Smartphones as actors: A new digital disability care actor-network in China

Abstract

Disability care is an understudied yet important phenomenon within the realm of caring media studies. It not only adds another identity-based lens for caring media studies but also proposes new questions at the intersection of media, disability and cultural studies. This study proposes a Chinese contextualized understanding of disability caring media, which may have broader implications in other contexts, even a global one. Mainly based on actor-network theory (ANT), this study looks at the smartphone as a new condition and a key actor in the emerging digital disability care actor-network to examine various modes of connections and associations, especially the application-network, the device-network, and the organization-network. This study seeks to provide a better understanding as to how meanings and technologies are enacted together in everyday caring practices, and how social dynamics are assembled and reassembled in contemporary disability caring media settings.