Usagewatch was created in 2005 by Francesco Cara to track the evolution of user practices with new digital media. Stefana Broadbent has since taken it on and is transforming it into a more narrative and analytic tool.
The idea is to combine three levels of analysis :
1. the stories of individuals in their daily use of communication channels
2. quantitative data from different sources on the adoption and usage of different digital services and society trends
3. analysis of what is happening in society as a consequence of the adoption of all these new channels
Some of the analysis are long texts that want to really explain the macro phenomena that are happening, other are short texts that comment on the stories that are being published or on the data of the day.
The main idea now is to let people tell their stories, let them do their own narration. Up to now the stories have been collected by anthropologists and social scientists, the objective is now to mix our own interviews with texts that people send us recounting how they communicate day after day.