CCTV cameras at home

Temporality experience of surveillance technology in family life

Bibliographic Data

ID6443403
AuthorsNa Liu (0000-0002-3273-7715, University of Leicester, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume27
Issue6
Pages3699-3719
Publication date2024-02-23
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew Media & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1461-4448 • E-ISSN: 1461-7315
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/14614448241229175
OpenAlexW4392123717
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited45

Political and socioeconomic factors contribute to the popularity of surveillance camera use at home in China. This study investigates how CCTV (closed-circuit television) technology shapes family communication practices. Drawing on interviews and observations of 12 migrant parents, four left-behind children and four proximal caregivers, this article explores why people use new surveillance technology in the private home sphere to help parenting, and how family members cope with such surveillance. Children’s coping tactics include participation, disregard, escape and resistance. Through the temporalities framework, this article uncovers nuanced immediate, archival and predictive time experiences. The temporality experience of CCTV use is not traditional linear time co-presence, but video-based concentric three-circle time experience. It shifts interpersonal trust in family life into surveillance trust and interpersonal distrust, which requires familial negotiation and trust reconstruction

Distrust · Interpersonal communication · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Popularity · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · Temporalities · Temporality · Children's Rights and Participation · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Media Studies and Communication · Psychology · Social Psychology

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