Emergent Mediations Framework: Sensemaking and Sensor-Making in Wearable Technologies Research

abstract: This article offers a framework for media technologies researchers to trace the "emergent" phase of different media devices and forms. Reflecting on the author's decade-long period of researching wearable technologies, it suggests emergent media are characterized by a prolonged period of sense-making and negotiation, which researchers can analyze through mobilizing the relationships between discourse and materials in particular ways. The article contributes an emergent mediations framework. This framework uses theories of mediation as its foundation and offers strategies for using mediation to simultaneously analyze discursive processes of sensemaking alongside hardware and software developments in a related "sensor-making."