1st Edition

Intimacy at Work How Digital Media Bring Private Life to the Workplace

By Stefana Broadbent Copyright 2016
    117 Pages
    by Routledge

    118 Pages
    by Routledge

    According to some social critics, the digital age involves a retreat into the isolation of intelligent machines. Acclaimed scholar Stefana Broadbent takes another view, that digital technologies allow people to bring their private lives into the often alienating world of work. Through ethnographic evidence and data gathered from large samples in Europe and the U.S., Intimacy at Work looks at a paradox in modern life: Although human beings today spend so much of their waking hours working, they remain increasingly connected to family and friends—because of digital and social media. This book -shows how portable communications sustain personal networks offering a sense of identity, comfort, support, and enjoyment in the workplace;-demonstrates through numerous case studies that digital technologies provide a kind of “safety net” in times of economic crisis, softening the precariousness of existence;-is a revised edition of a volume published in French (L’Intimité au Travail, 2011), which won the prestigious AFCI Prize for books on business communications.

    Introduction; Chapter 1 Some Characteristics of Digital Communication; Chapter 2 How Digital Channels Are Supporting Intimacy; Chapter 3 Intimacy at Work; Chapter 4 Communication, Productivity, and Trust; Chapter 5 Accidents, Distraction, and Private Communication; Chapter 6 Conclusions: Communication and Attention;

    Biography

    Stefana Broadbent

    "Intimacy at Work serves as a pithy introduction to the subject matter, and provides a useful departure point for practitioners and students seeking to comprehend the sociocultural consequences of private mobile communication at the workplace."— Sze Ming Loh, Mobile Media & Communication