"Big Family is Watching You": Everyday Family Interaction Mediated Through Communication Technologies.

Most of the research regarding the proliferation and development of Mediated Communication Technologies (MCT) is focused on collaborative and so-called working contexts. This study was focused on the rising popularity of these technologies within personal and intimate life contexts, such as the family. If distance work and collaboration is no longer a problem today, also throughout remote communication and virtual participation, the situation within the everyday dynamics of family-life is much more complex. Besides the physical distance there are difficulties with the accessibility of these technologies, such as generational factors and lack of information. This study took part in widespread research on MCT, intended as artefacts for the support and the extension of relations between people who do not live in the same geographical area. The first aspect analyzed throughout the interviews, regards the technological dimension and the decisional parameters through which family-memberschoose one or the other communication-system according to different everyday-life situations. In this setting we observed possible strategies through which dislocated family-members try to improve their feeling of closeness. The discourse analysis emphasizes the importance of communication technologies in family contexts, considered to be the basis of daily interactions. There are also different strategies in order to enhance the emotional level and the connections between family-members, also according to socio-cultural and generational variables.