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.

Erecting monuments and making meanings: Analysis of the Statue of Peace using actor‐network theory

“…Martek and Lozanovska (2018) have analyzed the social dynamics of the architects, planners, and policymakers involved in the Skopje reconstruction project using ANT. Lin and Yang (2021) have analyzed use of smartphones in disability care in China, noting that the “digital disability care actor‐network” is a constantly reassembling and reassociating movement rather than one existing as a single domain. Yet ANT is not always used to explain the successful completion of a project or a policy.…”