasize the broader analytical applicability of this framework in other contexts. Familism is prevalent in many cultures (Yan, 2016, 2021), yet its forms vary across ethnic groups and national contexts.
Capturing familism: the enculturation of home camera imaginaries into family life.
To conceptualize how camera surveillance integrates into family life, we propose the concept of “capturing familism,” which synthesizes the five imaginary themes, and highlights two points: the reinforcement of traditional familist values through surveillance practices; and the growing reflexivity in the captured family relationships. Our findings suggest that camera use both reflects and reproduces key elements of Chinese traditional familism, including parental responsibility and authority of guan and kanhu, children’s obedience to parents, the prioritization of family safety over individual privacy, and the pursuit of harmonious family emotions.
Chambers (2016) argues that advertising reinforces traditional familist stereotypes of gender and generational roles. However, our findings suggest that there is a discrepancy between media imaginaries of home surveillance and actual practices. As discussed in the fifth imaginary, exposing family tensions, the circulation of surveillance footage frequently exposes tensions and creates new family cultures that challenge the traditional familial harmony. The ideal harmony portrays the family as a warm collective, while obscuring individual suffering within it. Camera watching reveals the costs of maintaining such ideals, including excessive parental control, gendered hierarchies, and domestic violence.
Thus, the second point of “capturing familism” is that camera footage enables a reflexive performance that problematizes relationships by subjecting private interactions to scrutiny. Surveillance technologies capture previously “unmarked” aspects of individuals’ life, exposing private realms to others for judging the surveilled subject’s psychology and behaviors (Ball, 2009). This power of gaze and judging has the potential to destabilize traditional familist values and open up possibilities for more democratic family relations.
Despite these shifts, public discourses rarely question the ethics of constant monitoring. Surveillance capitalism persuades individuals to constant monitor through smart cameras. However, it undermines personal agency and devalues interpersonal boundaries (Ball, 2009). This prompts us to reconsider how we envision the ideal mobile smart home. Moreover, the interpretation of surveillance footage can be multifaceted (Shi and Xu, 2024). Does a snippet of surveillance footage represent complete and accurate reality? Our findings indicate that distinctions between authentic and staged content can be blurred, particularly in viral short videos that reproduce similar dialogues and scenarios.
We share with scholars’ concerns about children's rights to privacy and to be forgotten (Barassi, 2020; Holloway, 2019; Leaver, 2017). Given that young children often lack the cognitive ability to understand these issues, it is crucial to educate them about data privacy and online visibility (Holloway, 2019). While our study primarily focuses on the parent–child relationships, our fieldwork suggests that surveillance technologies extend to caregiving practices for elderly family members, an area that warrants further investigation.
Although not the primary focus of this study, we observed potential class-based differences between working-class and middle-class families. For example, disciplining children’s behaviors appeared to be more prevalent among middle-class parents. One possible explanation is that middle-class parents experience more pressure to secure their children’s educational success and maintain social status (Meng, 2020). However, this hypothesis requires further empirical examination.
While our concept of capturing familism is developed in the context of home smart cameras, the underlying affordances of capturing, namely recording, monitoring, and tracking, are increasingly embedded in a wide range of home technologies, including smart speakers, fitness devices, and AI companions. Future research can extend this conceptual framework to examine how such capturing affordances reshape family practices across different technologies and different ethnic cultures.
Footnotes
Ethical approval and informed consent statement
This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of University of Leicester (Ethics Code: 32197) on 5 November 2021. All participants provided written consent for review and signature before starting interviews.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data availability statement
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available to protection participants’ privacy, but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Appendix 1. Profiles of participants.
| Participant | Identity | Educational level | Age of child(ren) | Length of camera use |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fangmu | Working-class mother | High school | 15, 12, 11 | 1 year |
| Junmu | Working-class mother | Primary school | 16, 10 | 2 years |
| Huimu | Working-class mother | Primary school | 18 | 1 year |
| Mingmu | Working-class mother | Junior college | 8, 5 | 2 years* |
| Feimu | Working-class mother | Primary school | 13 | 1 year* |
| Gangfu | Working-class father | Junior high school | 10, 8 | 1 year |
| Xiamu | Working-class mother | High school | 2 | 1 year |
| Xuanmu | Working-class mother | Junior high school | 11 | 2 years |
| Yanfu | Working-class father | High school | 11 | 2 years |
| Zhangmu | Working-class mother | Junior high school | 11, 6 | 3 years |
| Lanmu | Working-class mother | Junior college | 3 | Half a year |
| Yingmu | Working-class mother | Junior high school | 12, 7 | Half a year |
| Linfu | Middle-class father | Undergraduate | 13, 7 | 3 years |
| Qianmu | Middle-class mother | Undergraduate | 1 | 1 year |
| Yangmu | Middle-class mother | Undergraduate | 5, 1 | 2 years |
| Sunmu | Middle-class mother | Undergraduate | 5 | 3 years* |
| Liumu | Middle-class mother | Postgraduate | 9 | 3 years |
| Guomu | Middle-class mother | Undergraduate | 12, 8 | 2 years* |
| Xumu | Middle-class mother | Undergraduate | 16 | 2 years* |
| Ruanmu | Middle-class mother | Undergraduate | 16, 9 | 5 years |
| Zhoumu | Middle-class mother | Undergraduate | 8, 5 | 3 years |
| Yumu | Middle-class mother | Undergraduate | 10 | 3 years |
| Meifu | Middle-class father | Undergraduate | 6 | 6 years |
| Liangmu | Middle-class mother | Undergraduate | 19, 13 | 1 year |
If the length of camera use is marked with the symbol *, it means a camera was used in the participant's home but was no longer in use at the time of the interview.