Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to begin to develop a research focus that draws directly upon the idea of technoculture. What does it mean to apply a technocultural research lens to the social worlds of the contemporary digital citizen-consumer? Human cultures are currently accompanied by a range of technological affordances, actors, and assemblages. Concomitantly, multitudes of different, overlapping, and conflicting cultures attend and attenuate these elements. These cultures and their elements require careful research attention and even specialized conceptual and investigatory toolkits. These cultures are technocultures: the various actions, identities, relations, and other sources and structures of meanings that are influenced, created by, or expressed through technology consumption. What are some of the most relevant technocultural elements amenable to our investigation? How might we approach their understanding? The focus of this chapter is to develop the utility and role of applying a technocultural research lens to the social worlds of the digital citizen-consumer. In doing so, the chapter conceptualizes technoculture, technocultural understanding, and offers some general overviews on the search for technocultural insight as they apply to contemporary research theories, methods, and practices.