Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
Goldsmiths' College
Expectation and Mobilisation: Enacting Future Users
This research takes a performative approach to discourse analysis to examine how the ‘user’ is deployed by the UK think tank Demos to inform government policy. The research contributes to the sociology of expectations and user studies by exploring how existing and future representations of users portray the multiple futures of location-based technology. Two key narrative patterns are identified including the bifurcation of the social and the technological as domains for policy action and their recombination as future visions. Preliminary research was presented at the joint 4S/EAAST conference 2008 (Rotterdam) and the 2007 conference ‘Negotiation the Future’, University of Oslo.