THE PHONE IN THE HOME: AMBIGUITY, CONFLICT AND CHANGE

Transcription

1 THE PHONE IN THE HOME: AMBIGUITY, CONFLICT AND CHANGE Dr Leslie Haddon School of Cultural and Community Studies Arts B University of Sussex Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QN UK Paper presented at the COST 248 Workshop: The European Telecom User. April 13-14th 1994 Lund, Sweden

2 The domestic telephone has only comparatively recently been re-discovered by social scientists. The previous neglect may well reflect the fact that within households the phone remains an invisible, taken-for-granted object - when asked to list the technologies in their home, our research shows that many people simply forget that the telephone is there, even if it is in regular use. That neglect may also reflect the way in which the basic phone and perhaps phone use has changed relatively little and relatively slowly over a long time period. However, innovations relating to the domestic phone over the last 15 years together with the prospect of more developments in the pipeline are adding to the pressure to reflect upon the role of the phone in the home. Although histories of the telephone s development have been in circulation for some time, it is only recently that we have witnessed the beginnings of a literature discussing social dimensions of the domestic phone. To date, most social scientists have concentrated on the basic phone rather than some of the newer telecoms products and facilities now available. Much, though not all, of this work has, at times rather descriptively, focused on questions such as demographics and patterns of phone use, the functions of the phone, attitudes to the phone and styles of interaction on the phone (Fielding and Hartley, 1987) In addition to these various classifications of usage, research on gender and the phone has perhaps gone furthest in exploring some of the meanings which this technology can have in the home. Feminist writers have not only noted distinctions between male and female styles of phoning (i.e. social/intrinsic versus functional/ instrumental uses of the phone - Moyal, 1989) but have emphasised how much social phoning supports women s role of maintaining links with the wider family as well as enabling them to sustain networks of contacts with other women (Rakov 1988; Moyal 1989). In other words, such analysis links phone behaviour to gendered social relations, i.e. to both domestic responsibilities and relations with others outside of the home. The Sussex research upon which this paper is based aimed to explore the various ways in which the telephone was given meanings and roles in the home - and was also sometimes the source of anxieties and conflict. In other words, we aimed to go beyond the details of subscription, acquisition of equipment or patterns of usage to explore the telephone as a cultural object, to chart its place in everyday life and how people s experience of the domestic phone can change over time. At this stage in our work, the empirical material has only been partially analysed. Hence, these preliminary comments, supplemented by examples, are meant indicate some of the frameworks, levels of analysis issues which might be utilised and issues which might be addressed in future research. In one sense, many of the examples given in this paper inevitably touches upon some themes which are likely to be familiar from personal experience and industry folklore. Nevertheless, they are intended address some of the dimensions of the phone s role in the home which have sometimes been neglected in the literature: for example, the interaction amongst household members concerning phone use, the regulation of the technology, and strategies employed to control the phone where its presence leads to problems or disrupts family life. 2

3 The UK Research This project was initiated at Brunel University in West London, where Professor Silverstone s team looked at a range of information and communication technologies (ICTS) in the home. In addition to the phone and supplementary telecoms technologies and services, this research examined TV, radio, computers and interactive games technologies. That first three-year phase developed the initial conceptual framework and carried out extremely indepth studies with 20 households, experimenting with a wide variety of methodologies (Silverstone, R. 1991; Silverstone, Hirsch, and Morley, 1992). This work located these ICTs within the whole culture of the home and its domestic politics, while being sensitive to key dimensions such as gender, class and age. A further three-year extension of that work, which is currently reaching its conclusion, has been conducted at Sussex University. Each year, in-depth qualitative case studies focused on a different target group: respectively, teleworkers, lone parents and the recently retired. These foci enabled us to examine, respectively, the effects of changes in the relationship between home and work, differences and change in household composition and change over the life cycle. Of these studies, the telework material has been furthest developed (Haddon and Silverstone, 1992 and 1993), in large part because such a radically new way of working gave rise to a range of new issues around the home s ICTs. In the studies of individual households we wanted to appreciate the social context in which ICTs were located. Adult members of the 20 or more households which participated each year filled out detailed diaries of their activities over the course of a week. They were subsequently interviewed on two occasions for a total of between 3-6 hours. Informal questions elicited information on a wide range of past experiences and contemporary domestic life. For example, we asked questions about their biography and memories of ICTs, transitions in their life, current domestic routines, financial circumstances and patterns of purchasing, social activities both inside and outside the home and the relationship with kinfolk and other social networks. Of course, we also asked numerous questions about the use and meaning of ICTs and how these had changed over time. The following discussion groups together some of themes which emerged in relation to the all ICTs in the UK, including the phone. Ambiguity The fact that the telephone is an ambiguous object might seem surprising given the near universal desire for this technology. Indeed, in our research nearly everyone gave it a high priority, often saying that nowadays they would find their everyday life very difficult without a phone. Even where it was rarely used, the reassurance of its presence and that fact that it allowed people to be ultimately contactable if need be were important justifications for having a phone. Nevertheless, some ambivalence was expressed. For instance, some people remained nervousness about communicating via this medium - only doing it when they had to. And this was by no means an experience exclusive to the older elderly who had grown up without phones. But more often ambivalence about the phone related to the degree to 3

4 which people felt they had control over the technology - in particular in relation to its potential intrusiveness and the fear of escalating costs. Intrusiveness There has been some discussion in the telephone literature of problem calls (Doderick and LaRose, 1992) - i.e. calls ranging from unsolicited telemarketing to obscene messages. In all three studies, reference was also made to the various unwanted phone calls from acquaintances whom our participants wanted to avoid. But even apart from these, there are times when people find incoming calls in general to be intrusive upon their privacy and peace. Given the feminist writings on way women network over the phone, it is worth adding that this is not just a male response to the outside world invading the haven of the home. Women too, especially those who are major users of the phone for work or at work, sometimes suffered from phone fatigue. They wanted a break from the demands of the telephone and sometimes wished to devote their attention to interactions with others in the home: for instance, with partners or children. Incoming calls could also interfere with the routines of the home, coming at unsociable or simply inconvenient times - such as late at night or early in the morning, or when parents were getting children off to school or nursery or getting them to bed -a situation more likely to be mentioned by women. The other side of this particular coin was illustrated in the study of the elderly, who, were usually willing to be contacted at most times but were sometimes apprehensive about choosing a time to call their adult children because they saw them as leading busier lives. The whole issue of the disruptiveness of calls arose most acutely in the study of teleworkers for a variety of reasons. Here, there was a frequent assumption by employers or clients that because teleworkers were home-based that they could be contacted about work issues outside of normal core hours - i.e. at evenings and weekends. While this was not deemed to be a problem by some, for others it was disruptive to family life: home was no longer a haven from paid labour. On the other hand, when their friends did not appreciate that the even if they were at home, teleworkers still had to get through their workload, incoming social calls to teleworkers could be a distraction from that work. In addition, the sheer volume of calls into the home often increased with the arrival of telework, meaning that other members of the teleworker s household could occasionally feel pestered by the phone. Strategies for controlling such intrusiveness have been documented in previous research (e.g. Doderick and LaRose, 1992) but it worth emphasising from our own work that these tactics often rely on social as much as technological solutions. The implication is that we need to be as sensitive to the regulation of the telephone and the understandings that are built up about its usage as to the new services and equipment that phone users adopt. For instance, one common approach was to attempt to lay down rules about contactability so that calls were steered to certain times: which was successful to greater and lesser extents in different households. Some of our participants also employed crude but effective means of making themselves unavailable: e.g. by unplugging the phone or turning the ringer off so that calls could not be heard. Leaving the phone off the hook was another strategy, although the telecom companies in the UK sends a loud signal down the line to deter this. However, one innovative participant in our research refused to be defeated by this arrangement and resorted to the low-tech solution of burying the handset in cushions to suppress this noise. 4

5 Other solutions required more expenditure. Call-barring on incoming calls was sometimes used, but more usually people resorted to some form of buffer so that they could control the timing of messages, to delay them, without losing them. By far the most common solution in this category was the answering machine,. For example, answering machines were not just used to capture the messages left when people were out of the home - in many cases they were in operation even when the teleworkers, or others, were at home but did not want to be disturbed. Here, then, we have an interesting case of a technology which is advertised as a means of enabling contactability or reachability being used sometimes to actually control that contactability. Alternatives included answering services, and some teleworkers resorted to making themselves only contactable by fax machines and - where they could chose when to respond. Such solutions enabled households to maintain a the boundary between the sanctuary of home and the outside world. Cost The cost of using the phone was usually the other dimension which required some control. This was less of problem in affluent households with few economic worries, but was an issue for more than just the poor. Many middle-class households had limited disposable income, since they had committed they money to high mortgages or children s private education. Such lifestyle choices meant they still had to be careful about their expenditures. The case of self-employed teleworkers also highlighted situations where future income was sufficiently uncertain that some caution with money was necessary. Nevertheless, concern about costs was most acute among those on low incomes, namely the lone parents and some elderly living solely on state benefits - the very people for whom the phone could be vital for emergencies or as a social lifeline when they felt trapped in the home in the evenings. This worry lead to outgoing calls being steered to times when cheaper tariffs operated when possible - although ringing up various state agencies and the council about problems related to living on a low income generally had to be done in the daytime. Calls were also rationed, both in terms of the number of calls and their length. Often, children s use was rationed, with the instigation of rules about what counted as necessary and unnecessary calls. In such households, children obviously had less access to a communications resource than many of their peers and in this sense experienced some sense of disadvantage. Despite such measures, the phone bill often remained a source of worry, always threatening to get out of control. Conflict Domestic conflict around phone use exists primarily because the telephone is a communal resource, with different demands being made on it by different household members. Such conflicts can centre around control of what other household members can access via the phone - as when parents showed concern about their children s secret use of premium price sexlines. Young children s access, in particular, sometimes has to be monitored since they can treat phones as playthings. Examples of such mis-use from our research include children turning the ringer off so that parents are not aware of incoming calls or else children calling 5

6 random numbers, including the emergency services. At times there are privacy issues at stake, as some household members, and this is more likely to be teenage children, want to make private calls while their parents may want to know whom they are calling. We have found instances of tensions between partners over the acquisition of extra telecoms equipment using joint household financial resources - for one teleworker buying extra extensions and handsets was deemed to be a necessary expenditure for telework while his wife expressed strong reservations about whether this was worthwhile. While there can be conflict around all these issues, the most frequent sources of irritation and negotiation seem to be around cost and the appropriation of the phone, to which we now turn. The size of bills can become a very serious concern indeed either in the case of communal living arrangements or when families have other people sharing their household: such as lodgers or au pairs. We have picked up the horror stories of huge bills arriving due to illicit use of the phone. Bills can also be an issue between partners, and one which has been exacerbated sometimes be the innovation of itemised billing. More frequently, it is a source of heated debate between parents and teenage children over the latter s social calls - more so when money is tight. But it is not just the cost of calls which can be a source of discontent. Where one household member appropriates the phone, blocking the phone with their frequent or long calls, this denies access to others. This problem was at it s most acute in the case of those teleworkers who had only one phone line. Here, such social calls blocked potentially important incoming work-related calls. We could, of course, extrapolate and anticipate similar problems could occur not just in the case of work messages but wherever other household members need to be contactable - e.g. because of their involvement in activities outside of the home. The other point about the appropriation of the phone returns us again to the theme of intrusiveness. Other household members can resent the number of calls coming in for someone who is at the heart of social networks and also resent the fact that they have to take on the role of secretary, forever answering calls and taking messages for that person. Once again, strategies to handle these conflicts entail both social and technological solutions. Persuasion only works some of the time, but there are plenty of examples of parents who managed to ration their children s calls, limit them to low tariffs or succeed in defining necessary and unnecessary communications. Where such persuasion does not work, the issue can remain on on-going sore point or else parents resort to other strategies such as charging children for calls or deducting pocket money to pay for their calls. In one case, exasperated parents ended up installing a second line for their children, whose usage the children then financed between themselves: with the result that this displaced any disagreements so that they now took place amongst the children rather than between the parents and children. Another tactic involved attempting to control the location of the phone. One variation involved not allowing children to have access to extensions or cordless phones, and placing the main phone handset in a relatively public place within the home, such as a hall. This meant that calls could be more easily monitored. Alternatively, parents have tried to make the location as uncomfortable as possible - although determined teenagers appear to be able to settle down to long phone calls even in the most awkward of spaces. Some parents have utilised call barring - stopping either incoming or outgoing calls at some points of the day, or allowing only local calls. And even sabotage has been resorted to, as one parent got so frustrated that he disabled his daughters phone so that she could not make outgoing calls from her bedroom. However, she managed to sometimes evade that control by initiating calls 6

7 on the main phone and then moving to the bedroom phone to continue her conversation at leisure. Change The final concern of this paper relates to three different form of changes: a) innovations and new telephone options b) broader societal trends and c) the evolving circumstances of households Changing Telephone Options British homes have seen a huge range of changes in the telecoms industry over the past 15 years with the liberalisation and then privatisation of British telecom, competition from Mercury, phone lines packaged with cable, the greater availability of handsets and extensions, the proliferation of features on phones and of phone services, and the promotion of cordless phones and mobile telephony. This relatively sudden change has had some influence upon the experience of the telephone. For example, we have already noted how the availability of some innovations such as the answerphone can enable people to have more control over the phone. Examining each of these developments would constitute a whole research agenda, beyond the scope of our work to date but the subject of a future project we hope to conduct. However, it is possible at this stage to signal at least some of the issues which might be worthy of further attention. 1) The first observation is that it is not only telecoms suppliers who innovate in terms of providing new telephone opportunities. The radio phone-in, for example, has created a whole new form of messaging but was initiated by the broadcasting industry. It is also worth adding that other industries innovations can have repercussions for phone use - as when teletext provided an alternative source of information to that which could be provided as a phone service. 2) Another area of study concerns the route by which innovations enter the home. For example, specialised phones and alarms are sometimes bought for elderly parents as presents. In our study of teleworkers, a range of telecoms technologies such as answerphones, cordless phones, mobile phones and faxes entered the home because of work, although these technologies were sometimes later used for social purposes. 3) The availability and falling costs of some supplementary telecoms technologies has enabled the multiplication of phone technologies: as with the second or third extension and handset, second telephone lines, second answerphones etc. In terms of their meaning for household members, these can entail changes as significant as the adoption of totally new technologies. For example, extensions can enable more privacy for individuals within the home - but as we have seen in the section on conflicts with teenage children, this also means 7

8 that some phone users can more easily evade the surveillance of others household members. Extensions, especially into areas such as the bedroom, can also deliver a greater sense of security or of being contactable in case of emergencies - as was made clear both by our female lone parents and the young elderly who worried about the health and security of their own ageing parents. This example also shows how it is important to pay attention to the consequences of more mundane innovations as well as more high-profile technologies and services. 4) One last issue to explore is the process of discovering use and finding out the implications of a technology or service after it has been acquired or made available. For example, cordless phones are often bought for the convenience of being able to use them around the house and garden. However, a number of mothers mentioned that whereas their young children had learnt that they could more easily misbehave when they parents went were tied to a phone handset which was based in a fixed location, the cordless phone enabled parents to move and follow the children around, monitoring them which they were holding a phone conversation. One or two people had also found that having a long extension lead which even reached into the bathroom and toilet opened up whole new telephonic experiences. Changing phone use in the longer term A second form of change has been in the way POTS - the plain old telephone system - is used and how the nature and pattern of messages has developed over the last few decades. For example, we had some glimpses of generational effects from our current research. Many parents observed that their children who had grown up with the phone were much more at ease with it then they had been at that age. They also identified teenage phone chatting as a phenomenon of more recent decades. When some of our elderly samplewere younger, they remembered phones as being regulated much more strictly, and only being used for more formal business. That said, some of those in our retired cohort who came from wealthier backgrounds noted that they used to regularly chat on the phone to their peers when they were young in the 1940s - so it is not an entirely new practice and already existed in some social circles. Turning to another form of social change, some of the retired sample also noted how they used the phone more now because of the dispersal of both their relatives and friends. While this is in part a life-cycle phenomenon, it also reflects some broader changes in mobility patterns and, for example, the break up of some traditional working class communities such as those of London s East End. One further example of a potential shift over time is in relation to shopping. A number of our participants reported that they increasingly used the phone to check whether what they wanted was at shops before going to them - suggesting that the use of the phone as an adjunct to shopping might become at least as significant as the idea of teleshopping. Changing household circumstances 8

9 The final form of change which bears examination is how the changing circumstances of households affects both phone use and interest in supplementary telecoms equipment and services. Such change can not only lead to the introduction of new telecoms technologies but also change the experience of the phone which is already present. In other words, technologies such as the phone can have a career in the home in their own right, where there is a transformation of not only of usage but of status over time. For example, the move to teleworking meant substantial changes in the experience of phones for many of the participants in our study. It has already been noted that teleworking sometimes provided the rationale for introducing a new telecoms infrastructure into the home which then found other uses besides a work role. But it was not only the arrival of new technologies which is important. Sometimes rules and understandings about existing technologies need to be re-negotiated. For example, by no means all households could justify separate work lines. Apart from the issue of social calls blocking work calls, some household members, usually children, were sometimes banned from answering the phone at certain times of the day, or else had to learn to improve their phone manner when taking messages. Since teleworkers were often conscious of the need to create an image of themselves as competent workers who worked in a convivial environment that would not hinder the work, they were also in the business of impression management. Having children shouting in the background, or a loud TV playing could shatter this image. Hence, the phone had to be relocated in quieter spaces or else the general sound regime of the house be more tightly regulated. Lastly, the change in the time structure of the day - when teleworkers worked, met family and social commitments or took their leisure, could influence the whole pattern of telephone calls. The lone parent study provides another illustration of a change in circumstances, especially in cases where parents split up with partners to form new households. The trauma of breaking up itself sometimes meant that the phone became a psychological lifeline to outside support networks. Where that break-up had been difficult, the phone could now enable these lone parents to control communication with their ex-partners, retaining some contact but distancing themselves from their ex-partners by avoiding difficult face-to-face discussions. A considerable amount of contact between children and the departed parent - usually the father - was now managed over the phone. And the phone became an important tool for managing the logistics of moving children who now spent time in two households. In addition to these examples of changes in circumstances, changes over the life cycle of the household can have a bearing upon the role of the phone. Quite simply, at different points in their biographies, people can use the phone in different ways and feel the need for telecoms facilities which they did not desire at another point in time. For example, from the period when people reach their late middle age and early retirement their own teenage or adult children usually leave home, thus generating a whole new pattern of phone contact. The arrival of grandchildren can provide a further stimulus to such contact. At about the same time, their own elderly parents now in their 80s and 90s, can require more attention, which often stimulates more and regular phone calls and also the installation of new telecoms equipment such as special phones or alarms. In addition to the phone needs generated by this enhanced role of carer, even if at a distance, some young elderly take on new roles with the onset of official retirement including new paid jobs, informal or formal voluntary work, educational activities and some sports. Not only can these entail new patterns of phoning but sometimes much more organisational phoning in cases where the elderly volunteer their efforts for administrative positions or attend committee meetings because they have the free time and are looking for active, purposeful roles to replace work. This, however, is only one 9

10 pattern of life after retirement. Others withdraw into the home, sometimes partly because of mobility or other health problems. Lacking opportunity for face-to face contact with inaccessible friends and relatives, the phone can become as social lifeline, just as it had for the lone parents. Conclusions Some of the issues and themes discussed here would have relevance for the study of new phone-based technologies and services. For example, if sections of the population are already worried about the costs entailed by the phone, how much are these concerns going to carry over into other telecom based pay-per-use services? When asked about future services, some of our participants objected to the size of the phone bill that would entail - ultimately, whatever you got via the phone, it was still the phone bill. Or if we take the example of mobile phones, such technologies raise new questions about contactability and intrusiveness. Although mobile phone users may want to be directly contactable some of the time, they may well have to negotiate new rules about when they can be reached - and indeed, some already use the buffer of answerphone services to control contactability. Meanwhile, if the telephone can be intrusive in the private space of the home, under what circumstances can it be intrusive in other, more public, spaces? Will we see no mobile phone zones to complement no smoking ones? To take a third example, if those concerned with impression management, such as many teleworkers, want to keep control over the perception that is being conveyed via the phone, then the videophone can actually undermine that control by giving out information about a person s appearance and surroundings that contradict the image they are trying to convey. No wonder, then, that so many of our participants from this group were dubious about consequences of videophone technology. While the observations in this paper can be used to generate such questions, the main aim was to indicated how much more can be involved in studying the domestic phone beyond looking at the nature of phone messages or what the ability to communicate telephonically can enable. In other words, what might we take in account when analysing the residential phone as a cultural object, when analysing phone consumption? We certainly need to be sensitive to issues of space, both in the sense of changing location of those outside the home and the organisation and regulation of space inside the home. An example of the first case was the effects of the dispersal of family and friends and of the second case, the location of phones in public and private spaces within the home. We also have to be aware of the effects on phone use of the more general organisation of domestic time - which changes at different points in the life course and as home circumstances alter. Of course, involvement in social networks and patterns of activity also alter over time and have a bearing on the role of the phone. In effect, the argument based on our research is that it useful to have a considerable amount of background information about the general organisations of a household s daily life to put phone use into context. Although the phone is a widely desired and essentially uncontroversial technology - in contrast to some people s very negative reactions to television, for example - this paper has also noted how research on the domestic phone needs to take into account the tensions which this technology can at times raise, and the on-going need to maintain some control over the phone. In addition, there are various ways in which the phone can be the source of some 10

11 conflict of interest in the home, with attempts to regulate its use and resistance to such efforts. The final focus was on the different form of change - in terms of innovations and new telephone options and perhaps a new telephone literacy as people discover what they can do with phones; in terms of the consequences of broader societal trends for the role of the phone; and in terms of the effects of the changing circumstances of households. Evolving patterns of adoption and use as well as new domestic tensions and strategies evoked by telecoms technologies lie at the intersection of these different forms of change. One challenge for researchers is to hold onto all these different strands well as disentangle their effects. References Doderick, H. and LaRose, R. (1992) The Telephone in Daily Life: A Study of Personal Telephone Use, Temple University, Philadelphia. Fielding, G. and Hartley, P.(1987), 'The Telephone: The Neglected Medium', in Cashdan, A. and Jordin, M. (eds.), Studies in Communication, Basil Blackwell, London, pp Haddon, L and Silverstone, R. (1992) Information and Communication Technologies in the Home: The Case of Teleworking, Working Paper 17, CICT, SPRU, University of Sussex. Haddon, L. and Silverstone, R. (1993), Teleworking in the 1990s: A View from the Home, SPRU CICT Report, University of Sussex. Morley, D. and Silverstone, R. (1990) 'Domestic Communication - Technologies and Meanings', Media, Culture and Society, 12. 1, Moyal, A.(1989), 'The Feminine Culture of the Telephone. People, Patterns and Policy', in Prometheus, Vol.7., No.1. Rakow, L.(1988), 'Women and the Telephone: The Gendering of a Communications Technology' in Kramarae, C.(ed.) Technology and Women's Voices: Keeping in Touch, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Silverstone, R. (1991) Beneath the Bottom Line: Households and Information and Communications Technologies in an Age of the Consumer, PICT Policy Research Papers 17, Swindon, ESRC. Silverstone, R.,Hirsch, E. and Morley, D. (1992) 'Information and Communication Technologies and the Moral Economy of the Household', in Silverstone, R. and Hirsch, E.(eds.) Consuming Technologies, Routledge, London. 11

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