Engaging practices : doing personalized media

In this chapter we explore the emergence of the 'personalization' of digital media. Drawing from disciplines ranging from anthropology, cultural studies, sociology and others, we begin this chapter by examining the ways in which personalization has been approached through different disciplinary and interdisciplinary debates. After discussing four key analytic approaches" Social Shaping of Technology (STS)/Social Construction of Technology (SCOT); Cultural Studies; Material Culture Studies; and Domestication Theory" that explicitly examine the role of media, technology and consumption in social and cultural life, we then introduce two case studies of digital environments and artifacts. The first case study explores digital environments, exploring how [personal] history and meaning is made through the possibilities and constraints of different social network site platforms. The second case study considers the implications of mobile media convergence and branding through platforms such as the iPhone by examining how these forms of mobile media personalization 'settle' (or are domesticated) into everyday life. Through these case studies, we reflect upon how the focus upon personalization in digital artifacts and environments returns us to classic tensions in society between agency and structure and choice and constraint, as well as new questions around the role of openness and closure (Lessig, 2001), generated v. tethered (Zittrain, 2008) freedom and control (Chun, 2006), and customization v. standardization (Castells, 1999) in our digital worlds.