A critical techno-anthropological view on the IoT in Danish media

Student thesis: Master thesis (including HD thesis)

  • Joachim Alexander Yarboi Mensa-Annan
  • Lars Hyrsting Larsen
4. term, Techno-Anthropology, Master (Master Programme)
Internet of Things (IoT) has in the last years become a very prominent term. IoT technologies can provide large amounts of information in order for the user to do beneficial real-time analysis. Even though this sounds promising, IoT technologies still faces challenges. Denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks have been done through IoT devices and can prove to be dangerous if left unchecked. In this master thesis, we focus on using a mixture of netnography and digital methods as our methodological framework in order to gather narratives from the Danish IoT scene, from a six-year period (2014-2019), to use in our analysis. To this framework we are also adding the thoughts of Andrew Feenberg’s Critical Theory of Technology (CTT) in order to describe the potentially oppressing designs of IoT technologies. Through our research, we have been able to identify certain patterns of change, both towards the adoption of IoT in Denmark, but also in terms of Danish businesses changing their position regarding security measures. With the use of Feenberg’s instrumentalization theory, we were able to identify the impact IoT has on technologies, and how easily it can decontextualize these in order for them to become oppressive by design towards potential users.
LanguageEnglish
Publication date4 Jun 2020
Number of pages50
ID: 333575734