Between reality and imagination, between you and me: Emotions and daydreaming in times of electronic communication

Abstract

This article focuses on the analysis of daydreams and fantasies people have regarding their partnerships in ‘non-moments’, moments in which we have time to take a break or to daydream. This article makes a strong case for the relevance of the shift from the isolation experienced within these ‘non-moments’ towards an altered experience of this isolation, which has been moulded and partially broken by the possibility to share our dreams in real time, and communicate with our significant others (here, partners), while tearing us further apart from those who share with us these moments in the same place. The analysis of such non-moments will help us to shed light on how our intimate relationships are woven on a daily basis, and how electronic communication is part of a differentiation process in which we can share our imaginaries just as we produce them.

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“…Although smartphones and social media have given the students the ability to maintain close friendships across long distances, lack of physical proximity does affect the intimacy practices. Cantó-Milà et al (2016) in their study, argue that although communication via smartphones is important in relationship maintenance, long-distance relationships had to deal with "higher expectations, verbal overshadowing, and individual facets". Online interaction became part of the imagined dreams in which people imagined the reaction from a text message and they pictured that the other person ideally was there for them, interested and caring for what they have to say (Cantó-Milà et al, 2016).…”

“…Cantó-Milà et al (2016) in their study, argue that although communication via smartphones is important in relationship maintenance, long-distance relationships had to deal with "higher expectations, verbal overshadowing, and individual facets". Online interaction became part of the imagined dreams in which people imagined the reaction from a text message and they pictured that the other person ideally was there for them, interested and caring for what they have to say (Cantó-Milà et al, 2016). However, this study indicates that physical distance limits the emotional connectedness as the students feel a lack of co-presence and immediacy in their intimacy practices.…”

“…Moreover, longdistance relationships have to deal with higher expectations and miscommunication. Cantó-Milà et al (2016) argue that online interaction has become part of the "imagined dreams" in which people imagine the reaction from a text message and they picture that the other person is ideally there for them, interested and caring about what they have to say. However, as social media allows daily interaction, it has changed the expectations of intimacy practices and created a certain pressure to communicate (Jurkane-Hobein, 2015).…”

Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Digital Touch

“…In these two case studies, the majority of participants did not include mobility as a key concept for their design of digital touch for remote personal communication, locating digital touch in a domestic and private place: usually the home: a tactile equivalent of the sonic-quiet sought for a spoken conversation appears to be a place where the body is at rest, static with a calm heartbeat, ready to be 'activated'. Three analytical rationales appeared to underpin this domestication of digital touch: touch as intimate and taboo; the 'slower' temporal quality of touch; and the sense that it requires a "prepared place" including a preparing and imagination of the self and the other for communication (Cantó-Milà andNúñez-Mosteo 2016: 2409). This emerging social norm may lessen over time enabling digital touch to come out of the home, changing practices and capacities and giving rise to a need for different kinds of touch awareness and sensitivity in the management of communication.…”

There Are No Old Media

“…In his history of media technology and emotions, Malin () shows that the social and cultural impact of media also concern the emotions and feelings invited by different media throughout time and in different places. Media, moreover, create specific ways to communicate and share feelings across space and time: Think of the impact of communications technologies in the relations between partners and family members at a distance (Cantó‐Milà, Núñez‐Mosteo, & Seebach, ; Shapiro & Humphreys, ), or how a medium such as the telegram became closely associated to the delivery of condolence messages (Ortoleva, ). Finally, the social use of media also entails the construction of emotional and even affective links to specific artifacts and technologies (Keightley & Pickering, ; Silverstone, ).…”