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The aim of this article is to advance theoretically the debate on the interrelation between robotization and the domestic sphere. I adopt a critical approach to the political economy about the diffusion of machines in the domestic sphere (unexpected and not predicted by the classical theories of capital) and the automation of everyday life, including that of the human body. In the first part, I focus on why robotics has shifted from the industrial sectors in the domestic sphere and on which features characterize today this sector. Then, I describe the trends that robotics has put in motion in the domestic sphere and Europeans' attitudes toward it. In the final part, I analyze the processes of automation that are taking place. I will conclude posing the problem of what kind of society we want to build and live in by introducing the social robots and which future perspectives emerge at social level.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the communicative status and the daily practices of use of the recipe in the broader context of cooking and eating inside the home. My thesis is that the recipe should be regarded as the queen of pragmatics of communication, as recipes are to be found in homes all over the world. I draw on two different research projects: the first study reports upon semi-structured interviews with 137 respondents living in the North East of Italy. The second study presents and discusses the most important categories of meaning that emerged from a content analysis of 398 messages posted on the online cooking forum of the site of Donna Moderna [Modern Woman], the most widely read women's weekly magazine in Italy.

In this article first of all I want to look at the current debate on fashion and the mobile phone. After a brief outline of the question, I discuss the role of fashion and then of design, an interconnected theme that has never been satisfactorily addressed in this debate. Then I analyse briefly how social networks and applications have introduced the discourse surrounding fashion and information about fashion to this device. My conclusion is that it is now necessary to make social science research converge with HCI research in order to have a better understanding of the potentialities of the mobile phone and a clearer vision of where research is now needed.

In this introduction to the fifth volume of the journal Human-Machine Communication, we present and discuss the five articles focusing on gender and human-machine communication. In this essay, we will analyze the theme of gender, including how this notion has historically and politically been set up, and for what reasons. We will start by considering gender in in-person communication, then we will progress to consider what happens to gender when it is mediated by the most important ICTs that preceded HMC: the telephone, mobile phone, and computer-mediated communication (CMC). We outline the historical framework necessary to analyze the last section of the essay, which focuses on gender in HMC. In the conclusion, we will set up some final sociological and political reflections on the social meaning of these technologies for gender and specifically for women.

In this introduction to the fourth volume of the journal Human-Machine Communication, we present and discuss the nine articles selected for inclusion. In this essay, we aim to frame some crucial psychological, sociological, and cultural aspects of this field of research. In particular, we situate the current scholarship from a historical perspective by (a) discussing humanity's long walk with hybridity and otherness, at both the cultural and individual development levels, (b) considering how the organization of capital, labor, and gender relations serve as fundamental context for understanding HMC in the present day, and (c) contextualizing the development of the HMC field in light of seismic, contemporary shifts in society and the social sciences. We call on the community of researchers, students, and practitioners to ask the big questions, to ground research and theory in the past as well as the real and unfolding lifeworld of human-machine communication (including what HMC may become), and to claim a seat at the table during the earliest phases in design, testing, implementation, law and policy, and ethics to intervene for social good.

In this essay, we introduce the 10 articles comprising Volume 2 (2021) of Human-Machine Communication, each of which is innovative and offers a substantial contribution to the field of human-machine communication (HMC). As a collection, these articles move forward the HMC project by touching on four layers of important discourse: (1) updates to theoretical frameworks and paradigms, including Computers as Social Actors (CASA; Nass et al., 1996), (2) examination of ontology and prototyping processes, (3) critical analysis of gender and ability/disability relations, and (4) extension of HMC scholarship into organizational contexts. Building upon the insights offered by the contributing authors and incorporating perspectives coming from the historical, sociological, and semiotic (and hermeneutic) disciplines, we discuss challenges of applying CASA in HMC to suggest reframing in light of long-standing human experiences with automata, objective culture, narration (fiction), and symbols. Whereas CASA's "old brains engage new media" formulation leads naturally to a focus on mindless versus mindful attribution processes, these hermeneutic and semiotic interpretations of robots/media as narrative texts and symbolic humans beg scholarly attention to issues of literacy and representation, respectively. Finally, we advance a series of justifications/calls for future research avenues.