Researching Affordances

Abstract

In an age of profound technological changes, the concept of affordances has assumed a prominent position in the vocabulary scholars use to describe and analyze current transformations. Affordances is a concept that is subject to continuous developments and renegotiations through the scholarly conversation, even if the conceptual core of it (that it relates to the possibilities for action that an environment or artifact offer a living being) remains stable. This chapter provides a conceptual overview and discussion of the concept of affordances, outlining the most important positions and developments in its history. Furthermore, the chapter proposes a methodological procedure for measuring quantitatively the use of affordances; this way, it suggests to broaden the scholarly focus on affordances beyond situated qualitative cases to also pay an interest to the use of affordances across larger samples of communicative, organizational, or institutional contexts.