EMTEL II Reports Available

The EMTEL II (European Media, Technology, and Everyday Life) project reports are now available - click here

The aim of the EMTEL network, funded under the European Commission’s 5th Framework Programme, was to investigate the ‘information society’ from the perspective of ‘everyday life’.

The co-ordinator of the network, Roger Silverstone, might be remembered as the author of the seminal work ‘Television and Everyday Life’ (1994), where he sketched a process termed ‘the suburbanisation of the public sphere’. In addition this was one of the first books I read which managed to carry off the delicate balancing act of writing about television as both an ‘object’ (a box, in a house, etc) and simultaneously a collection of ideas, discourses, and bits and pieces of content, what used to be called ‘programmes’, in the days when these things seemed a little clearer.

But back to EMTEL… The website includes seven reports, dealing with a variety of areas: youth, ambient intelligence, work, consumption, political activism, minority media, and disability. In addition five thematic reports are also available encompassing: media and technology, the ‘information society’, inclusion and exclusion, public policy, and quality of life.

It is noticeable that the emphasis placed upon ‘consumption’ is broadly in line with commissioner Liikanen’s championing of “inclusive and personalised” eGovernment services; a virtuous circle comprising of technological roll-out (read: broadband) driving ‘citizen-centric’ content provision, i.e. automated public services, political and democratic applications, and so forth, all accessible from the home.

Just a preliminary thought…