ABSTRACT
Every evening at about 10pm GMT when it is 6am in the Philippines, Donna, a care-home worker on a student visa in Cambridge, webcams her husband and two eldest sons, aged 12 and 10, while they are having breakfast and getting dressed for school. Early mornings used to be Donna’s favourite time when she was back home. Now she will always make sure she is in front of her screen at that time in order to admire her sons in their school uniforms. This is the time when she asks about school and gives them advice on their homework. After a webcam session with her husband and sons, Donna webcams her mother who looks after her eight-month-old daughter. She asks her mother about how her daughter slept and what she will eat. She sings songs to her daughter and they often play peeka-boo. Donna can stay up for hours chatting to her mother and playing with her daughter, but the thought of her early shift finally forces her to quit the call and go to bed. When she wakes up in the morning her first action is to read the texts that her sons have sent to her roaming phone. She made them promise before she left that they would text her at least once every day and she sends them extra money for this purpose. Donna almost always texts her second son to remind him to take his asthma medication. She will then call her husband and mother to ask about how their day has been. If they are at home she will webcam them briefly before going to work. And then she will briefly call again during her break at work just to say Kumusta (how are you) to her husband. All this intense communicative experience culminates in the weekends when she will webcam her mother and talk to all her relatives who gather there for the family meal. They often leave the camera on for hours, sometimes even for eight consecutive hours. Donna knows what her children have for dinner and what they do at school. She is heavily involved in the Facebook social networking game ‘Café World’ where she ‘owns’ her own café. Donna has made one of her sons her ‘virtual employee’ and they also interact daily through this online game.
