Digital life as a cabaret, old chum : a dramaturgical analysis of older digitalised home residents and their wider caring networks
Abstract
The use of smart and assistive devices for remote healthcare monitoring is becoming increasingly popular for older people in their homes. However, the lived and long-term experiences of such technology, for the older residents and their wider caring networks remains unclear. Using in-depth qualitative data collected between June 2019 and January 2020 from older people living in their own homes in rural Scotland, we highlight that although such monitoring could improve the experiences of older people and their wider caring networks, this may create additional care and surveillance. We employ the concept of dramaturgy, which understands society to be a stage on which actors perform, allowing us to explore how different residents and their networks make sense of their experiences with domestic healthcare monitoring. We found that some digitalised devices may reduce the degree to which older people and their wider caring networks can live authentic and truly independent lifestyles.
Citation
Creaney , R S , Currie , M & Reid , L A 2023 , ' Digital life as a cabaret, old chum : a dramaturgical analysis of older digitalised home residents and their wider caring networks ' , Journal of Aging Studies , vol. 65 , 101129 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2023.101129
Publication
Journal of Aging Studies
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0890-4065Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Description
Funding: The paper was written as part of Economic and Social Research Council funded PhD.Collections
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