Glitch Studies and Smart Speakers: A Spotlight on User Experiences of Unexpected Behaviors
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https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3173435Utgivelsesdato
2024Metadata
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Sammendrag
Smart speakers have been widely adopted but come with substantial privacy risks, touching on different privacy types such as informational, social, and physical privacy. Scholars have increasingly studied the privacy implications of smart speakers, finding that users tend to have limited privacy concerns and engage infrequently in privacy protection behavior. Extant research also stresses the contextual and situated nature of privacy around smart speakers, pointing to relevant affordances of the technology. Despite these knowledge advancements, a glitch studies perspective on smart speaker interactions and privacy is notably missing. The glitch studies approach was developed by Rosa Menkman at the intersection of art, technology, and critical social research. It directs the attention to glitches as seemingly small and mundane but powerful moments of interruption that allow for reflection and have productive character. In this contribution, we introduce a glitch studies perspective to the investigation of smart speakers and privacy, showing its fruitfulness. We first discuss the literature on smart speakers and privacy, before providing a concise overview of the glitch studies approach. We then present our data and methodological approach. Based on open text responses from an online survey in the United Kingdom, we identify four types of smart speaker glitches: randomly starting to talk or carry out unexpected activities, misinterpreting the user, technical issues related to connectivity, and violating social and contextual norms. Each glitch type is described in turn, with quotes from the survey as illustrative Glitch Studies and Smart Speakers: A Spotlight on User Experiences of Unexpected Behaviors