The Home as a Site of Platformization

AbstractChapter 3 investigates how processes of platformization play out in relation to the spaces and spatial arrangements of family life, focusing in particular on the idea of the home. Given that family life, including the meaning of the home, are constructed through relational practices and that these practices are increasingly platformized (that is, occurring through and in relation to platforms), this chapter asks: how is the platformization of the family reshaping and extending the home? Drawing on qualitative empirical data from our own projects and existing literature, we examine how platforms are implicated in family life within the physical space of the home and how platforms might be used to extend the idea of home beyond a physical space of co-location. We argue that, on one hand, the use of platforms reconfigures how the physical home is experienced by those within it—sometimes fracturing the idea of the home as a private space and other times supporting the practices of care, intimacy, and organisation that give it meaning as a home—while on the other, it extends relational practices beyond the physical boundaries of the home, opening up new possibilities for families to practice care and intimacy across distance.