Document [original]

Digital Energy Futures:

Emergence, Stabilization and Contestations

vorgelegt von:

Dipl.-Soz. tech.

Friederike Rohde

an der Fakultät I – Geistes- und Bildungswissenschaften

der Technischen Universität Berlin

zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades

Doktorin der Philosophie

- Dr. phil. -

genehmigte Dissertation

Promotionsausschuss:

Vorsitzender: Prof. Dr. Axel Gelfert, Technische Universität Berlin

Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Tilman Santarius, Technische Universität Berlin

Gutachterin: Prof. Dr. Cordula Kropp, Universität Stuttgart

Tag der wissenschaftlichen Aussprache: 18. März 2024

Berlin 2024

Hinweise

Diese Dissertation ist am Institut für Berufliche Bildung und Arbeitslehre, Fachgebiet Sozial-

ökologische Transformation an der Technischen Universität Berlin entstanden. Erarbeitet

wurde die Dissertation am Institut für ökologische Wirtschaftsforschung (IÖW) im Rahmen

der Nachwuchsforschungsgruppe „Digitalisierung und sozial-ökologische Transformation“,

die von Prof. Dr. Tilman Santarius geleitet wurde. Die Nachwuchsgruppe wurde vom

Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) im Rahmen der sozial-ökologischen

Forschung (SÖF) unter dem Förderkennzeichen 01UU1607B über einen Zeitraum von sechs

Jahren (2016-2022) gefördert

III

Summary

This thesis investigates how smart homes and smart grids are envisioned and legitimized by

different actors in Germany. Since, the transformation of the energy system is of utmost

importance in current ambitions towards mitigating climate change, question about the future

configuration of the energy system and the role of digital energy technologies are a core

concern in current policy and innovation strategies in Germany. Germany can be

characterized by controversies between visions motivated by business interests on the one

hand and an apparently large skepticism amongst the population on the other hand.

Furthermore, active social movements such as digital-policy activists shape public debates

and demand political and civil human rights regarding digital technologies in the energy

sector and beyond. The contestations that occur within smart home and smart grid

developments are associated with multiple conflicting aims, interests and interpretations. This

research wants to shed light on what those conflicting visions are about, who is promoting

them and how they are justified and legitimized. The theoretical framework of this thesis is

composed of visions, sociotechnical imaginaries and strategies of legitimation. By revealing

processes through which imaginaries emerge and are legitimised, it is possible to uncover

hidden assumptions about the interplay of future society with future technologies. The actor

constellations and dynamics that take place when future visions circulate and develop can

show which actors exert influence on emerging sociotechnical imaginaries. This thesis shows

that both smart grid and smart home visions are legitimised by overall ambitions towards

climate protection and ICT implementation in households and electricity infrastructures is

naturalized as inevitable. The findings show that there is a mutual enforcement of policy

visions and economic imperatives of competitiveness and eco-modernity. The analysis of

discourse coalitions and related storylines in the German social media debate illustrated that

the most influential actors in that public debate were taking a critical stance towards the smart

home. Through revealing conflicting imaginaries of digital energy futures this thesis

contributes to critically interrogating dominant visions. It can be found that research on digital

futures research should also investigate social groups which reject or criticize smart home

developments and focus more on the diversity of perspectives and disentangle the contested

visions and their underlying assumptions and justifications. Concludingly the insights of this

thesis can give important advice for current and future policy priorities, research agendas, and

funding schemes on digital energy technologies in Germany.

 
IV 
Contents 
Overview of publications ..................................................................................................VI 
Overall Introduction................................................................................................... 1 
1. Overarching theoretical framework .............................................................................. 5 
2. State of research and research questions ...................................................................... 8 
2.1. Energy related visions and imaginaries ............................................................................................ 8 
2.2. Research Gaps and research questions .......................................................................................... 10 
3. Overview of publications and contribution to the thesis aims ...................................... 12 
4. Research Approach and Methodology ......................................................................... 14 
4.1. Interdisciplinarity considerations ................................................................................................... 15 
4.2. Methodological approach across papers ....................................................................................... 16 
Publications ............................................................................................................. 19 
1. Publication A: Imagining the smart city through smart grids? Urban energy futures 
between technological experimentation and the imagined low-carbon city ............................. 20 
1.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 21 
1.2. Background - Smart grid imaginaries and the city ......................................................................... 23 
1.3. Conceptual framework - The performative power of imagined futures........................................ 24 
1.4. Methodological approach .............................................................................................................. 26 
1.5. Berlin as case study city .................................................................................................................. 27 
1.6. Results - Imagining and making smart grids in Berlin .................................................................... 29 
1.7. Discussion and conclusion .............................................................................................................. 36 
2. Publication B: Threat, Fixable or Opportunity? Contested smart home futures in the 
German social media debate. ................................................................................................. 39 
2.1. Abstract........................................................................................................................................... 39 
2.2. Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 39 
2.3. Smart Home Futures and Public Discourses ................................................................................... 43 
2.4. Conceptual Framework: Capturing Sociotechnical Imaginaries Through discourse coalitions ..... 45 
2.5. Methods: Combining social media Discourse and Network Analysis ............................................ 48 
2.6. Findings ........................................................................................................................................... 55 
2.7. Discussion: Contested sociotechnical imaginaries on digitalization in Homes in Public Debates . 68 
2.8. Conclusion....................................................................................................................................... 71 
3. Publication C: Emerging Sociotechnical Imaginaries – How the smart home is legitimized 
in visions from industry, users in homes and policymakers in Germany.................................... 74 
3.1. Abstract........................................................................................................................................... 74 
3.2. Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 74 
3.3. Envisioned Futures of the Smart Home .......................................................................................... 76 

 
V 
3.4. Conceptual framework: Visions, Sociotechnical imaginaries and legitimation ............................. 77 
3.5. Methodology .................................................................................................................................. 81 
3.6. Findings: German smart home visions from industry, users and politics ...................................... 85 
3.7. Analysis and discussion: stabilization of emerging smart home imaginaries through legitimation

3.8. Conclusion....................................................................................................................................... 96 
4. Publication D: Smart grids and institutional change: Emerging contestations between 
organisations over smart energy transitions ............................................................................ 98 
4.1. Abstract........................................................................................................................................... 98 
4.2. Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 98 
4.3. Background: Smart grid developments in Germany and the role of Institutions ........................ 101 
4.4. Conceptual framework: Investigating institutional changes ........................................................ 105 
4.5. Methodology ................................................................................................................................ 108 
4.6. Findings ......................................................................................................................................... 109 
4.7. Discussion ..................................................................................................................................... 119 
4.8. Conclusions ................................................................................................................................... 122 
Overall Discussion and Conclusions ........................................................................ 125 
1. Contributions to knowledge of the four publications ..................................................125 
2. Reflection of methodological approach ......................................................................132 
3. Discussion of results ..................................................................................................134 
4. Opportunities for further work ..................................................................................137 
5. Conclusions and implications regarding socio-ecological transformation processes .....139 
References ............................................................................................................. 142 
Darstellung des Eigenanteils an den Publikationen ................................................. 161 
Danksagung .......................................................................................................... 164 
Eidesstattliche Erklärung ....................................................................................... 165 
Appendix ............................................................................................................... 166 
1. Appendix Publication A .............................................................................................166 
2. Appendix Publication C ..............................................................................................166 
3. Appendix Publication D .............................................................................................168 
 
   

Overview of publications

Publication A

Quitzow, L., & Rohde, F. (2021). Imagining the smart city through

smart grids? Urban energy futures between technological

experimentation and the imagined low-carbon city. Urban Studies,

00420980211005946. https://doi.org/10.1177/004209802110059

(This article is licensed under anCreative Commons license (CC-BY

4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Publication B

Rohde, F.; von Andrian, N.; Lange, S. (2023). Threat, Fixable or

Opportunity? Contested smart home futures in the German social

media debate. Energy Research & Social Science. 103306.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.103306

(accepted manuscript included)

Publication C

Rohde, F., & Santarius, T. (2023). Emerging sociotechnical

imaginaries–How the smart home is legitimised in visions from

industry, users in homes and policymakers in Germany. Futures,

103194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2023.103194

(accepted manuscript included)

Publication D

Rohde, F., & Hielscher, S. (2021). Smart grids and institutional

change: Emerging contestations between organisations over smart

energy transitions. Energy Research & Social Science, 74, 101974.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.101974

(accepted manuscript included)

1. Overall Introduction

Major societal challenges such as climate change, abiotic depletion or land use changes are

being driven by the increasing combustion of fossil fuels to cover the growing need for

energy (Ripple at al., 2019). Against this backdrop, the transformation of energy systems

has become increasingly important in current ambitions to achieve the climate protection

goals of the European Union (European Commission, 2019) and ultimately of the Paris

Climate Agreement. In order not to exceed planetary boundaries and to enable a decent

quality of life for future generations, a so-called socio-ecological transformation (Brand

2014, Brunnengräber et al., 2017) or socio-ecological transition (Kraussmann et al., 2008;

Dmitrova et al., 2013) are said to be essential.

The reconfiguration of the energy sector is part of such ongoing transformation processes,

which are highly contested (Baker et al., 2021; Lauber & Jacobbson, 2016). The

contestations that occur within these transformation processes are associated with multiple

conflincting aims, interests and interpretations that currently co-exist. How future energy

systems will be configured, and who will be included, excluded or marginalised (Tarazova

& Rohracher, 2023) remains part of ongoing debates.

Simultaneously, the spread of digital technologies is accelerating significantly and today

encompasses nearly all areas of society. These processes of digitalisation are associated

with multiple visions of smart energy systems (Lund et al., 2017). It is argued that digital

energy technologies can contribute to a reduction of CO2 emissions in the energy sector

(Kroposki et al., 2017) and solve some of the main challenges of integrating renewable

energies into the electricity system (e.g. Appelrath, 2013). However, the visions and ideas

of what our energy system will look like in the future – and the role digital technologies

will play in that future – is discussed quite diversely (Skjølsvold, Ryghaug and Berker,

2015). These diverging visions of smart energy systems nurture certain perceptions of

futures that should or should not be realised and might be used by powerful actors for

pursuing their own agendas while concealing problematic developments or driving

incomplete solutions (Sovacool et al., 2020). To reveal visions of future energy systems,

research has focused on the analysis of sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015)

as collectively shared visions of the future and on the role of these imaginaries in national

or transnational controversies about technologies (Lösch et al., 2019). Accordingly, this

thesis is situated in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology studies (STS),

which is critically examining the development of new ways of governing science and

technology (Felt et al. 2017). STS scholars have stressed that visions of the future shape

the governance of innovations and exert a major influence on which technologies and

systems are developed and what is considered desirable or feasible (Konrad & Böhle,

2019; Dignum, 2019). Visions and imaginaries can influence political agendas, funding

schemes or the distribution of resources in certain sectors. The literature on sociology of

expectations has revealed the performative role of expectations and visions in science and

technology (van Lente & Rip 1998, Borup et al.). These so-called socio-technical futures

(Lösch et al. 2019, Konrad & Böhle et al.) define roles, shape relationships between

different actors and groups and thus can guide activities or set agendas. Visions and

imaginaries play a major role within ongoing political struggles and public debates since

visions can mask political interests and actors coalitions driving the development of

technological systems (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015).

Visions on smart homes and smart grids form the main focus of this thesis. These visions

associated with the implementation of digital energy technologies in households and

related grid infrastructures can be subsumed under the term digital energy futures

(Strengers et al., 2023). Households’ use of digital energy technologies, widely known as

smart home technologies, are seen as "the next wave of development in the ongoing

electrification and digitalization of everyday life" (Wilson et al., 2015: 365) and as "the

next great disrupter" (Walpot, 2014). Households as energy consumers are put at the center

of the energy transition in current policy objectives in the EU (European Commission,

2019). The use of digital energy technologies in households and linked energy

infrastructures is associated with great ambitions for decarbonised electricity

infrastructures and an overall vision to support wider energy system change, enabling

flexibilisation on the demand side (Ford et al., 2017; Tsiu and Chan, 2012; Lewis,

2012,;Martiskainen and Coburn, 2011). Demand side management (also load shifting)

describes the adaptation of the supply side to the energy production to adress the need of

integrating fluctuating renewable energies into the German electricty grid.

It is often emphasised that smart homes and the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) are

crucial for changing the role of private consumers from passive energy consumers to active

shapers of the energy system implying that we enter an era of prosumers (Kotler 2010;

Ritzer et al., 2012; Parag and Sovacool, 2016), i. e. agents that both consume and produce

energy. At the same time, the smart home entails a utopian vision for harmonious,

convenient and efficient living (Strengers, 2016). Such convenience narratives are driven

by the smart home industry (Strengers & Nicholls, 2017). On the one hand, the use of

digital technologies is thus seen as an essential element of decarbonised electricity

infrastructures (e.g. Appelrath, 2012). But on the other hand, the environmental

implications of manufacturing the devices and infrastructure needed for smart homes and

smart grids should equally be considered (Pohl et al., 2022; Lange & Santarius, 2020;

Ipsen et al., 2019). Furthermore, issues such as privacy and data security are also common

concerns (Balta-Ozkan et al., 2014) and significant risks regarding domestic surveillance

(Maalsen and Sadowski 2019), control or abuse (Sovacool et al., 2021) are increasingly

discussed.

The digitalisation of the electricity grid infrastructure connected to households is strongly

related to the key ambition of decarbonised electricity infrastructures. The overarching

vision of smart grids is seen as an important path to enable demand side management and

the de-peaking of energy demands through an enhanced electricity infrastructure equipped

with information and communication technologies (e.g. Marris, 2008). Smart grids are

closely linked to smart homes. The extent to which households change their energy related

practices will have a considerable impact on possible configurations of smart grids

(Verbong et al., 2013). However, the real promise of smart grids is that they can process

and analyse large amounts of data (Blumsack and Fernandez, 2012, p. 61) to deal with

future energy supply challenges (Muench et al., 2014) and in doing so create a more

sustainable energy system (e.g. Clastres, 2011). Advocates consider smart grids a solution

for “almost every thinkable energy issue” (Verbong et al., 2013). However, a shared vision

(Tricoire, 2015) and common definition (Konrad and Scheer, 2015) currently still lacks. In

addition to offering technological solutions to integrating fluctuating renewable energy,

smart grids are said to solve a broad range of social challenges (Skjlsvold et al., 2015).

Both smart grids and smart homes are perceived as unclear, vague and ambiguous

umbrella terms entailing a wide range of definitions (Skjølsvold et al., 2015; Sovacool and

Furszyfer Del Rio, 2020). This is an important observation since the question of how these

concepts are defined often indicates what aspects and which actors get included and

excluded from them (Kumar, 2019).

This thesis aims to explore how smart homes and smart grids are imagined in Germany and

what contestations are associated with related future visions. Put differently, this thesis

seeks to capture the tensions between alternative visions of smart energy systems, and how

different actor groups are forcefully articulating futures "that ‘ought’ to be attained" (Beck

et al., 2021, p. 144). A key interest of this thesis is to investigate how the proclaimed

benefits and the risks of smart homes and smart grids are perceived, discussed and justified

in digital energy futures. In order to understand the tensions and contestations that are

associated with different and competing digital energy futures, it is necessary to look at the

emergence of these visions from the perspective of different actors. There is need to reveal

how actors groups such as Policymakers, Industry, Citizens, Civil Society Organizations or

Scientist are justifying and legitimizing the uptake of digital energy technologies Germany

This thesis sheds light on the actors and actor-coalitions that shape the emergence and

enactment of visions on smart homes and smart grids in Germany. The conceptional lens

of sociotechnical imaginaries applied in this thesis seeks to reveal the contestations that

influence the emergence and stabilization of digital energy futures, i.e. visions linked to

smart homes and smart grids.

This thesis is structured as follows. This chapter contains the overall introduction. The

theoretical framework is explained in Chapter 1.1. Research gaps and research questions

are derived from the state of research in Chapter 1.2. The methodological research

approach is explained in Chapter 1.4, which entails considerations on interdisciplinarity

(Chapter 1.4.1) as well as the methodological approach across papers (Chapter 1.4.2).

Chapter 2 constitutes the main part of this work and includes the publications that make up

the cumulative thesis in their original published versions (formatted accordingly for this

thesis). Chapter 3 shows and discusses key findings and reflects on the methods. Chapter

3.1 presents the contribution to knowledge of the publications to the overall thesis aim and

Chapter 3.2 entails a reflection of the methods applied in this thesis. The results of this

thesis are discussed in the context of current research on sociotechnical imaginaries and

energy in Chapter 3.3. Opportunities for further work are outlined in chapter 3.4. and

finally, the results are discussed with regard to their implications regarding socio-

ecological transformation processes.

1.1. Overarching theoretical framework

The production of science and technology is deeply entangled with social norms, rules and

cultures (Jasanoff 2004). One important theoretical starting point for this thesis provides

the idea of co-production of technical developments and social change. The theoretical

framework of this thesis is composed of three main concepts: visions, sociotechnical

imaginaries (Jasanoff & Kim 2009, 2015) and processes of legitimation. The analysis of

visions and imaginaries of energy futures has become an important strand in social science

energy research (Sovacool et al., 2020) and many scholars have analysed sociotechnical

imaginaries of energy for specific regions, infrastructures or fields of application and more

than 43 journal papers on sociotechnical imaginaries in energy studies have been identified

(Rudek, 2022).

In this thesis, visions form the first conceptional building block. Visions are understood as

desirable future images (Dignum et al., 2018) articulated by certain actor groups

(Hilgartner, 2015). "Visions deploy stories, narratives, or scenarios that reveal fundamental

patterns of human reasoning, and how humans communicate their thinking to others, in a

future oriented context" (Sovacool et al., 2020. p. 3). Visions can be differentiated with

regard to temporality, valence, i.e. utopia or dystopia, and radicality (incremental or

transformative) (Sovacool et al., 2020). Visions are highly controversial and contested

(Sovacool et al., 2020) and closely related to processes of envisioning (Schelhas et al.,

2018; Strengers, 2016), i.e. the practices and methods employed in approaching the future

(Ziegler, 1991).

The second building block is the concept of imaginaries. Scholarship on imaginaries is

described as a complex terrain (McNeil et al., 2016) in light of the diversity of terms, such

as the "philosophical imaginary" (Le Doeuff, 1989), "social imaginaries" (Taylor, 2004),

"genetic imaginary" (Franklin 2000, Stacy 2010) or "bioimaginary" (Steinberg, 2015), to

name just a few. In this thesis, the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries by Jasanoff and

Kim (2009) is applied as a theoretical perspective. It points out that futures claimed as

desirable are very often linked to and driven by ideas of techno-scientific progress as well

as national policies. The distinction between visions and sociotechnical imaginaries can be

made according to their stability and circulation within broader collectives. Whereas

visions refer to future images held by certain social groups, sociotechnical imaginaries

refer to collectively shared, institutionally stabilised visions of the future (Jasanoff and

Kim, 2015).

With the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries, Jasanoff and Kim (2015) aim to capture

how cultural orientations and social norms are interwoven with the technical and material

world. The development of scientific knowledge and technology is, according to Jasanoff

and Kim, both embedded in social practices, identities, norms, discourses and institutions

and constitutive of the social world. Sociotechnical imaginaries describe "the myriad ways

in which scientific and technological visions enter into the assemblages of materiality,

meaning, and morality that constitute robust forms of social life" (Jasanoff, 2015:

4). Sociotechnical imaginaries are defined as:

"collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed

visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of

forms of social life and social order attainable through, and

supportive of, advances in science and technology" (Jasanoff, 2015:

4).

In sociotechnical imaginaries, positive notions of social progress, but also fears and

dystopias, can play a significant role (Jasanoff, 2015). The role of imaginaries has already

been studied in relation to various technological developments, such as fuel cells

(McDowall and Eames, 2006; Eames et al., 2006), nuclear power (Hultman, 2009),

biofuels (Fatimah, 2015; Kuchler, 2014), bioenergy (Levidow and Papaioannou, 2013),

solar energy (Cloke et al., 2017), as well as in the field of smart grids (Ballo, 2015) and

low-carbon housing (Cherry et al., 2017). Developments in the field of biotechnology

(Smith, 2015; Chen, 2015), nanotechnology (Burri, 2015) or electromobility (Ryhaug and

Toftaker, 2016) are also analysed with recourse to the concept of sociotechnical

imaginaries. In the context of digitalisation, the concept is also used for the analysis of

data futures (Rupert, 2018), self-driving vehicles (Angelov, 2016) and smart cities (Mertia,

2017). Significant for this thesis is the observation that futures mark a shared imaginative

space that can be valued or desired very differently (Jasanoff, 2015).

The third building block that constitutes the theoretical framework is legitimation as a

process of gaining (and maintaining) legitimacy. Legitimacy can be defined as

“a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity

are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed

systems of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions” (Suchman, 1995 p.

574).

Legitimation is thus “the product of an ongoing process of social negotiation involving

multiple participants” (Suddaby et al., 2017, p. 24). Consequently, legitimation is a process

that is socially constructed (Suddaby et al., 2017) and involves agency from different

actors who seek to align new ideas within prevailing normative prescriptions (Suchman,

1995). Thus, legitimation involves conscious actions by various actors, which encompass

cognitive, normative and regulative aspects (Bergek et al., 2008). When it comes to digital

energy futures this thesis aims to reveal the multiple ways in which visions legitimise the

uptake of emerging digital energy technologies. The processes of stabilization and

enactment of sociotechnical imaginaries can be analysed regarding their repeated

reproduction for instance, in the acts of power (legal acts, political decisions and fund

allocations) coalition building or fostering the innovation (Graf and Sonnberger, 2020;

Gross et al., 2019; Miller, 2019). This conceptual framework is developed and described in

more detail in the respective publications of this thesis which make up the core content of

this thesis.

1.2. State of research and research questions

This chapter seeks to provide a short overview in chapter 1.2.1 over the state of research

regarding energy futures more broadly and sociotechnical imaginaries and energy more

specifically. Subsequently, research gaps are described, and the research questions are

expounded in chapter 1.2.2.

1.2.1. Energy related visions and imaginaries

For more than a decade, energy futures research has investigated the ways in which the

future energy system is imagined. Various research has investigated collective visions

ranging from the multinational to the local and urban, and involving different energy

sources and technologies (e.g. Eaton et al., 2014; Tozer and Klenk, 2018; Longhurst and

Chilvers, 2019). Scientific research on various socio-technical elements of future energy

supply, such as smart grids, smart meters or smart homes, has focused intensively on the

associated visions, which vary greatly depending on context, scope and level of

consideration (Ballo, 2015). This research has revealed that digital energy futures are

highly contested (Tricoire 2015, Hielscher & Sovacool 2018). For example, as shown by

the example of the smart meter discourse in the UK, the media discourse is characterised

both by positive expectations of consumer empowerment and a decarbonised energy

system, as well as fears of surveillance, cyberattacks, increased costs and social injustice

(Hielscher and Sovacool, 2018). Similar polarised discourses can also be observed in the

topic area of smart homes (Sovacool and Furszyfer Del Rio, 2020). Research on smart grid

visions in the European Union has shown that those visions are strongly influenced by

actors from industry who herald smart grids as reliable, competitive and innovative means

to solve several growth, sustainability and energy security challenges (Vesnic-Alujevic,

Breitegger and Pereira, 2016). Social science and energy research has found that the

creation of smart grid-related imaginaries is often restricted to relatively small

communities of experts, usually in the context of curbed testing grounds (Ballo, 2015 ;

Engels and Münch, 2015; McLean, 2013). Scholarship has critically argued that emerging

smart grid infrastructure concepts primarily reflect positivist notions of sustainability,

reliability, efficiency, transparency, and security (Ballo, 2015; Palensky and Kupzog,

2013; Skjølsvold et al., 2015; Wentland, 2016) hampering broader and critical public

debate (Lösch and Schneider, 2017; Luque-Ayala, 2014; Vesnic-Alujevic et al., 2016).

Moreover, smart grid experts have conveyed to the public mainly positive views about

energy system automation, consumer engagement, and security of supply, while hiding

concerns about risks and uncertainties from public view (Vesnic-Alujevic et al., 2016;

Luque Ayala, 2014).

In smart home futures research, visions from the industry have been widely discussed and

critically interrogated, (Aagaard, 2021a; Strengers et al., 2020b; Strengers and Nicholls,

2017b), as has the question of how users are imagined in smart home visions (Aagaard,

2021b; Cherry et al., 2017). Visions of the “quantified”, “automated” and “enhanced”

smart home through digital data and connectivity promise users more comfort,

convenience and time, and technology that can be integrated almost seamlessly into

everyday practices (Strengers, 2016). Visions, narratives and imaginaries of smart homes

and smart grids have been explored in various countries and contexts (e.g. Ballo, 2015;

Cherry et al., 2017; Strengers, 2016). According to research conducted in the UK, there are

a number of benefits to adopting a smart home, including energy savings (linked to

ecological and financial benefits), convenience and controllability, aesthetic and health

benefits, social acceptance (status consumption), entertainment, security and shopping

(Sovacool and Furszyfer Del Rio, 2020). The possible energy and sustainability outcomes

are, however, thwarted (Strengers et al., 2020b) by convenience narratives that, along with

the related devices, play a crucial role in influencing future practices in the home

(Strengers, 2013, 2016; Strengers et al., 2018, 2020). Frequently, a narrative of

convenience is used to justify and legitimise the smart home by promising to make life

better, easier and more energy efficient (Strengers and Nicholls, 2017a). Indeed, the

narrative of convenience is one of the most important findings from research on smart

home visions (Aagaard, 2021; Strengers and Nicholls, 2017a). A study of Australian smart

home business aspirations also found a wide vision of pleasure with specific attributes,

such as aesthetic experience, customisation and control, ease of use and simplicity or

seamless energy-saving (Strengers et al., 2020b). Other researchers have identified

competing visions for the future of housing, including the ‘Passivhaus’ low-tech building

standard on the one hand and high-tech, automated smart homes on the other, where the

occupant is disregarded since they lack knowledge or skills (Cherry et al., 2017).

1.2.2. Research Gaps and research questions

This thesis addresses several research gaps that have been identified in the current

literature on energy related visions and imaginaries. In contrast to the current literature on

smart home visions, which focuses on either industry visions (Strengers et al., 2020b;

Strengers and Nicholls, 2017a) or on the convenience aspect and how users are envisioned

(Aagaard, 2021b), this thesis looks at visions from different actors such as the smart home

industry, users of smart homes and policymakers to analyze how sociotechnical

imaginaries emerge out of different visions. The roots and underlying processes of

justification are important because they can show how competing ideas of the role of smart

energy technologies in future society exist alongside each other. The emergence of

dominant imaginaries is strongly related to discursive processes (Tozer and Klenk, 2018a),

which are centered around discourse coalitions and contested sociotechnical arrangements

regarding certain technologies. Although research on sociotechnical imaginaries and

energy has started to investigate the underlying justifications and notions of legitimation

(Dignum, 2018) as well as mechanisms of visibility, performativity and transformation into

practice (Kuchler, 2017b) "there is a lack of research that deals with the processes of

imaginaries formation" (Rudek, 2022, p. 231). Consequently, this thesis aims to further

analyse the roots of imaginaries and how they become visible, collective, and

institutionally stabilised (Rudek, 2022). Research on the processes of the institutional

stabilisation of imaginaries is concerned with epistemic framings (Flegal & Gupta, 2018),

ideational and material contexts (Christiansen & Carton, 2021) and how proponents (e.g. in

the case of gene-editing) seek to frame science and technological trajectories as being in

the public interest (Bain et al., 2020). This thesis closes this research gap by focusing on

legitimation processes and how they contribute to the institutional stabilisation of emerging

sociotechnical imaginaries.

Another research gap, which this thesis addresses, is the interdependence between

sociotechnical imaginaries and public reason (Rudek, 2022). Although energy futures

research has started to focus on discourses of the general public, especially in the UK

(Cherry et al., 2017; Hielscher and Sovacool, 2018a), there is a lack of evidence about

which public views exist on smart homes and what contestations are part of publicly

expressed envisionings of the smart home. Acknowledging that collective dynamics of

imagining the future are inherently political (Milkoreit, 2017), sociotechnical imaginaries

are always associated with struggles and contestations over future states in relation to

certain technologies. By addressing this gap, this thesis aims to take a deeper look at

relations between the state, society and technologies – which are always part of the

processes of collective imagination (Beck et al., 2021; Jasanoff, 2015).

Finally, this thesis aims to empirically capture the tensions between competing imaginaries

and thus reveal the contestations that are part of these emergence and stabilisation

processes.

These research gaps result in the following overarching research question and subordinate

research questions, that are part of the publications:

Table 1: Research questions

Overarching research question: How are smart homes and smart grids envisioned and

legitimised by different actors in Germany, and how do contestations between

alternative visions influence collectively shared imaginaries of digital energy

technologies?

Subordinate research questions of this thesis

• How are smart homes and smart grids imagined by certain actor groups?

• Who is promoting which vision on smart homes and smart grids?

• How do certain actors legitimise those visions as part of stabilisation processes?

• What contestations arise around envisioned smart homes and smart grids?

These questions will be answered throughout this thesis to eventually answer the

overarching research question. The following chapter seeks to provide an overview on the

four publications making up the body of this thesis and demonstrates how each publication

is contributing to the research aims provided above.

1.3. Overview of publications and contribution to the thesis aims

This chapter aims to provide an overview over the publications that make up the body of

this thesis and their respective contributions to the formulated research aims.

The main part of this thesis are four publications that address the above-mentioned

research questions. Two publications focus on smart homes and two further publications

on smart grids. Publications A and B focus on the discursive structures through which the

formation of sociotechnical imaginaries can be traced. Both papers ask how smart grids

and smart homes are being imagined and which actors are part of these processes. Whereas

publication A investigates smart grid imaginaries empirically on a local scale in Berlin,

publication B looks at social media discourses in Germany and thus focuses on the national

level. Beyond the empirical contribution, publication A contributes to the conceptional

development of the performative capabilities of sociotechnical imaginaries by explaining

the role of urban laboratories as means of perpetuation and diffusion (Table 2).

Publication B illustrates how certain social groups imagine the digitalized home in the

public social media debate and contributes a novel methodological approach combining

quantitative network analysis with qualitative discourse analysis. Publication C advances

the research on sociotechnical imaginaries by looking at the roots of imaginaries and

processes of stabilization through legitimation. The main contribution of publication C is

an empirical investigation of the contestations that derive from attempts of different actors

to shape smart grid developments in Germany. The contribution of Publication D is first

and foremost an empirical one, because it illustrates how actors involved in German smart

grid developments trying to actively shape institutional changes so that they can take up

their preferred roles and responsibilities. It reveal several contestations related to smart

grid developments in Germany and thus can provide important insights on actors roles and

contestations that arise when smart grids are implemented. Furthermore it shows the

contested issues and negotiations over existing and possible future institutional

arrangements and how diverse actors in the field undertake different efforts to ‘create’,

‘maintain’ or ‘disrupt’ the existing institutional setting.

Table 2: Overview of Publications and contributions to overall thesis aim

Publication

Research questions

Conceptual

Framework

Contribution to the overall

thesis aim

Publication A

Quitzow, L., & Rohde, F.

(2021). Imagining the

smart city through smart

grids? Urban energy

futures between

technological

experimentation and the

imagined low-carbon city.

Urban Studies,

00420980211005946.

• How are smart grids

being locally

imagined?

• Who is promoting

these imaginaries?

• How does this relate

to the global smart

city paradigm?

Sociotechnical

Imaginaries

Sociology of

knowledge

approach to

discourse

(SKAD)

Empirical contribution:

Reveals smart grid

imaginaries in the City of

Berlin

Conceptual contribution:

Seeks to explain the

performative capabilities of

imaginaries

Publication B

Rohde, F.; von Andrian,

N.; Lange, S. (2023).

Threat, Fixable or

Opportunity? Contested

smart home futures in the

German social media

debate. Energy Research

& Social Science

• Which actors

dominate the social

media discourse in

Germany around

smart homes?

• How is the smart

home discussed and

imagined in the

German (social)

media debate

Sociotechnical

Imaginaries

Discourse

Coalitions

Empirical contribution:

Sheds light on the online

debates on Smart Home in

Germany and which actors

are influential

Methodological contribution:

Applies a novel

methodological approach of

network-discourse-analyses

to identify conflicting visions

that form public smart home

imaginaries

Publication C

Rohde, F., & Santarius, T.

(2023). Emerging

sociotechnical imaginaries

– How the smart home is

legitimised in visions

from industry, users in

homes and policymakers

in Germany. Futures,

103194.

• What visions of the

smart home do the

smart home industry,

users in homes and

policymakers in

Germany create?

• How is legitimacy

created in those

smart home visions?

Sociotechnical

Imaginaries

Legitimation

Empirical contribution:

Shows smart home visions

from industry actors, users in

homes and policymakers in

Germany

Conceptional contribution:

Provides insights into the

institutional stabilization of

emerging imaginaries trough

different legitimation

strategies

Publication D

Rohde, F., & Hielscher, S.

(2021). Smart grids and

institutional change:

Emerging contestations

between organisations

over smart energy

transitions. Energy

Research & Social

Science, 74, 101974.

• What challenges do

organisations

involved in smart

grid developments

currently face and

how do they attempt

to engage in

processes of

institutional change?

Institutional

change

"issue-based"

Fields

Institutional

work

Empirical contribution:

Identifies three core

contestations amongst actors

in the German smart grid

field

When writing a cumulative thesis, it is always necessary and advisable to make use of

publication opportunities and to collaborate with other researchers on research from other

project contexts. Two publications of this dissertation (Publications A and D) therefore

also address further research interests, which, however, do not form the core interest of this

thesis. Publication A, for example, also interrogates the relationship between smart grid

imaginaries and the overarching smart city paradigm and situates the analysis of smart grid

imaginaries in urban research. These sub-aspects of the publication correspond more to the

research interests of my co-author Leslie Quitzow and her thesis (Quitzow 2022) and are of

minor importance for this thesis. What is important for the current thesis in publication A

is the question of how smart grids are being locally imagined and which actor groups are

promoting which vision of smart grids. When it comes to publication D, a distinct

conceptional framework has been applied that sheds light on processes of institutional

changes and how actors engage in institutional work to influence and shape smart energy

systems. The empirical work in Publication D was conducted as part of the work in a

Smart Grid Pilot Project in Berlin Adlershof and finalised within the junior research group.

Since this publication was written with a different theoretical focus than the other three

publications, it also addresses research interests beyond the scope of this thesis, such as

questions of institutional change within smart grid developments. However, the evidence

gathered from this publication provides important insights for future research agendas,

which might combine sociotechnical imaginaries and institutional changes, which I will

explain in more detail in section 3.4.

1.4. Research Approach and Methodology

This chapter provides an overview of the research approach underlying this dissertation.

Section 1.3.1 discusses the interdisciplinary research project that forms the framework for

the thesis and the cooperation with authors from disciplines other than sociology. Section

1.4.2 explains the methodological approach of this thesis in a comprehensive manner and

with regard to the individual publications.

1.4.1. Interdisciplinarity considerations

This thesis was written as part of the inter- and transdisciplinary junior research group

"Digitalization and Sustainability" funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and

Research and conducted as a cooperation between the TU Berlin and the Institute for

Ecological Economy Research (IÖW). This research was conducted as part of an inter- and

transdisciplinary smart home project, that was carried out within the framework of the

junior research group together with Johanna Pohl, Vivian Frick, Tilman Santarius, Anja

Höffner, Manuel Brümmer and Steffen Lange and includes publications with researchers

from other disciplines such as architecture, design and economics. In the following, the

research background and the interdisciplinary collaboration with the co-authors will be

explained in more detail. While Johanna Pohl's dissertation examines the environmental

impact of ICT and how higher order effects can be integrated into the life cycle assessment

of ICT (Pohl 2022), this thesis aims to analyse the future visions associated with the smart

home.

Publications B and C were produced as part of the interdisciplinary smart home project,

which was characterised through collaborative knowledge production and joint

development of research questions (Lang et al., 2012) as well as the integration of research

methods from the different disciplines sociology, psychology, environmental engineering

and economy. Furthermore, the integration of the results between the different disciplines

in course of conference contributions for the 6th International Conference on ICT for

Sustainability, ICT4S 2019, Lappeenranta, Finland (Pohl et al. 2020) and the 20th

European Round Table and Sustainable Consumption and Production, ERCSP 2021 in

Graz, Austria (Rohde et al. 2021). The research group has also published interdisciplinary

publications (e.g. Santarius et al., 2022; Lange et al., 2023) in which some of this thesis’

findings have been integrated.

Above that experiences from practice and the cooperation in the smart grid pilot project in

Adlershof strongly influenced the research perspective. Furthermore, the results of this

research were discussed with stakeholders from civil society in workshops and at

conferences, such as the Bits & Bäume Conference 2022.

1.4.2. Methodological approach across papers

To understand the way smart homes and smart grids are imagined and the contestations

that are part of processes of emergence and stabilisation on imaginaries, this thesis is

mainly based on a qualitative-interpretative research approach (Flick, 2002). The term

“qualitative research” is used for very different theoretical and methodological

approaches to social reality. These approaches include "symbolic interactionism" (Blumer,

1980), ethnomethodology (Weingarten et al., 1976) and field research, a branch of social

research which seeks to observe people under natural conditions (i.e. not in laboratory

experiments) and to intervene as little as possible (e.g. Patry & Bay, 1982). A qualitative

research approach focuses on understanding and explaining social realities and interactions

in an interpretative way. As such, qualitative research neither aims to test a hypothesis nor

does it aim for measurements, i.e. mapping of a characteristic on a scale. Rather, it

describes realties and interactions, when “description” entails representation through

language. Since material and social worlds are symbolic and interpreted by individuals and

collectives, the interpretation by researchers can be understood as the mere reproduction of

the pre-interpreted world (Flick, 2005). The qualitative research process is therefore

oriented towards a circular process, which is also subject to constant reformulations during

the process itself. Data collection, data evaluation and the theoretical discovery of

knowledge are closely intertwined and are mutually dependent in the research process until

a theoretical saturation of knowledge has been achieved (Strauss, 1998; Strauss & Corbin,

1998).

According to Flick (2005), scientific research should proceed in a “qualitative manner”,

when the subjects and themes are complex, differentiated, not very clear or contradictory",

which in this thesis is the case, since the concepts of smart homes and smart grids lack a

common definition (Konrad & Scheer, 2014, Skjølsvold 2015) and can be described as

vague umbrella terms. Likewise, as this research is based on an interpretation of the data

against known everyday experiences, historical knowledge or ingrained socio-cultural

orientations (Flick, 2005), a qualitative approach to the research questions is reasonable

and purposeful. The qualitative methods used in this thesis are in-depth, semi-structured

interviews (Flick, 2005) and qualitative content analyses (Mayring, 2015). See Table 3 for

details. Important quality criteria of qualitative research are the explanation of the context,

the intersubjective comprehensibility of the interpretation (Flick 2005) as well as the

relevance of the results. For this reason, the methodological section of the publications

describes in detail how the findings were achieved. Qualitative research also has its limits,

especially in terms of the size of the samples to be studied, but also in terms of how much

the researchers' interpretation influences the reproducibility of the results.

The rise of social media and digitally mediated communication has come with the

opportunity for social science research to follow constant flows of communication and

provide access to interactions and discourses. As such, a shift in the field towards "digital

methods" occurred, recognizing the internet not only as an object of study, but also a

source (Rogers 2013). Research has found that for example Twitter communities’ network

structures reflect to some extent real-life communities (Quercia et al., 2021).

Social media not only provides access to shared public understandings and perceptions but

can also reveal networked structures of actors that are part of these public debates.

Therefore, this thesis aims to combine qualitative approaches with the possibility to trace

actions and expressions by social actors in the digital space, i.e. quantitatively analysed

networked structures. Combining qualitative content analysis with network analysis, this

thesis thus makes use of the explanatory design model for mixed methods research

outlined by Creswell and Plano Clark (2011). This approach is proposed as a framework in

which qualitative data helps to explain or bolster initial quantitative results (Mulligan,

2016). Revealing not only the perspectives and interpretations of different actors regarding

the envisioned smart home, this thesis also seeks to uncover the actors’ networks in online

media debates (Publication B). An overview of the methods applied in this thesis across

the publications is given in Table 3.

Table 3: Overview of methods applied in the publications

Publication

Applied methods

Amount of material

to be examined &

period under study

Authors

that

conducted

empirical

inquiry

Publication A

Quitzow & Rohde (2021)

• In-depth, semi structured

interviews

• Qualitative content analysis

of publicly available policy

documents, laws, strategy

papers, reports, policy briefs,

company websites,

advertisements and

informational brochures

• 16 Interviews

• 42 documents

• 2016 - 2018

Leslie

Quitzow

Publication B

Rohde, Andrian, Lange

(2023)

• Twitter Network Analysis:

41,062 tweets that used the

keyword “smart home” or the

hashtag “#smarthome”,

between January 1st 2018

and December 31st 2019

• Qualitative content analysis

of media content that was

linked in the tweets of the 25

most central actors in the

network (predominantly

news articles, blog posts and

online newspaper articles)

• 419 tweets

• 74 documents

• 2018 - 2020

Friederike

Rohde,

Nikolaus v.

Andrian

Publication C

Rohde & Santarius (2023)

• Qualitative content analysis

of website content of the 10

most widespread smart home

providers in Germany

• Interviews with smart home

users

• Qualitative content analysis

of policy documents

• 12 Interviews

• 17 Policy

documents

• 277 pages of

marketing material

Friederike

Rohde

Publication D

Rohde & Hielscher (2021)

• In-depth, semi structured

interviews

• Document Review

• 18 Interviews

• 41 documents

Friederike

Rohde

2. Publications

Table 4: Overview over Publication History and Authorship Details of Publications

Publication

Publication History

Authorship Details

Impact

Factor

Journal*

Quitzow, L., & Rohde, F. (2021).

Imagining the smart city through

smart grids? Urban energy futures

between technological

experimentation and the imagined

low-carbon city.

Urban Studies, 00420980211005946.

Manuscript received: Aug. 2020

Manuscript revised: Jan 2021

Manuscript accepted: April 2021

Conception: First Author

Analyses: First Author

Original Draft: All Authors

Final Approval: All Authors

4.7

Rohde, F.; von Andrian, N.; Lang, S.:

Threat, Useless or Fixable?

Contested smart home futures in

the German social media debate.

Energy Research & Social Science,

(under review, second revision

submitted)

Manuscript received: Dec. 22

Manuscript revised: May 2023

Manuscript revised: Sept, 2023

Manuscript accepted: Oct, 2023

Conception: All Authors

Analyses: First & Second

Author

Original Draft: All Authors

Final Approval: All Authors

6.7

Rohde, F., & Santarius, T. (2023).

Emerging sociotechnical

imaginaries–How the smart home

is legitimised in visions from

industry, users in homes and

policymakers in Germany.

Futures, 103194.

Manuscript received: Feb. 22

Manuscript revised: Aug. 2022

Manuscript revised: Jan. 23

Manuscript revised: May 23

Manuscript accepted: May 23

Conception: All Authors

Analyses: First Author

Original Draft: First Author

Final Approval: All Authors

Rohde, F., & Hielscher, S. (2021).

Smart grids and institutional

change: Emerging contestations

between organisations over smart

energy transitions.

Energy Research & Social Science,

74, 101974.

Manuscript received: March 2020

Manuscript revised: Oct. 2020

Manuscript revised: Jan 2021

Manuscript accepted: Feb. 2021

Conception: All Authors

Analyses: All Authors

Original Draft: All Authors

Final Approval: All Authors

6.7

* Impact factor provided on the journal homepage (9/2023)

2.1. Publication A: Imagining the smart city through smart grids?

Urban energy futures between technological experimentation and

the imagined low-carbon city

Current imaginaries of urban smart grid technologies are painting attractive pictures of the

kinds of energy futures that are desirable and attainable in cities. Making claims about the

future city, the socio-technical imaginaries related to smart grid developments unfold the

power to guide urban energy policy-making and implementation practices. This paper

analyzes how urban smart grid futures are being imagined and co-produced in the city of

Berlin, Germany. It explores these imaginaries to show how the politics of Berlin’s urban

energy transition are being driven by techno-optimistic visions of the city’s digital

modernization and its ambitions to become a “smart city”. The analysis is based on a

discourse analysis of relevant urban policy and other documents, as well as interviews with

key stakeholders from Berlin’s energy, ICT and urban development sectors, including key

experts from three urban laboratories for smart grid development and implementation in

the city. It identifies three dominant imaginaries that depict urban smart grid technologies

as a) environmental solution, b) economic imperative, and c) exciting experimental

challenge. The paper concludes that dominant imaginaries of smart grid technologies in the

city are grounded in a techno-optimistic approach to urban development that are

foreclosing more subtle alternatives or perhaps more radical change towards low-carbon

energy systems.

Keywords: smart city; smart grid; urban imaginary; urban laboratories;

2.1.1. Introduction

Smart grid technologies play an increasingly important role in imaginations of urban low-

carbon transitions. Especially in the context of Germany’s Energiewende, smart grids are

being hailed as environmental innovations and indispensable means to achieve the mass

integration of renewable energies in cities. Although only vaguely defined and imagined

very differently smart grids stand for the integration of information and communication

technologies (ICT) into electricity networks. The use of ICTs in electricity networks is

seen as a way to achieve low-carbon energy production through the integration of more

(fluctuating) renewable energy sources, higher energy efficiency through the real-time

coordination of resource flows, higher supply security through automatic grid

reconfiguration, and more active consumer participation in energy markets. Moreover, the

digital enhancement of urban electricity grids is seen as an opportunity for increasing

economic competitiveness through high-tech infrastructural modernization and the

attraction of high-skilled, well-paying jobs. The imaginaries associated with urban smart

grid infrastructures are inspiring highly unlikely alliances across different expert domains

and stimulating visions of environmentally sustainable and economically thriving urban

futures.

This is happening at the height of the global smart city paradigm. Cities across the world

are increasingly relying on high-tech innovation to solve all kinds of urban problems, from

transport congestion to citizen participation and environmental degradation. Urban

administrations are passing smart city strategies and opening urban laboratories, innovation

spaces, or other sites of technological experimentation in order to attract ICT companies

and compete in the race for digital modernization and progress. Urban studies researchers

have amply criticized the smart cities paradigm as corporate driven strategy for promoting

neoliberal agendas (Hollands, 2008; Söderström et al., 2014; Vanolo, 2014), and as techno-

reductionist in its claims to solve complex social and environmental problems (Luque et al;

Luque-Ayala and Marvin, 2015; Viitanen and Kingston, 2014; Wiig and Wyly, 2016).

Nevertheless, smart urbanization is rapidly being put into practice in myriad projects

across the world (Karvonen et al., 2019) .

Against this backdrop, it seems worth asking how local imaginaries of the smart grid fit

into the logics of “low-carbon” on the one hand and the global logics of “smart cities” on

the other. The question therefore is whether and how visions of smart grids are opening

pathways for the achievement of urban low-carbon transitions, and how this relates to the

logics of “smart” that might simultaneously be at work. To answer this question, it is

important to understand how and by whom smart grid futures are being imagined at the

local level. Guiding questions for this research therefore were:

• How are smart grids being locally imagined?

• Who is promoting these imaginaries?

• How does this relate to the global smart city paradigm?

We conceive of smart grids as socio-technical infrastructure systems that are deeply

entangled with the social, political and cultural shaping of cities (Hommels, 2005; Hughes,

1983), and whose development is driven by visions and imaginaries that nurture certain

assumptions about desirable and attainable urban futures. Although the environmental

promises associated with smart grids attract many (non-corporate) experts who are

intrinsically motivated to make urban energy transitions work, we argue that dominant

imaginaries accompanying the development of smart grid infrastructures at the local level

are currently reinforcing the largely uncritical, techno-positivist logics of the global smart

city paradigm.

Our analyses of three smart grid pilot sites in Germany´s capital Berlin reveals that – just

like with smart cities - the imaginaries associated with smart grids have become quasi

hegemonic and thus irresistible to urban administrations, businesses and researchers alike.

Because smart grids are still at an early stage of development, these imaginaries are

currently being advanced by a small community of experts mostly through involvement in

three of Berlin’s so-called “future sites” (“Zukunftsorte”) – or urban laboratories for

developing, testing, and showcasing smart grids in the city. By disentangling the

imaginaries that are associated with smart grids in the city of Berlin, this article discusses

which urban problems smart grids seek to address, critically engages with the solutions that

urban smart grids promise to provide and asks questions about who is currently involved in

producing and reinforcing these imaginaries in the city. It starts by briefly contextualizing

our research within the social and urban studies discourses on smart grids, followed by an

illustration of the conceptual framework of our research approach, including methods of

data collection and analysis. It then goes on to discuss the research findings along the lines

of the three dominant socio-technical imaginaries we identified, which link smart grid

futures with urban futures. Finally, we conclude und discuss our research results.

2.1.2. Background - Smart grid imaginaries and the city

While a growing body especially of STS research has started engaging with smart grids as

social endeavors (Kumar, 2019; Meadowcroft et al., 2018), there is still relatively little

urban studies literature on the topic (Bulkeley et al., 2016; Levenda, 2018a; Levenda et al.,

2018b; Luque-Ayala, 2014; McLean et al., 2015). Skjolsvold et al. (2015) identify three

areas of relevant social scientific inquiry: firstly, imaginaries and visions (Ballo, 2015;

Köktürk and Tokuç, 2017; Skjølsvold and Lindkvist, 2015; Tricoire, 2015), secondly,

expectations towards users, such as consumer engagement (Gangale et al., 2017),

participation (Throndsen and Ryghaug, 2015), acceptance (Broman Toft et al., 2014;

Geelen et al., 2013; Verbong et al., 2013) and empowerment (Shaukat et al., 2018), and

thirdly, system building and transformation (Erlinghagen and Markard, 2012). Other

researchers have also examined questions of trust and confidence (Büscher and Sumpf,

2015; Reuver et al., 2016) or of ownership of electricity infrastructures (Hall et al., 2019).

Our analysis relates to the first area of research, i.e. the imaginaries and visions associated

with smart grids and how they materialize in current smart grid implementation projects.

Here, social scientific research has found that the production of smart grid related

imaginaries is often confined to relatively small communities of experts, mostly in the

context of bounded sites of experimentation (Ballo, 2015; Engels and Münch, 2015;

McLean, 2013). Recent studies have argued critically that imaginaries of emerging smart

grid infrastructures are depicting largely positivist notions of sustainability, reliability,

efficiency, transparency, and security (Ballo, 2015; Palensky and Kupzog, 2013;

Skjølsvold et al., 2015; Wentland, 2016), while impeding more comprehensive, critical

public debates (Lösch and Schneider, 2017; Luque-Ayala, 2014; Vesnic-Alujevic et al.,

2016). Moreover, smart grid experts have been found to communicate mostly positive

views of energy system automation, consumer engagement and security of supply to the

general public, while hiding their concerns about risks and uncertainties from view

(Vesnic-Alujevic et al. 2016; Luque-Ayala 2014).

Although all of these findings have contributed to a better understanding of how smart

grids are shaping imagined futures, very few explicitly address the urban. This article aims

to expand on this literature by exploring what kinds of urban futures are being imagined

through the development of smart grid infrastructures in the city of Berlin, Germany, and

how they relate to questions of “smart cities” on the one hand, and questions of

“sustainable” and “low carbon cities” on the other. We argue that in Berlin, imaginaries of

a future smart grid city are being co-produced through policies and implementation

practices that are mutually reinforcing each other, and which are being nurtured as much

by environmental ideals as by the technical solutionism of the smart city.

2.1.3. Conceptual framework - The performative power of imagined futures

Our analysis is based on the concept of socio-technical imaginaries and the notion that they

exert strong influence on processes of policymaking, social debate and technology

development in the present (Lösch et al., 2019). Scenarios, imaginaries and Leitbilder

represent visions of future states (Lösch et al., 2016) and serve as collective visions of a

good, desirable future ( e.g. Böhle and Bopp, 2014; Borup et al., 2006; Dierkes et al., 1992;

Ferrari and Lösch, 2017; Giesel, 2007; Harro van Lente and Arie Rip; Jasanoff and Kim,

2009; Sand and Schneider, 2017).In their work on socio-technical imaginaries, Jasanoff

and Kim (2015) argue that once certain claims about the future are sufficiently wide

spread, they develop into "collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly

performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of

social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and

technology" (Jasanoff and Kim, 2015: 4). These imaginaries can gain the power to steer

national level policy decisions, guide research programs or direct global financial

investments (Jasanoff and Kim, 2015). They can mask the political interests and power

constellations that drive the development of technological systems and act as somewhat

fuzzy, implicit, broadly accepted and culturally embedded understandings of the ‘good

life’ or the ‘good future’ that promote mostly positivist, seemingly value-neutral, apolitical

notions of modernity and progress (Jasanoff and Kim, 2015). Whose visions take root in

the collective imagination and how this influences what people consider to be ‘modern’,

‘progressive’ and ‘up-to-date’ as opposed to ‘backwards’ or ‘forgotten’ then becomes a

highly political issue.

As Jasanoff and others have shown, future imaginaries only develop this kind of normative

force if they are communicated and reinforced through (policy) narratives, images,

material manifestations or representations and (public) performances (see Figure 1) that

make them ‘stick’ until they are shared collectively (Hajer and Pelzer, 2018; Jasanoff and

Kim, 2015).

Figure 1: Socio-technical Imaginaries and their development from discourse to performativity (own figure)

Dierkes et al. underline this by showing that collective claims about the future only

stabilize if they are somehow ‘felt’ and experienced in the real world (Dierkes et al., 1992).

Visions therefore depend on continuous repetition and real-life enactments as means of

perpetuation and diffusion. In the case of smart grids, urban laboratories are playing an

important role in fulfilling this purpose by providing a space for articulating and

negotiating technological futures, as well as implementing and showcasing them to a

broader public. By means of technology trials, they facilitate new policies, actor coalitions,

institutional arrangements, and cultures around issues such as energy, mobility and the

like, and should therefore be understood as spaces not only for envisioning, but for

governing and actively creating the city (Bulkeley and Castán Broto, 2013).

At the same time, Van Lente argues that a cycle of continuous reinforcement can also

result in a paradoxical dynamic, such that "a compelling constellation of promising claims

that enforces action in a way that perhaps none of the companies or researchers themselves

would have chosen. Participants will reason in terms of ‘not missing the boat, but the

‘boat’ only exists due to the collective decision not to miss it" (van Lente, 2012: 773). The

irrationality and contingency of this process resonates with what the social studies of

infrastructural development have called technological “fetishism” (Kaika and

Swyngedouw, 2000; Larkin, 2013). As Brian Larkin argues, technological infrastructures

are far from purely rational in an economic or even a technical sense, but “emerge out of

and store within them forms of desire and fantasy and can take on fetish-like aspects that

sometimes can be wholly autonomous from their technical function” (Larkin, 2013: 329).

Imagined technological futures therefore carry much more than the relatively mundane

promise of solving an engineering problem but are intermingled with emotions of awe and

hope that can be highly seductive.

2.1.4. Methodological approach

This article investigates the future imaginaries promoted through smart grids in urban

development and implementation circles. These imagined futures manifest themselves in

discourse, which we understand as narrative and material processes of sense-making that

create social reality. In our understanding, discourse configures social realities by creating

and reinforcing shared understandings of certain facts, norms, values and orders, and by

stimulating action that is in line with these understandings (Keller and Truschkat, 2013).

Most importantly, however, discourse is the place where "creativity, interpretation, fantasy,

imagination and desire come to the fore" (Keller and Truschkat, 2013: 35). To understand

how smart grid futures are being imagined in Berlin, we analyzed the smart grid related

discourse within the city as well as its public performance and material representation at

three spatial levels in the city:

1) Three smart grid implementation projects, including selected institutions, companies and/or

individuals involved;

2) Three so-called future sites (‘Zukunftsorte’) or urban laboratories, which host these smart

grid projects;

3) Berlin’s political administration as well as relevant institutions and companies working in

the field of smart grids in Berlin.

We traced these discourses in documents and through interviews with key stakeholders

involved with smart grids at all three levels. We analyzed a total of 42 publicly available

policy documents and grey literatures such as laws, strategy papers, reports, policy briefs,

company websites, advertisements and informational brochures (see overview in the

appendix). We complemented our document analysis with a total of 16 in-depth, semi-

structured interviews that lasted approximately one hour each (see overview in the

appendix), and were conducted with experts from Berlin’s energy, ICT and urban

development sectors. Overall, our data covers material from city government and

administration, the electric grid operator, the newly founded public services company, two

civil society organizations, the local energy agency, two electronics companies, two project

development companies, and various research institutions. We then systematically coded

all documents and interviews in MAXQDA and identified common frames, classifications

and phenomenological structures, which resulted in three dominant storylines relating

smart grids to the city. We call these storylines Berlins’ imagined smart grid futures.

2.1.5. Berlin as case study city

The city of Berlin has set ambitious goals for becoming a leading ‘smart’ and ‘green’

European metropolis. In doing so, the city is attempting to position itself as frontrunner in

the advancement of Germany’s Energiewende and global competitor in the field of digital

industries. These aspirations are based, among others, on the city’s growing self-

confidence as Germany’s start-up capital. After a long phase of economic stagnation

following the city’s reunification, the prospect of developing leadership in a growing

industrial field is being embraced by the city government as an opportunity to secure

competitive, well-paying jobs. In 2015, the government passed a Smart City Strategy

(Berlin Senate, 2015b) that details how it aims to support the equipment of numerous areas

of urban life with digitized technologies in the course of the coming years. This strategy

has since been complemented by a less formalized digital agenda, which outlines the city’s

approach to confronting the so-called digitization challenge

. In 2014 and 2015, the city

administration also commissioned two studies called Climate-Neutral Berlin 2050

(Reusswig et al.) and New Energy for Berlin (Enquête-Kommission, 2015), which were

translated between 2016 and 2018 into a binding local Energy Transitions Law (Berlin

Senate, 2016b) and related Energy and Climate Protection Program 2030 (Berlin Senate,

2016c). These programs and strategies all emphasize the necessity of digitizing the city’s

electric grid infrastructure. Moreover, since 2012, the urban administration has designated

a total of ten so-called ‘future sites’ (Zukunftsorte) for pioneering and showcasing different

kinds of novel digital technologies, at least three of which are dedicated – among other

things - to the development of smart grids. These are the EUREF Campus, the Technology

Park Adlershof, and the TXL Urban Tech Republic (see Figure 22).

Figure 2: Location of ‘future sites’ and smart grid pilot sites in Berlin

available at: https://www.berlin.de/sen/energie/digitalisierung/

At these sites, different stakeholders collaborate to develop, test and practically implement

pilot versions of smart grid technologies under ‘real-life’ conditions. These expert

coalitions include researchers, ICT companies, project developers, utilities, energy start-

ups, and consumers. Along with the city’s policies and strategies, Berlin’s future sites have

thus become important spaces for negotiation and exchange, providing those involved with

an opportunity for envisioning and making the ‘smart grid city’. While the projects at

EUREF Campus and Technology Park Adlershof are well underway, implementation

activities at TXL Urban Tech Republic have been stalled due to problems with the project

site – the city’s current airport. Instead of being replaced in 2012 as originally planned, the

airport remains in use and TXL Urban Tech Republic continues in a state of seemingly

never-ending expectation: always at the brink of realization, but never implemented. The

material gathered in relation to this site is therefore informed by plans and aspirations

rather than the details of actualization. The smart grid projects on the three sites focus on

different technologies and processes (see figure 2).

2.1.6. Results - Imagining and making smart grids in Berlin

Our findings reveal three dominant imaginaries that relate smart grid technologies to the

city, promoting them as a) environmental necessity for advancing Berlin’s local

Energiewende, b) economic imperative to secure Berlin’s future as a thriving metropolis,

and c) exciting experimental challenge to modernize the city’s infrastructure. Overall,

smart grid technologies evoke a fuzzy but enticing urban imaginary that merges

technological optimism with fantasies of economic achievement and environmental health.

Among others, this fuzzy imaginary of a future smart grid city promotes a modern, eco-

progessive “Zeitgeist” that blurs the lines between the means and ends of “smart”: does

Berlin need to advance the smart city to advance its smart grid? Or does it need a smart

grid to become a smart city?

Our findings show that Berlin’s modern, eco-progressive smart grid imaginary is being

mutually reinforced by urban development narratives on the one hand and by

implementation practices on the other. This co-constitutive process of imagining and

making the smart grid city is driven by a relatively small circle of experts. At the urban

development level, these experts are primarily using smart grids as marketing tool to attract

businesses and professionals; at the implementation level, these experts are committed to

smart grids in a genuine effort to contribute technological solutions to Germany’s

Energiewende. Together, they are imagining and enacting an urban future that is driven by

techno-optimism, built on few peoples’ perspectives, lacks critical negotiation and is

strongly embedded in the economic opportunities associated with the smart city.

Smart grids as environmental necessity for advancing Berlin’s Energiewende

Berlin’s urban and energy policies primarily depict smart grid technologies as a necessary

prerequisite for achieving Berlin’s local Energiewende. This expectation goes hand in hand

with an increasing overall reliance on technological development to solve urban

environmental problems. In Berlin, imaginaries of low-carbon urban futures are becoming

increasingly interwoven with imaginaries of ‘smart’ technological progress, merging

notions of environmental consciousness with notions of high-tech development and digital

sophistication. Among others, the current city government’s energy policies aim to help

advance the city’s Smart City Strategy and turn Berlin into a ‘Smart Energy City’ (Berlin

Senate, 2016a). The Smart City Strategy, in turn, describes the development of ‘intelligent’

supply infrastructures as its ‘backbone’ (Berlin Senate, 2015b)

. Similarly, a report

commissioned by the urban administration in 2015 entitled ‘New Energy for Berlin’ states

that Berlin should introduce smart grids “so it can become a ‘Smart City’ that contributes

to the Energiewende” (Enquête-Kommission, 2015). The ‘smartification’ of electricity

grids is therefore not only being justified with energy-related goals, but with the vague and

overarching aim of digitizing urban life in general. The Masterplan Energy Technology

Berlin-Brandenburg further underlines this by stating that “energy is part of an

interconnected smart city and region” (Clustermanagement Energietechnik Berlin-

Brandenburg, 2017). This shows how closely imaginaries of resource-efficiency and

sustainability are being linked with notions of digitization and vice versa. The interface

between energy and ICTs is regarded as a natural and inevitable process that goes hand in

hand with the increasing digitization of everyday life. By linking the smart city to local

energy transitions, smart technological solutions are being depicted not only as healthy and

All citations from original data (documents and interviews) were translated from German into English by the

authors.

clean, but also as part of a response to the pressing global challenge of climate change and

thus as a seeming moral imperative. Concomitantly, urban development discourses are

systematically linking imaginaries of the smart city to notions of climate-friendliness and

sustainability, describing the smart city of Berlin as ‘resource-efficient’ (Erbstößer and

Müller, 2017), ‘post-fossil’ (Berlin Senate, 2015a), ‘ecologically modernized’, and ‘green’

(Berlin Senate, 2016a). In Berlin’s local policies, low-carbon transitions are therefore

imagined to be inherently ‘smart’, and smart cities are imagined to be ‘low-carbon’.

The seemingly inevitable connection between technology and environmental protection is

being strengthened by smart grid imaginaries at the city’s future sites. TXL Urban Tech

Republic, for example, advertises that “we need new solutions for mobility, for energy, and

for resources. And we need new materials and intelligent systems to make these solutions

possible. We need Urban Technologies. Technologies for the cities of tomorrow” (Tegel

Projekt GmbH, 2015). According to this advertisement, there seem to be no alternative

‘solutions’ to technological advancement. Moreover, these technologies are claimed to be

“what will keep alive the growing metropolitan centres of the 21st century” (Tegel Projekt

GmbH, 2018), and thus depicted as fundamental prerequisite for the sake of pure survival.

The same is true for the EUREF Campus, which claims to bridge solutions not only for the

“intelligent transformation of the energy sector” (Technische Universität Berlin, 2012), but

also for the intelligent city:

„We are discussing the global context, how to design the future

intelligent city? […] and [for me] a smart grid is part of that

(Interview, EUREF Campus_2017, Pos. 15-21).

Here, too, smart grids are depicted as “intelligent” and necessary means of urban

environmental protection. Only one interview partner in Berlin, notably from an

environmental NGO, actually looked into alternatives, asking:

“What is the goal of smart grids? If the goal of smart grids is, let’s

say, climate protection, which is actually our overarching goal; and

climate protection in terms of energy use means avoidance, efficiency,

and the rest renewable; then I think there are a lot of good

alternatives. You don’t need the intelligent house; it’s a question of

habits and how to address habits” (Personal interview, 2018).

There is a growing debate over how the smart grid should end up looking, what it should

do and how it should be understood (Skjølsvold et al., 2015). Although smart grid

technologies are (to some extent) necessary for integrating renewables at scale, contrary to

dominant smart and low-carbon imaginaries, the growing reliance on digitized

technologies is significantly increasing overall electricity consumption and resource use,

and therefore counteracting long-term environmental objectives (Lange and Santarius,

2018: 146).

Smart grids as economic imperative to secure Berlin’s future as a thriving metropolis

Berlin’s city administration also depicts smart grids as an attractive opportunity for

boosting the low-carbon economy, evoking visions of a thriving and industrialized, yet

post-fossil urban future (Berlin Senate, 2015a). The current government underlines this by

stating that "a smart city, an intelligent city, is able to increase growth while decreasing

resource-use" (Berlin Senate, 2016a: 51). Among others, smart grids are envisaged to

"increase industrial value generation, expand technological expertise, create new jobs and

increase urban quality of life" (Berlin Senate, 2015b: 28). These promises are built to a

large degree on Berlin’s existing strengths in the fields of research and digital industries.

Apart from hosting numerous renowned research institutions, Berlin has become

Germany’s leading hub for the (digital) start-up scene (Kollman et al., 2019). The urban

administration therefore views smart grid technologies as a way to combine the city’s

socio-economic capital with its energy transformation goals, and for leading it into a

‘green’ economy:

"The Energiewende offers Berlin's businesses unique opportunities on

the future markets of a resource-efficient economy based on

renewable energies. The extension and advancement of an intelligent

electricity grid, smart grid, are important technological challenges

that Berlin is especially suited for due to its combination of scientific

research and industry" (Berlin Senate, 2015b: 26).

The city’s future sites advertise the same combination. At EUREF, the project

development company states that “we all benefit from this topic; we benefit, the companies

benefit, and the idea behind it does too” (Personal interview, project development

company, 2016). And then adds:

“I want to prove that what we are doing here is not more expensive

than what we have now. The Energiewende will only succeed if

customers don’t end up paying more. Maybe even pay less [….]. I

think that this is a commercial project that we are doing here”

(Personal interview, project development company, 2016).

Smart grids are therefore depicted as economic opportunity that will help the

Energiewende, not the other way around. Similarly, large businesses involved in Berlin’s

future sites are primarily driven by the opportunity for expanding into an emerging market:

“Suddenly the grid becomes a huge data project, and that makes it

interesting for us. […] Wherever data packages are transmitted based

on internet protocols, independent of whether it’s video live streams

or stock market data or private emails, we don’t really care what it is,

as long as it’s a lot. That pretty much sums up our interests”

(Personal interview, ICT/electronics company, 2017).

Not surprisingly, large ICT companies are participating in Berlin’s future sites primarily

because they see a chance to increase their specialized knowledge and turn it into

standardized products that can be transferred to multiple systems and situations. They are

especially interested in devising ‘cookie-cutter’ solutions and developing them into mass-

products (Personal interviews, ICT/electronics companies, 2016 & 2017).

At the same time, these optimistic, forward-looking narratives are also built around a

number of fears. They convey a strong sense of urgency and inevitability that depict smart

grids as progressive technologies that are not only necessary, but also without alternative.

Berlin’s digital agenda, for example, describes digital technologies as Berlin’s “only

chance” at securing its economic competitiveness. There is a sense that Berlin needs to

‘catch up’ both in environmental and in technological terms (personal interviews, project

development company at TXL and public energy agency). This is echoed by experts from

Berlin’s future sites:

„New York is ahead; Amsterdam, Copenhagen are also ahead of

Berlin in many points. They have a more flexible administration, that

isn’t so stuck in the 80’s and 90’s as it is here. [Their administration]

isn’t as ideological, more pragmatic” (Interview, TXL Urban Tech

Republic, 2017).

Urban policy makers, researchers and businesses alike are conveying a sense that

digitization is coming, and that Berlin can either keep up with the pace of technological

development or lose in the run for global competitiveness. Asked about possible

alternatives, an expert from the city’s network operator responds: “Adobe huts. Then we

won’t need electricity, we won’t need hot water; it’ll be one cold shower a week [….] Of

course, then we’ll use much less energy per person, but I don’t know if that’s really the

path Germany wants to take” (personal interview, network operator, 2018). Smart grids, in

this expert’s view, are needed to avoid regression, underdevelopment, and cold. The city of

Berlin, in this reading, has to make a choice between being a pioneer or a loser, a world

class competitor or a poor house. There seems to be no middle ground and no time for

considering possible risks or alternatives.

The smart grid as exciting experimental challenge

These visions are met with positive notions of smart grids as exciting collaborative

challenge and interesting opportunity for techno-scientific experimentation. Researchers,

engineers and businesses all tend to be highly motivated to ”make the Energiewende work”

(personal interviews with researchers at Adlershof, EUREF and TXL), while their efforts

are largely removed from broader social or urban development considerations. Instead,

most engineers are driven by a sense of being at the cutting edge of research and

development and by an interest in advancing and exploiting the full potential of existing

technological possibilities (personal interviews with researchers at Adlershof, EUREF and

TXL). They are motivated by a strong belief in the necessity of integrating more

renewables into the city’s energy system, and by the prospect of contributing to global

climate protection. Moreover, they view their work as exciting possibility to build an

attractive, interesting, modern, and highly functional technology, thinking only marginally

about risks or social consequences (personal interviews, researchers at Adlershof and

EUREF). Among other things, they view smart grid technologies as “stylish” (personal

interview, public service provider, 2018), “sexy” (personal interview, project development

company at TXL, 2017), “progressive” (personal interview, researcher at EUREF, 2017)

and “cool” (personal interview, researcher at Adlershof, 2017). These attributes stand in

stark contrast for example to questions of costs, which they perceive as mundane and

reactionary (“ewig gestrig”) (personal interview, ICT entrepreneur at EUREF, 2016).

While the city government is well aware of costs, it too regards smart grids as a “sexy”

technology that small and medium sized enterprises need to be convinced of (personal

interview, Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises, 2018).

Most engineers and researchers involved in Berlin’s future sites view smart grids as a

personal opportunity for creating something new, and the Energiewende thus takes on a

quality of being ‘the next big thing’ in technological advancement.

As the city government designates more and more spaces as experimental urban labs, these

spaces are becoming important sites of urban (energy) governance, where Berlin’s urban

futures are not only imagined but materialized (Bulkeley et al., 2013; Castán Broto and

Bulkeley, 2013; Engels and Münch, 2015; Evans et al., 2016; Hoffman, 2011; McLean et

al., 2015). In Berlin, these labs are explicitly envisioned as places for advancing "urban

Energiewende innovations" (Berlin Senate, 2016c: 32), such as virtual power plants,

heating and cooling networks, vehicle-to-grid technologies or other (micro-)smart grid

technologies. The city government is marketing them as spaces for pioneering

technological advancement and offering cutting-edge research and development

opportunities. These sites are supposed to “make Berlin future-proof, shape its economic

profile, and increase its international visibility” (Berlin Senate, 2015a: 54). They are

depicted as “hot spots”, and “innovation spaces” (Berlin Senate, 2018) for showcasing

urban energy technologies to the world, and increasing Berlin’s global competitiveness

(Berlin Senate, 2015a). Adlershof even boasts to be Berlin’s Silicon Valley (Science at

Work, 2018). Beyond their function as local testbeds, these sites are conceived as

“lighthouses” and shining examples with an outreach and impact far beyond the region

(TSB Technologiestiftung Berlin, 2012: 26). In other words, they are explicitly

designed to provide development impulses for the broader city and region. A brochure

advertising TXL Urban Tech Republic underlines this by saying that "energy

transformation policy is not only decided here; it is made here" (Tegel Projekt GmbH,

2015: 13).

However, Berlin’s urban laboratories are designed for an exclusive urban business and

research establishment, catering to the young, creative, intelligent, cosmopolitan elite.

They invite “students, entrepreneurs, industrialists, and researchers”, to “learn from one

another and come up with new ideas together” in a joint “democratic ambition” for making

“the cities of the future” (Tegel Projekt GmbH, 2015). Urban scholarship has shown that

urban laboratories are often designed as priviledged sites of formalized knowledge

production that favor certain actors and interests over others (Evans and Karvonen, 2014).

More often than not, "the social aspects of urban development and issues that do not fit

into the nexus of economic development and environmental protection are largely ignored"

(Evans and Karvonen, 2014: 425). In Berlin, experimentation with smart grids has likewise

been confined to a relatively small community of experts, mostly from the business and

research domains. Interaction with the public is limited to showrooms that explain certain

energy technologies and visualize flows, but regular citizens are not part of the projects.

This raises important questions about who gets to develop the city of the future, and whose

imaginaries are part of the process. In Berlin, this is currently a mix of researchers,

engineers and business people – but hardly any citizens.

2.1.7. Discussion and conclusion

The purpose of this article has been to disentangle and critically discuss dominant

imaginaries of the future smart grid city and how they are being (co-)produced in Berlin’s

policy and implementation circles. We identify three dominant imaginaries that depict the

smart grid city as a progressive, eco-friendly, economically thriving, attractive and livable

city of the future that is largely without alternative and also without risks. We have shown

that these dominant urban imaginaries merge notions of technological progress (most

notably digitalization) with the achievement of Berlin’s urban energy transition, thus

latching onto the techno-positivist gravitation of Berlin’s smart city paradigm. Put

differently, these imaginaries depict urban smart grid technologies as a necessary

prerequisite for developing Berlin into a low-carbon city on the one hand, and a smart city

on the other, making ICT-implementation seem like a natural and inevitable process (i.e.

"the smart city will have smart grids" (Erbstößer and Müller, 2017: 11)). Moreover, we

have shown that these imaginaries are in part driven by a sincere interest in making

Berlin’s energy transition work, but also in part by economic concerns and the pure thrill

of spearheading technological development. They thus emphasize promises of economic

competitiveness and (global) leadership over risks and vulnerabilities. Moreover, we have

shown that in Berlin, dominant imaginaries of the smart grid city remain largely

uncontested. Instead, the combined promises of the smart grid city are being pursued and

marketed by Berlin’s urban policy-makers, researchers and businesses alike, be they from

the energy, the ICT or the urban development sectors. We argue that the imaginaries that

are created, reproduced and publicly promoted through urban laboratories are thus

reinforcing what the city government is promoting in its policies and vice versa, and that a

broader, more inclusive and possibly controversial debate is lacking.

We draw three main conclusions from these findings. First imaginaries of the future smart

grid city are not only fueled by urban (energy) policy but also gain traction through

material manifestations in urban laboratories. In Berlin, this co-productive process of

mutual reinforcement has created a spiral of reciprocal encouragement and affirmation

rather than controversial debate or critical scrutiny. Smart grids have arguably taken on the

fetish-like qualities of a technological fix or a ‘boat’ that is not to be missed, rather than

one out of various means to an end. We criticize that these imaginaries are thus foreclosing

debate about other pathways towards low-carbon urban development such as digitally

sufficient alternatives (Lange and Santarius, 2018) or smart grids as commons (Hall et al.,

2019). Therefore, Berlin’s smart grid development is an example of how positivist

imaginaries can serve as catalysts for technological change but largely without reflecting

on the complex, interconnected, imperfect, and very human realities of urban existence

(Greenfield, 2013).

Second, current smart grid imaginaries are emphasizing (possible) technological benefits

instead of weighing them against the environmental costs of technological expansion or the

risks of digitally-born vulnerabilities. They also convey a sense of fear and urgency that

hardly tolerates opposition. With the rising use of ICT-devices, data-traffic and data

centers are responsible for increasing energy consumption (Lange et al., 2020). In policies,

implementation projects or the minds of local stakeholders, risks are rarely mentioned and

only in a vague and unspecific way. Only few critical voices or alternative futures are

making themselves heard in the city of Berlin. Issues such as supply security, data security

and cyber security are mentioned as necessary prerequisites for smart grid implementation,

yet they don’t feature as part of the project design. Instead, possible costs are perceived as

the most important “risk” or obstacle to smart grid implementation. Urban policies should

engage more in discussions about the risks, environmental impacts and implications for

inclusive urban development when it comes to smart grid implementation projects instead

of advocating material intensive smart grid futures as the unalterable solution that will

solve all urban energy challenges we are currently facing.

And third, Berlin’s smart grid city imaginaries are being promoted by a relatively small

community of experts, not least because urban laboratories are limiting – instead of

encouraging - necessary public debate. Currently, Berlin’s future sites are being marketed

as showcases for new technological developments and urban space is painted as

experimental playground for engineers and tech-enthusiasts to pursue these inspiring high-

tech innovations. Instead, urban laboratories could be designed to include a broad cross-

section of urban actors, notably also citizens, civil society organizations and planners. This

way, they could become places for inclusive, controversial and democratic discussion and

thus potential catalysts for urban change.

2.2. Publication B: Threat, Fixable or Opportunity? Contested smart

home futures in the German social media debate.

2.2.1. Abstract

The idea of the ‘smart home’ envisions futures of a transformed day-to-day life. However,

contrary to the glossy visions of the smart home industry, the public discourse in Germany

is marked by skepticism due to concerns about data protection, security risks and state

surveillance. This paper seeks to illustrate how certain social groups imagine the smart

home and how fears and promises related to the digitalized home shape the public social

media debate in Germany. We advance the analysis of smart energy futures with a novel

methodological approach which combines quantitative network analysis with qualitative

discourse analysis. We apply our approach to the online discourse around ‘#smarthome’ on

Twitter and related media spaces in Germany in 2018 and 2019, which unveils the

contested German smart home imaginaries.

We identify five discourse coalitions that constitute shared understandings and perceptions

of smart home futures in the social media sphere in Germany: Threat, Hackable, Useless,

Fixable and Opportunity. Those discourse coalitions form around specific storylines that

reveal partly opposing perspectives and competing ideas on what smart home systems

might or should entail for society. Our empirical analyses reveal that in Germany, the

envisioned smart home is highly contested and public discourse on social media is

dominated by actors who critically interrogate the promises and prospects of smart home

futures.

2.2.2. Introduction

Over more than a decade, the smart home has become a topic with growing importance in

recent technology and policy discussions about energy efficiency, climate change, and

innovation ( Sovacool & Furszyfer Del Rio, 2020). This importance is also fueled by the

rise of the Internet of Things, with an increasing number of objects, such as smart

refrigerators, having internet connections. The initial idea of the smart home refers to the

use of interactive and networked technologies for the private living space (Harper, 2003)

and can be defined as "a residence equipped with computing and information technology

which anticipates and responds to the needs of the occupants, working to promote their

comfort, convenience, security and entertainment through the management of technology

within the home and connections to the world beyond" (Aldrich, 2003, p. 17). The

networked technologies of smart home may reach from radiator thermostats, windows

sensors, smart plugs, smart washing machines to smart TV, voice command devices and

cameras (Berry et al., 2007). Envisioned as enhancing convenience (Aagaard, 2021a;

Strengers & Nicholls, 2017a) whilst reducing household energy demand a prominent

debate around smart homes relates to questions of how smart homes may contribute to

energy savings (Pohl et al., 2021; Tirado Herrero et al., 2018). However, in the public

views, issues such as privacy and data security are also common concerns, often presented

as barriers to smart home adoption (Balta-Ozkan et al., 2014). The smart home has made

the everyday material environment even more alive with data, exposing residents to

significant risks in terms of privacy, surveillance, or cyber-security and creating threats

related to technology-facilitated abuse (B. Sovacool et al., 2021).

These multifaceted and contested promises, hopes, and uncertainties related to the

digitalized home are a core concern of our research. Especially, when it comes to

Germany, the controversies between smart home visions motivated by business interests on

the one hand (Rohde & Santarius 2023), an apparently large skepticism towards smart

home amongst the population (acatech & Körber Stiftung, 2018), where more than half of

respondents (57.3 per cent) said they had no interest in smart home systems at all (acatech

and Körber Stiftung 2018: 39) are worth taking a deeper look. Furthermore in Germany

there are active social movements such as digital-policy activists (Löblich & Wendelin,

2012), which make it an interesting case. In this paper the want to critically analyze

sociotechnical imaginaries in public debates (Tidwell & Tidwell, 2018a) on the smart

home in Germany and reveal what modifications to daily life are deemed rational and

desirable by the actors involved in those debates. Furthermore, we want to reveal the

underlying interpretations and justifications within the public debate. Those visions already

play a key role in decision-making processes towards a certain development path (B. K.

Sovacool et al., 2020). The smart home, as a system, that massively affects the most

private area of our lives, is a topic of growing importance in the scientific, political and

public debate about the energy futures (Dahlgren et al., 2021; e.g. Furszyfer Del Rio et al.,

2021a; Maalsen & Sadowski, 2019). We thus contribute to a critical analysis of converging

or diverging socio-technical imaginaries in public debates on a national level (Lösch et al.,

2016).

There is a need to explore the multiplicity and the contestations that make up diverging

smart home futures (Strengers et al., 2020a) instead of focusing only on user perceptions

and experiences (Hargreaves & Wilson, 2017; Nicholls & Strengers, 2019; Zimmermann

et al., 2018). Social science and energy research lack a profound analysis of ‘how different

visions for and interpretations of the smart home coalesce or depart from one another’

(Strengers et al., 2020b p. 275). Our paper aims to address two overarching research gaps.

Firstly, we want to make a methodological contribution to the scholarship on

sociotechnical imaginaries. We enrich the scholarship on sociotechnical imaginaries with

this investigation of actor networks and related discourse coalitions and apply a novel

methodological approach of network-discourse-analyses. Through identifying differing and

conflicting visions that form public smart home imaginaries and the related discursive

struggles we can link actors which exert influence on the public debate to certain

storylines. Secondly, our analysis explores which social groups are shaping the German

social media discourse on the smart home. In doing so we are able to contribute

empirically to smart home research and reveal the shared understandings and competing

ideas about the smart home articulated in the German debate. To adress these gaps, we

pose the following research questions:

• Which actors dominate the social media discourse in Germany around smart

homes?

• How is the smart home discussed and imagined in the German (social) media

debate?

To answer the questions, we rely on the analytical concept of sociotechnical imaginaries

(Jasanoff & Kim, 2009a), the approach of discourse coalitions (M. A. Hajer, 1993a), and

methodologies from social-network analysis on Twitter

(e.g. Morgan et al., 2019). We

applied a combination of network-analysis with discourse analysis (we call this

combination NetDA in the following) to investigate sociotechnical smart home imaginaries

in the public online debate. This combination of methods is distinct, because we are able to

see which actors are influential in the public debate and what kind of perspective they have

regarding the future role of smart home in society.

We focus our analysis on the social media sphere, which is increasingly used as an

empirical basis for analyzing public discourses around certain issues, for example, on

sustainable development (Goritz et al., 2019; Merle et al., 2019), climate change (Williams

et al., 2015), or sustainable energy transitions (Labonte & Rowlands, 2021). Since media

exposure and engagement influence the tenor and content of public perceptions (Fuentes &

Peterson, 2021), we want to gain insights into the general public’s smart home

perspectives. Other methods such as the analyses of media discourses (Hielscher &

Sovacool, 2018a) or the analysis of various media (e.g. newspaper articles, books, papers,

films) would have been appropriate as well. But to be able to conduct a network analysis in

combination with discourse analysis, we relied on twitter data because the social media

discussions on Twitter occur as information flows in the context of social connections and

interactions represented as following, liking, and retweeting (Li et al., 2019a). Twitter

enables us to gain insight into the public debate and to understand which actors have which

perspectives on the smart home. Although the Twitter debate is limited to a certain type of

actors, namely users of Twitter who make up only 27 percent of the population in Germany

(Bitkom Research, 2023), research has shown that the analysis of Twitter data is

particularly capable of tracing conflicting perspectives on a particular issue, e.g. climate

change (Williams et al., 2015). In order to better interpret the perspectives on the smart

home presented in the tweets and to identify different discourse coalitions, we have also

analyzed the media content linked in the tweets. We do this, to rely on more content than

just the tweeted content, which provides a broader empirical basis for our findings and

make them more robust. This approach is novel in that sense, that combining network

Twitter has renamed into X in July 2023 due to a rebranding process. Since, the same was twitter when we

did our analysis we remain the name Twitter.

analyses and qualitative content analyses in such a way, was not done before, up to our

knowledge. This novel approach allows us to reveal the diversity of smart home futures

and can provide insights into which actors promote certain visions, what arguments and

patterns the different perspectives use and what separates them.

Our paper contributes to energy future research in two ways. First, we show how the

combination of Network Analysis with discourse analysis (we refer to this as NetDA in the

following) can be applied to capturing sociotechnical imaginaries and the networks of

distinctive symbols and interpretations, as well as to capturing orientations towards the

future (Beck et al., 2021). Second, we contribute to smart home research by providing

insights into the German media and public discourses around the smart home and reveal

the controversial public perceptions and the related fears and presumptions of what the

smart home might entail for society.

2.2.3. Smart Home Futures and Public Discourses

Energy futures research has shown that core constructs of digitalized energy systems, such

as smart homes or smart grids, are more diffuse concepts of possibilities than clearly

defined phenomena. They are subject to contested and ambiguous socio-technical futures

(Dahlgren et al., 2021; e.g. Tricoire, 2015) and are perceived as unclear, vague, and

ambiguous umbrella terms entailing a wide range of definitions (Skjølsvold et al., 2015; B.

Sovacool & Furszyfer Del Rio, 2020). This diffuseness is important for our analysis

because the question of how concepts are defined often indicates what aspects and which

people are included and excluded from the possibilities they offer (Kumar, 2019). The

umbrella terms function as mediators between science policy and society and, through their

emergence and stabilization, specific scientific opportunities and promises interact with

societal and policy goals and interests (Rip & Voß, 2013).

In smart home futures research, the visions from the industry itself have been widely

discussed and critically interrogated, revealing convenience as a core theme and

overarching vision of the smart home industry and its professionals (Aagaard, 2021a;

Strengers et al., 2020b; Strengers & Nicholls, 2017b). Research has found increasing

lifestyle expectations (Strengers et al., 2020b) and has questioned whether the smart home

can provide energy savings (Tirado Herrero et al., 2018). Furthermore, the question of how

users are imagined in smart home visions has been addressed (Aagaard, 2021b; Cherry et

al., 2017). Studies of low-carbon housing imaginaries found that users are regarded as

passive and disengaged (Aagaard, 2021a) and the public is imagined as lacking knowledge

and interest (Cherry et al., 2017). Recent work on user perceptions reveals that

"knowledge, preferences, and perceptions remain mediated by gender as well as

opportunities for abuse and violence" (B. Sovacool et al., 2021, p. 14). Questions

concerning domestic surveillance (Maalsen & Sadowski, 2019) and gender issues

(Furszyfer Del Rio et al., 2021a) remain critical points and there is lack of analyses of how

those aspects are perceived in public debates. Although energy futures research has started

to focus on general public discourses, especially regarding smart energy technologies in

the UK (Cherry et al., 2017; Hielscher & Sovacool, 2018b), little attention has been put on

public smart home discourses and there is a lack of profound evidence of what

sociotechnical imaginaries exist within the public discourse in Germany concerning the

smart home. Since the focus of smart home research often refers to actual or potential users

in homes (Frick & Nguyen, 2021; Hargreaves & Wilson, 2017; Marikyan et al., 2019;

Wilson et al., 2015; Zimmermann et al., 2018) we want to shift the attention to the public

discourse. Up to now little research has shown the discursive struggles regarding the smart

home.

With our focus on the German smart home discourse on Twitter, we aim to reveal the

converging and diverging perceptions and understandings around smart home and shed

light on what the conflicting visions (Nyborg & Røpke, 2011) are actually about. Although

selected studies analyzed public views (Balta-Ozkan et al., 2014) and motivations for smart

home adoption in Germany (Frick & Nguyen, 2021) less attention is paid to contested

smart home futures and the different perspectives that exist in the German debate. The

debate in Germany on smart homes is particularly interesting because in Germany privacy

concerns and data protection issues are highly contested and discussed, which became

evident for example during the smart meter rollout (Hellmuth & Jakobs, 2020). In

Germany there has established a particular policy field around so-called "Netzpolitik"

(internet/digital policy) or digital policy (Greef, 2017) and it is also one important hub of

the hacker culture, where the famous Chaos Computer Club was founded in 1981 and has

evolved into an advocacy group that is registered as a non-profit organization with around

5,500 members (Kubitschko, 2018). In Germany civil society is an established political

actor, being invited to policy consultations and ICT policy activism is committed to

privacy protection, free access to information, free software and open standards (Löblich &

Wendelin, 2012). Additionally, a representative survey amongst the German population in

2018 has shown that more than half of the respondents (57.3 percent) said they are not

interested in smart home systems at all (acatech & Körber Stiftung, 2018). At the same

time, the smart home is receiving a high political priority, especially in the context of the

energy transition and its implementation in Germany, and it has been strongly promoted in

funding programs (Rohde & Quitzow, 2021). The political visions focus above all on

secure smart home solutions 'Made-in-Germany' to leverage climate protection potential

(Rohde & Santarius, 2023a). This tension between the political promotion of smart home

systems, a vibrant civil society and quite high skepticism among the population makes

Germany a very interesting field of study.

The investigation of debates in hybrid media spaces, i.e., Twitter data and the linked media

content, allows us to capture the public debate and public perceptions rather than expert or

policy discourses (Tidwell & Tidwell, 2018b). We address this gap to reveal how different

actors and social groups in the country shape and question sociotechnical imaginaries.

With this research, we in particular address the fact that expert perspectives may not reflect

general public perceptions when it comes to energy narratives and imaginaries (Smallman,

2018; Tidwell & Tidwell, 2018a). We contribute to research on sociotechnical imaginaries

by shedding light on collectively shared understandings and perceptions of what, related to

the smart home, seems attainable and attractive within public social media debates.

2.2.4. Conceptual Framework: Capturing Sociotechnical Imaginaries Through

discourse coalitions

Our conceptional framework is mainly composed of two elements: sociotechnical

imaginaries (Jasanoff & Kim, 2009a) and discourse coalitions (M. A. Hajer, 1993a).

Whereas the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries provides our analytical framework, the

approach of (Beck et al., 2021) discourse coalitions help us to empirically grasp

sociotechnical imaginaries through discursive structures. (Jasanoff, 2015)Sociotechnical

imaginaries serve as collective visions of a good, desirable future (Jasanoff & Kim, 2009b)

and guide and coordinate actions (Beckert, 2016; Borup et al., 2006; Konrad & Böhle,

2019; Lösch et al., 2019). They describe "the myriad ways in which scientific and

technological visions enter into the assemblages of materiality, meaning, and morality that

constitute robust forms of social life" (Jasanoff 2015 p. 4). With the concept of the

sociotechnical imaginary, Jasanoff and Kim aim to capture how cultural orientations and

social norms are interwoven with the material world and how they inevitably produce

imagined social, political, and economic orders (Longhurst & Chilvers 2019).

Sociotechnical imaginaries may also stir public debate on the desirability of certain

technologies (Konrad and Böhle 2019: 102) and can be understood as ‘representations of

how collectives want that world to be’ (Beck et al., 2021 p. 147). Consequently, successful

future visions provide interpretative frames through which people make sense of the

meaning and relevance of certain technologies for different groups (Meyer, 2019 p. 119).

However, to become sociotechnical imaginaries, future visions need to be institutionally

stabilized and communally adopted (Jasanoff, 2015).

(Levenda et al., 2019; Quitzow & Rohde, 2021; Tozer & Klenk, 2018a)(Beck et al.,

2021)We rely on the approach of discourse analysis because discourses can be understood

“as battlefields, as power struggles around the legitimate definition of phenomena” (Keller

2011). As such, discourse analyses is not simply a methodology but a distinct perspective

on how actors give meaning and make sense of certain issues at stake (M. Hajer &

Versteeg, 2005). For sociotechnical imaginaries, discourses can show the implicit framings

and normative beliefs that are part of imagined futures. But we also want to look at the

material manifestations and how social order is imagined when it comes to smart homes.

We don´t agree with Jasanoffs notion that discourse "usually focuses on language and is

less directly associated with action and performance"(Jasanoff & Kim, 2015, p. 20). In our

understanding, discourses are socially produced ideas and objects that comprise

organizations, institutions, and the social world in general. Discourses are created and

maintained through any kind of symbolic expression requiring a physical medium for its

expression (Phillips et al., 2004a). As such, discourses do not only describe things but they

are performative and make certain ways of thinking and acting possible, and may impede

other ways (Phillips et al., 2004b). According to Hajer (1993), discourse coalitions can be

defined as "the ensemble of a set of storylines, the actors that utter these storylines and the

practices that conform to these storylines" (M. A. Hajer, 1993a p. 47). That is, discourses

do not only refer to language but to practices and the construction of objects (Parker,

1992). Consequently, we refer to the materiality of idea production and its concrete

manifestations in practices, institutional structures, and objects (Keller, 2011).

To empirically identify sociotechnical imaginaries, growing attention has been put on

analyzing discourses (Levenda et al., 2019; Quitzow & Rohde, 2021; Tozer & Klenk,

2018a). Our work builds on the idea that the co-production of science, technology, and

society can be observed within discursive processes (Beck et al., 2021). For example

(Tozer & Klenk, 2018b) show in their analysis of discourses in urban carbon governance

texts the storylines that are underlying urban imaginaries of carbon neutrality and find that

the shared sociotechnical imaginary of ‘carbon neutrality’ supports a certain discourse

coalition. Other recent work analyses how urban smart grid futures are being imagined and

co-produced based on a discourse analysis of relevant urban policy documents (Quitzow &

Rohde, 2021).

Research has shown that sociotechnical imaginaries can be empirically traced through

discourses. We are interested in showing how actors in the public discourse interpret and

make sense of smart home systems and how the smart home is publicly perceived. The

concept of socio-technical imaginaries "draws attention to the entanglement of the

materiality of complex sociotechnical projects with the normative aspects of collective

imaginations of states of society" (Beck et al., 2021, p. 145). Consequently, the focus of

our analysis lies in identifying discourse coalitions that form around specific storylines.

Whereas storylines describe the continuous process of giving meaning to the vague and

ambitious world (Hajer 1993), discourse coalitions are the ensemble of actors that utter

these storylines. The concept of "discourse coalitions" is able to analyze controversies in a

wider political context (M. A. Hajer, 1993b) and to see how a diversity of actors shape the

definition of the problem (M. Hajer & Versteeg, 2005) or in our case contested smart home

futures.(Keller, 2011)(Beck et al., 2021)(Beck et al., 2021, p. 145)(M. A. Hajer, 1993b)(M.

Hajer & Versteeg, 2005)

Since we are interested in public debates (Jasanoff, 2015)(Jasanoff & Kim, 2015)(M. A.

Hajer, 1995a)(Tidwell & Tidwell, 2018b)we rely on the social media platform Twitter

where content is not created by experts but by users, which represent at least some part of

the public. Because twitter data allows one the one hand to get access to public debates and

on the other hand to detect network structures of actors and their expressions in those

debate, we combine network- analysis with the approach of discourse analyses.(Li et al.,

2019a)(Li et al., 2019a)

2.2.5. Methods: Combining social media Discourse and Network Analysis

To enrich the research about smart home futures, we want to reveal not only the discourse

coalitions but also the network structures within the social media discourse on

#smarthome. Therefore, we combine network analysis with a qualitative discourse analysis

of the (social) media sphere. This paper makes use of the explanatory design model for

mixed methods research outlined by Creswell and Plano Clark (2011), which is intended as

a framework in which qualitative data helps to explain or bolster initial quantitative results

(Mulligan 2016).

Social media provides access to interactions and discourses that explain social phenomena,

which occur not only in social media but also in the broader social world (Cihon &

Yasseri, 2016). Online communication via social media has changed communication into a

constant flow of conversation, and research has found that Twitter communities’ network

structures reflect to some extent real-life communities (Quercia et al., 2021). We argue that

the Twitter debate reflects diverse aspects of the public debate on smart home although it

only represents certain parts of the public. Twitter is not able to represent the majority of

the public since only 27 percent of Germans are active on Twitter. In addition, tweets can

be very short texts that usually need to be embedded in a larger media debate. Therefore,

we included media content in our analysis in order to strengthen our findings beyond the

social media sphere and to be able to show the diverging arguments and justifications that

can be found in the public debate. The analysis of social media serves our research goals

best because it provides access to shared public understandings and perceptions of the

smart home in Germany. Compared to energy surveys, social media platforms contain

crowd-sourced rather than targeted, public opinions and allow continuous observation

along broader spatial and temporal scales (Li et al., 2019b). However, there are certain

limitations to using social media data, such as the uncertain representation of the general

public and the difficulty in validating data-mining outcomes, or the data contamination

from fake accounts, advertisers, and spam (Bitkom Research, 2023) (Li et al., 2019b). To

address some of the constraints of pure social media analysis and generate findings beyond

the social media sphere, we used media content that was linked within the tweets (e.g.,

newspaper articles, blogs, news, etc.) as an additional qualitative data source, with the

main source of qualitative data remaining the tweets themselves. Such a spectrum of social

media and conventional media platforms is also referred to as a hybrid media space

(Freelon & Karpf, 2015). The analysis of the hybrid-media spaces allows us not only to

examine the different perspectives but also to take a deeper look into arguments and

patterns of justifications for certain smart home futures.

Network Analysis based on Twitter Data

For our analysis, we gathered Twitter data based on the keyword "smart home" and the

hashtag "#smarthome”. The choice of these queries was informed by preliminary tests

where relevant actors in the German discourse (e.g., companies and lobby groups, think

tanks, civil society organizations, and ministries) were identified and their tweets were

examined regarding word and hashtag frequency. This step was undertaken to ensure that

our inquiry relies on the appropriate hashtag and keyword since other terms such as 'smart

living' are also used in the German debate. In the tests, we found the keyword "smart

home" terms to be by far the most prevalent. We decided to use the keyword and hashtag

as a method for identifying relevant tweets because we wanted to include debates where

the relation to smart home is expressed using the keyword or the hashtag #smart home.

Consequently, what is considered as part of a smart home is not decided by our definition,

but by the social media users and how they make use of the hashtag #smarthome. Although

some more narrow smart home definitions put energy management at the center of the

smart home (e.g. Pohl et al., 2021), we refer to the way the smart home is discussed on the

social media platform Twitter and thus refer to a more broad definition of the smart home,

which includes all kinds of interactive and networked technologies for the private living

space (Harper, 2003). The procedure of our network analysis is displayed in Figure 3. Our

analysis is based on tweets written in German between 2018 and 2019. In the first step, we

collected the tweets and derived simple quantitative metrics and statistical descriptors for

the set; these included the total number of tweets captured in a given timeframe, the

number of those that were replies, the number that contained URLs, the number of unique

users, the number of users, and the mean and minimum and maximum number of tweets

per user. The explanatory potential of Twitter data is increased by the segmentation of

these statistical measures into customizable intervals (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.)

and the capability to easily derive and analyze sub-sets of a total archive (Mulligan 2016).

Data collection was handled using the open-source platform R, specifically the package

“Rtweet” (Kearney, 2019). Via Twitter’s PREMIUM API, we requested tweets containing

either the word combination “smart home” or the hashtag “#smarthome”, querying for both

original tweets and retweets between January 1st 2018 and December 31st 2019. The

dataset comprised 41,062 tweets from 9,383 accounts. The following data-cleaning

measures were undertaken: removal of bots, irrelevant noise, and accounts that received

less than 0.1 Likes per Tweet on average. As is often the case in Twitter networks,

communication power is strongly concentrated in relatively few accounts. This can be seen

in the distribution of “likes" across the data set. We calculate a basic like-per-tweet metric

for each account and find the median value to be 0 with a mean of 1.916. This highly

skewed distribution means that many tweets about smart home go completely unnoticed on

the network because they do not have likes and are therefore not of interest to our research

question. We incorporate this by including only accounts with a minimum like-per-tweet

ratio of 0.1 in our final data set. This also helps to a certain extent in filtering out bot

activity. From the remaining dataset, we constructed a retweet network. In our retweet

network, the nodes are Twitter accounts, connected by the retweets as edges/paths. We

reduced this network to the giant component (Aydin & Perdahci, 2020), i.e., the accounts

that form the main network components, to exclude the peripheral accounts that did not

bear any relation to the main network. This produced our final network for analysis.

To identify the most important actors, we applied centrality as the selection criterion. If

actors are central in terms of their average distance from others, they can communicate

efficiently (Trappmann et al., 2011). Centrality can be calculated using different

approaches. Degree centrality is based on the number of outgoing or ingoing connections

of a node (in our case a Twitter account) within the network. But the number of

connections does not necessarily mean that an account is important. To cover importance,

scores such as eigenvector centrality

are useful because they also consider the centrality

of other accounts. The eigenvector centrality of an account is higher if that account is

linked to important 'friends', i.e., accounts that themselves have many retweets. We

conceive of retweet networks as directed: a retweet increases the visibility and hence the

influence of the original tweet and its creator and thus the direction will be from the

retweeting account to the original creator – regardless of the retweeter’s intention

(criticism or endorsement). However, this influence causes eigenvector centrality values to

be skewed because, as is often the case in social networks, some accounts have retweeted

others but not received retweets themselves. The eigenvector centrality score would

disregard those retweets because the in-degree score of the nodes would be zero. This

disadvantage can be overcome by using Katz-centrality, which attributes a minimal

centrality score to all nodes, regardless of their in-degree (Laflin et al., 2013). It

furthermore incorporates the number of paths leading to a given account, with longer paths

weighted lower than shorter ones (Rieder, 2012).

Often also referred to as PageRank in social media research (Rieder, 2012)

Figure 3: Data collection, operationalization of Twitter network and sampling strategy (source: authors)

In a recursive process, our interdisciplinary team studied the advantages and disadvantages

of the various centrality measures and compared the measures’ impacts on the retweet

network. The team concluded that Katz-centrality would be the most appropriate measure

to identify the network’s central accounts, i.e. the accounts that received the most retweets

from accounts that, themselves, had many retweets and that had the least distance to other

accounts in the network.

Network Discourse Analysis

Our approach consists of a combination of quantitative network analysis (Trappmann et al.,

2011) with qualitative content analysis (Mayring, 2014). Similar approaches can be found

under the term Discourse Network Analysis (DNA), which also combines qualitative

content analysis with network analysis (Fergie et al., 2019; Leifeld, 2016). DNA is used to

convert structured data into a weighted actor-network, where ties and their weights

represent similarities among actors’ expressions and perspectives on a certain issue. We

did not use Phillip Leifeld's method of DNA because, unlike in policy discourses, binary

coding (such as binary information about support or opposition) is not capable to map the

diverging perspectives that might occur when it comes to smart home imaginaries. In

addition, as we understand it, the Discourse network analysis method is not able to deal

with the logic of Twitter data. Our goal was also to find out who is powerful in the

discourse and gets a lot of support, which cannot be depicted with the DNA-method from

Leifeld, which is otherwise very elaborated and useful. When it comes to the qualitative

data, i.e., tweets and media content, it is not always possible and epistemologically rich to

clearly classify, whether certain actors are for or against the smart home. Rather, a

qualitative interpretation of the data is nececssary. We did this by means of qualitative

content analysis (Mayring, 2014) in MaxQDA and coded and interpreted the Data in a

systematic way. We arrived at the discourse coalitions through frequency analyses

(Mayring, 2015), i.e. the frequency of occurrence of certain argumentations and statements

about smart homes. The difference between our approach and DNA is that our network is

not created by binary coding of support or opposition (Leifeld, 2013), but by centrality in

Twitter discourse on the Hashtag SmartHome over a two-year period. That is, the network

is created via a centrality measure and the discourse coalitions are identified through

qualitative-interpretative content analysis of the tweets and linked media content from the

most central actors. We, therefore, identify our method as Network-Discourse Analysis

(NetDA), a novel approach that does not appear to have been used yet. (Kuckartz &

Rädiker, 2019)Kuckartz, 2014)

From our total database, we selected the tweets from the 25 most central accounts (Table

5) and collected the related media content, predominantly news article, blog posts, and

online newspaper articles, and converted it into PDF files for the MAXQDA analysis. Our

final sample for the qualitative content analysis consisted of 419 tweets and 74 documents

from linked media content. The dataset was cross-checked with the most frequently

retweeted tweets of our original unfiltered dataset to ensure that the most popular tweets

were part of the qualitative analysis (see Figure 4).

We used qualitative content analysis with MaxQDA (Kuckartz & Rädiker, 2019) to

identify the storylines within the discourse and the discourse coalitions that are referring to

those storylines. Our qualitative content analysis consisted of thematic analysis (Silver &

Lewins, 2014), and the (Keller, 2011)coding was conducted by two researchers who were

passing through intercoder checks according to (Mayring, 2014) to ensure intercoder

reliability. We coded the tweets and the documents along several categories derived from

our conceptual framework and from our research question which were written down in an

initial codebook to guide the first coding cycle. We first identified positive, negative, and

ambivalent issues and interpretations and perspectives raised within the tweets and

documents since our research aim was to identify the distinct orientation of the actors and

communities towards the future (Beck et al., 2021). Furthermore, we went through the

whole material (419 tweets and 74 documents) in a second coding cycle and applied

inductive codes to reveal which justifications and arguments lay behind the different

perspectives and what technical configurations of the smart home are associated with the

interpretations and perceptions. In the next step, we went through our codes and clustered

them according to the frequency of arguments, statements, and perspectives we found in

our material. We clustered the material making use of the creative coding function in

MAXQDA, which resulted in the five storylines. We arrived at the five storylines by

assigning statements about the smart home that expresses a shared perspective or view on

the smart home to the storylines. This means that the storylines are derived from the

empirical material and the views and perspectives identified in the tweets and media

content. We clustered the coded material into groups that share the same perspective

towards the smart home, i.e. the frequency of the respective code. To show an example: for

the "threat" coaltion key statements included aspects such as surveillance, privacy or loose

of control and autonomy. For the "fixable" coalition key phrases included aspects such as

closing of security gaps, alternative smart home systems or interoperability. However, the

five discourse coalitions emerged out of the empirical material through an interpretive and

contextual approach to the social reality that is interactively ‘produced’ within this

discourse. To improve the detection of the discourse communities and create a shared

understanding among the research team, this analysis was supported by MAXQDA

visualization functions, i.e. document portrait, code relations browser, and the “heat map”

function. We drew on the work of Hajer (M. A. Hajer, 1993a), Keller (Keller, 2011), and

Tozer and Klenk (Tozer & Klenk, 2018a) to guide our discourse analysis and to understand

the dominant storylines employed by discourse coalitions. We then mapped the storylines

to the 25 most central Twitter accounts with our MaxQDA software, where we had

collected all tweets of the most central actors and the media content.

As this approach we have used here is quite novel, it has always involved a certain amount

of experimentation and testing. For both the network analysis and the qualitative content

analysis, we followed the usual standards in the respective methods and used the usual and

common methods as well as consulting with experts in the respective methods (see

acknowledgements) in order to carry out the method as robustly as possible.

2.2.6. Findings

The Twitter Network and most central actors

The quantitative Twitter network analysis provides the insights to answer our first research

question regarding which actors dominate the social media discourse around the smart

home. Figure 4 shows the retweet network, with node size equivalent to Katz-centrality

scores. According to the Katz-centrality values, the most central account is ‘heiseonline’, a

German-based news and information website.

Figure 4: Retweet network of the German Twitter discourse on smart home based on Katz-centrality scores (Source:

authors).

The 25 most central accounts in the retweet network and their Katz-centrality scores are

shown in Table 5. The figure shows that the most central accounts consist of many

accounts from private individuals, such as coldmirror, don_sebo or udo_vetter, and

accounts run by news and media platforms on information and communication technology,

policy issues, and security and data protection issues.

Table 5: Most central Twitter accounts in the German debate on #smarthome (Source: authors).

Twitter

account name

Abbr.

Actor type

Additional description

Katz-

centrality

heiseonline

media

News website about Technology, IT and the

Digital

4.081

coldmirror

private

Female Influencer

3.809

_don_sebo

private

3.394

udovetter

private

Private User /Lawyer and Lecturer for media

law

3.286

Schisslaweng

private

2.942

bstrasser

bst

policy

Benjamin Strasser/ Member of the German

Bundestag

1.774

Peter_Schaar

private

Former Federal Commissioner for Data

Protection and Freedom of Information

(2003 to 2013)

1.772

netzpolitik

Media/

Medium/platform for digital rights

1.689

buerger18

private

1.664

DLF

Media

German Radio Station

1.609

SmarthomeAREA

Private

Private account, running a website with the

same name, which is only tweeting to smart

home-related issues

1.573

heisec

Media

News website Heise Security

1.453

BR24

Media

Radio station of Bayerischer Rundfunk

1.446

5_MINUTES_TO_12

Private

1.423

golem

Media

Cross-platform news brand

1.349

BSI_Bund

Public administration

Federal Office for Information Security (BSI)

1.336

_drsarkozy

Private

1.196

YourHomeKnowsIT

Business

Website of the “connected living”

association

1.139

mac_and_i

Media

IT News for mac users

1.116

PirateSecon

Private person

1.109

BoschSmartHome

bsh

Business

Bosch Company

1.072

zeitonline

Media

Weekly Newspaper

1.024

chaosupdates

Civil society

Chaos Computer Club

1.019

sys_adm_ama

Private

0.995

certbund

public administration

Federal Computer Emergency Response

Team of Germany

0.986

Our NetDA reveals that the Twitter debate in Germany about smart homes is dominated by

actors from the tech-communities, internet policy communities, and the digital rights and

hacker movements, e.g. Chaos Computer Club. Furthermore, actors such as the Bosch

Smart Home, the Federal Office for Information Security and newspaper and radio stations

are among the most central actors that tweet about smart homes.

Discourse Coalitions and related Storylines on #SmartHome

Over the two years being analysed, we observed different discourse coalitions that formed

around specific storylines. These storylines reveal distinct and even contradictory

perceptions and understandings of what risks and benefits the smart home may entail for

society, how useful the smart home could be, and how the smart home is configured

technologically. We identified the discourse coalitions by analysing the content of the

tweets of the most central and influential actors (as identified above) and the linked

(media) content from the tweets. These discourse coalitions derive from a qualitative

content analysis of the tweets and the media content (see section 2.2.5. for details) and

were not derived from literature but emerged out of our empirical material. This

reconstruction of collective perceptions and perspectives in a qualitative-interpretative way

(Flick, 2007) also implies the knowledge and cultural embedding of the actors conducting

the research. Thus, insights from smart home research, which were reviewed in the context

of this paper, also influenced in the interpretation of the empirical material. To answer our

second research question, we investigated how the actors involved in the Twitter discourse

were making sense of the smart home and what perceptions, understandings, and visions

certain groups had related to how things ought to be. We further examined the battles over

interpretations related to the media discourse (Hielscher & Sovacool, 2018b). The

discursive struggles we found are strongly related to the techno-scientific developments

that would be attractable, attainable, probable ,and desirable in the future (Jasanoff, 2015;

Schirrmeister, 2014). The discourse coalitions we identified also provide insights into the

fears and hopes regarding smart home systems and the interplay between positive and

negative imaginings.

Figure 5: Distribution of coded segments among storylines and accounts in the discourse coalitions

(Source: authors).

Our findings show numerous storylines that focus on the risks and shortcomings of smart

home systems. Our NetDA revealed five discourse coalitions with different “discursive

affinities” (M. A. Hajer, 1995b) centred around specific storylines. At the same time, the

discourse coalitions overlap because some actors from the media sector, such as

heiseonline or golem, make use of several different storylines due to the multiplicity of the

Gray indicates the actors that were attributed to more than one discourse coalition

not reliably applicable:

Discourse Coalitions

content they provide. Figure 5 shows the distribution of our coded segments among the

storylines. The figure shows to what extent the actors refer to the specific storylines. It

shows that the storyline “Threat” has the broadest exposure in the discourse, followed by

the storylines “opportunity” and “hackable”, which show a similar frequency of coded

segments.

Figure 6 provides an overview of the identified storylines and the discourse coalitions

found within the network of the most central actors. The colored nodes represent the most

central actors in the network and the different colored circles show the distinct storylines

and the discourse coalitions (i.e., the actors that utter these storylines). The two grey nodes

(with the abbreviations sw and ds) are actors in the network that could not be assigned to a

certain discourse coalition because the expressions from their tweets were too unspecific.

The grey nodes with abbreviations are part of more than one discourse coalition. This

multiplicity results from many of the accounts being media accounts that tweet about

general media content on smart home or being online media platforms with varying

content on the smart home, such as critical perspectives about data security or news items

about new functionalities of smart home systems.

Figure 6: Storylines in the Twitter network and discourse coalitions that form around them (Source: authors).

As described in our Methods section, the storylines and related discourse coalitions were

only identified for the 25 most central actors, as can be seen in the abbreviations of the

account names (e.g., bsh = Bosch Smart Home, see also Table 5). The discourse coalition

we identified through qualitative content analysis of tweets and linked content form around

five different storylines. These range from rejection and a critical view of the smart home,

including the description “useless” to the smart home as fixable, or as an opportunity for

innovation and market development. Our analysis thereby shows the multifaceted

perspectives within the public debate on the smart home in Germany and the controversial

imaginings of what role the networked home can or should play in the future. In the

following sub-sections, we describe the storylines and the discourse coalitions that form

around them in more detail and provide examples of tweets before we proceed with a

general discussion.

“Threat”: The smart home as a threat to privacy and a state surveillance tool

The discourse that forms around the storyline “threat” emphasizes the risks and problems

related to smart home systems and criticizes the smart home as a tool used by state

authorities for control and surveillance. The actors that form this discourse coalition are

composed of media actors such as BR24, DLF, golem and the German digital policy media

platform Netzpolitik. Furthermore, the private accounts from Peter_Schaar, the former

Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information and other private

accounts utter this storyline. Within this storyline, the smart home is depicted as part of a

surveillance system that is misused by public authorities such as the police.

One tweet, that is most frequently retweeted says:

"Attention, #Seehofer is listening in! A letter of inquiry from me shows

that the German government believes it is already allowed to surveil

voice assistants such as #Alexa. The snooping state knows no borders.

#wiretapping #smarthome #bundestag. @fdpbt

https://t.co/7oLlTKuqeq”

(Tweet from netzpolitik, June, 2019)

The discussion about the use of data from voice assistants received wide public attention in

Germany, especially from actors engaged in data protection issues. The actors involved in

this discourse frame the smart home as a set of technologies that undermine citizens’

personal freedom and self-determination. One of the most central actors Peter_Schaar

emphasizes in his tweet the risks for privacy:

Alexa from #Amazon is considered an important component in the

#SmartHome. But the voice assistant can also be activated by using

similar-sounding words. This could lead to unintentional recording of

conversations. #networkedeveryday life https://t.co/Pof5ej1iVK (Tweet

from Peter_Schaar, September 2018).

Other technologies, that make up the smart home, such as vacuum robots are also

discussed as problematic regarding data protection and privacy issues. A news article from

All the cited tweets and the tweet content originally were in German. The author team translated the tweets

and crosschecked them within the team to ensure that the original meaning is reproduced as accurately as

possible. Nevertheless, there are always subtle meanings shifts in translations into other languages, which

cannot be eliminated.

heiseonline entitled “Every year again: spy toys and dangerous gadgets” discusses how

modern vacuum cleaner robots can be problematic if they record images with a camera and

send them to an app: “If people can be recognized on the camera images and they do not

realize they are being filmed, the small household helper is also considered an illegal

broadcasting device” Heiseonline, 2019). This storyline depicts the smart home as a risky

system that is a threat to privacy because private and personal data can be used for

surveillance.

Interestingly the role of the state and state surveillance are the main aspects that constitute

this storyline. The debate about whether state authorities, such as the Federal Ministry of

the Interior and Community or the police, are allowed to use data from smart home devices

for law enforcement was controversial. This discourse coalition strongly argues against any

such surveillance. The draft resolution of the Conference of Interior Ministers, which

envisages law enforcement authorities such as the police having access to data from voice

assistants such as Alexa and Siri as well as other smart home devices, was controversially

debated and sharply criticized by data protection experts:

"This is potentially a bug that can possibly be used by state agencies,"

warns data protectionist @Peter_Schaar in Dlf about smart home

devices. The conference of interior ministers is dealing with possible

access to the data of such devices.” (Tweet from DLF, July 2019)

The storyline at the center of this discourse coalition reveals a strong criticism of smart

home systems with a special focus on privacy, data protection, and the risk of state

surveillance. Accordingly, the actors constituting this discourse coalition have a strongly

negative perception of smart home systems and engage in activities that delegitimize the

use of those systems because of the related risks and threats.

“Hackable”: The hackable smart home that lacks data protection and cybersecurity

The second storyline we identified within our discourse network is the perception of the

smart home as a vulnerable, insecure system and a hacker gateway to personal data and

digital devices. The discourse coalition that forms around this storyline is distinct from the

first one because the smart home as such is not rejected, which it is in the "Threat"

storyline, but is critically interrogated in terms of cybersecurity and missing data

protection. Actors from the hacking movement criticize that devices’ security levels are

minimal and provide extensive hacking possibilities:

“sensitive data is openly accessible in the repository, the

communication transfer is mostly and in critical cases unencrypted,

the further use of cryptographic protection mechanisms is "no hurdle"

for reasonably experienced hackers”

(Heise online Report about the 35th Chaos Computer Club

Congress).

Although, the smart home is not per se rejected or opposed by the actors referring to this

storyline, the technological configuration and how those technologies are used are strongly

criticized. Within this discourse coalition, we found examples of 'reverse engineering', i.e.

the reversal of the development or production process from the product to the design

process or source code of smart home systems. These practices of reverse engineering

show how the discursive construction of the hackable smart home materially manifests.

The actors strengthen their perceptions and understandings of smart home systems through

practices, as a quote from a news report reveals:

“The one-megabyte flash memory was quite easy to retrieve with the

help of the Esptool after some soldering (…) firmware and the

unencrypted WLAN ID and password were found on various

partitions, as well as various keys and the serial number". (Heise

online 2018)

By uncovering the problems and security vulnerabilities of smart home systems, this

discourse coalition interrogates current smart home developments and engages in

activities to shape smart home futures in a way that makes them more secure and less

exposed to misuse and threats. However, the debate about potential cyber-attacks is

technical and discussed between engineers, the hacker community, and software

developers. Within this discourse coalition, the smart home is not only envisioned or

imagined but manifests in certain objects. Thus, the interpretations of the hackable

see Appendix for overview on analyzed media content

smart home are performative and intended to shape future smart home developments

in a direction that addresses those vulnerability risks.

“Useless”: The useless smart home that people do not want to have

The questionable benefits of smart home systems and the storyline of a superfluous system

that nobody wants provided the third storyline we identified in our Twitter discourse

network. The most frequently retweeted tweet within our sample comes from the account

"coldmirror", which belongs to the media artist and screenwriter Kathrin Fricke, an

influencer who gained fame for a modified synchronization of Harry Potter videos. The

tweet makes fun of the usefulness of the smart home:

"My new favorite activity is to pretend I have a smart home. And at

the same time, I pretend to be the smart home myself. "Alexa, lights

off!" and then I turn the lights off myself. Great fun." (Tweet from

coldmirror, November 2019)

A sentence from a newspaper article in the renown German Newspaper “Zeit”

reflects the core of this storyline: “Thus, over the years, the "smart refrigerator" has

become the symbol of a technology that no one seems to need” (Newspaper article,

Zeit Online, 2019). This perception is supported by a survey in Germany in 2018,

which found that most citizens are not interested in smart home products at all. In

that survey, “Technology radar”, only 8.1 per cent of respondents stated that they use

smart home systems and another 6.2 per cent responded that they at least planned to

use them. More than half of respondents (57.3 per cent) said they had no interest in

smart home systems at all (acatech and Körber Stiftung 2018: 39).

The perception of smart home systems as something that nobody wants and nobody

needs is also combined with the risks that those technologies entail, as one software

developer states in a tweet:

"I have been earning my bread and butter in software development for

23 years. It has never made sense to me what a 'smart refrigerator' is

good for - except, of course, for surveillance."(tweet from buerger18,

June 2019)

This statement also reveals the fundamental criticism from this discourse coalition. The

smart home represents the drawbacks of techno-scientific progress and simultaneously

unmasks the affordances and the domestic surveillance capacities of homes (Maalsen &

Sadowski, 2019) that are inherent in those technologies. This storyline underlines the

contested visions associated with the smart home and reveals the vested interests of

different actors who want to know and change what goes on in our most private spheres

(Maalsen & Sadowski, 2019).

“Fixable”: The smart home as an unfinished fixable technological system

However, within this discourse network, we could also identify storylines that are

interrogating not smart home systems themselves but the way they are configured. The

tweets and the related media material indicate that the tweeting actors have deep insights

into technological peculiarities and consider smart homes to be something that can be

enhanced, for example, through interoperability or alternative networks:

“Ideally, the domains communicate with each other and influence

each other. However, the generally accepted standards and protocols

required for this have not yet been established across all sectors.”

(Golem 2019, News article)

The storyline “Fixable” is centered around the smart home as an unfinished system that can

be fixed through standardization. The diverse standards, protocols, and companies that

were flooding the German smart home market between 2018 and 2019 created a variety of

incompatible solutions, as one quote illustrates:

"Numerous non-compatible and per se non-interoperable

technologies, as well as standards from a wide range of

manufacturers, are available for networking. Among the wireless

connection technologies, the well-known standards Wi-Fi (also known

as WLAN), DECT (ULE) and Bluetooth compete with each other, as

well as solutions specialized in home networking such as IP500, KNX

RF, Zigbee, EnOcean or Z-Wave. In addition, several other solutions

are used less frequently." (News item, Golem 2019)

This quote reveals one of the central understandings and perceptions of this discourse

coalition, which envisions the smart home as a technological problem that can be solved.

The core of the debate is not whether the smart home is useful or serves certain user needs

but whether it is designed and configured appropriately from a technological perspective.

Interestingly, this storyline also entails entry points for alternative smart home visions such

as the “self-made smart home” and the “open source smart home". Contrary to corporate-

driven visions of the smart home, a blog post from heiseonline explains:

“With a Raspberry Pi you tinker your own intelligent system for your

home. With hardware support and an internet connection, it finally

offers a fully functional system at an unbeatable price. ” (News item,

Heise online, 2019).

This tweet shows that there is not only a claim that the smart home could be fixed but also

a claim that the smart home could be alternatively configured. Those alternatives do not

only empower the users to enhance their knowledge about how the smart home system

works but can also function as a counter-vision to the corporate-driven, profit-oriented, and

locked-in smart home.

“Opportunity”: The smart home as a growing market opportunity and innovation field

This storyline focuses on the opportunities and potentials of smart homes and covers

aspects such as convenience and comfort, which have been found in studies from other

countries (Strengers et al., 2020b; Strengers & Nicholls, 2017a). The smart home is

depicted as a system that makes everyday life easier, for example, because the users get a

“personalized push message on the mobile phone as soon as the dishwasher is finished”

(Bosch Smart Home, Tweet from 24th July 2018). Furthermore, these actors also

frequently discuss technical features or trends and debate platform policy, such as

information on which smart home manufacturer has been acquired by which one. For

example, a news report from heiseonline expresses:

“The French group Legrand is acquiring the smart home specialist

Netatmo. With the takeover, Legrand wants to expand its product

portfolio with smart home solutions for households. The acquisition is

still subject to the approval of the regulatory authorities.” (News item,

Heise online 2018)

This storyline also refers to the potential of networking with other services, such as

insurance. The visions that become apparent in this storyline are shaped by technology

enthusiasm and emotionalizing the smart home devices with claims like "Welcome to the

family, Alexa!” (Bosch Smart Home, Tweet from 9th April 2018). The smart home is

envisioned as a way to facilitate everyday life and reduce housework that enables a one-

touch-control approach to home systems, as a tweet from BoschSmart Home, one of the

most central actors of this discourse coalition puts it:

"Your Bosch Smart Home Controller is the heart of your smart

and

coordinates all devices within your home. https://t.co/fIMByOz5PV

#BeSmarter https://t.co/R2dXwD9s7M" (Tweet from

BoschSmartHome, July 2018)

The claims and promises within this discourse coalition correspond in many respects to

what has been identified in research as techno-hedonistic imaginaries (Dahlgren et al.,

2021). The smart home is envisioned through notions of modernization and

emotionalization and thus proclaim the techno-scientific progress that is supported through

smart home developments. A strong focus we also found in these storylines is the

presentation and explanation of new gadgets and tools for the smart home such as online

grocery delivering which can be delivered through home access with a smart lock, that is

rented to the customer. This perspective also illustrates how the smart home is becoming

more and more connected to the world beyond.

Those five storylines are however overlapping and some of the content might fight into

two storylines, or the expressions can be interpreted in more than one way. But what is

distinct in the storylines is the role that is perceived to the smart home in society. It makes

a huge difference if a smart home is depicted as "useless" or as" threat" and our aim was to

reveal how distinct orientation towards the future can be detected and what they are about.

The role that is attributed to smart home in relations to how society and social order might,

should or could be configured when it comes to smart home systems is distinct in each

coalition. Therefore, the discourse coalition which derived from the analyses of the

network of most central actors in the public debate on twitter can provide important

insights into the research of smart home futures as we will illustrate in the next section.

2.2.7. Discussion: Contested sociotechnical imaginaries on digitalization in Homes

in Public Debates

We have analyzed the German social media debate on smart homes and identified five

discourse coalitions that form around certain storylines associated with distinct

perspectives on the role of the smart home in society. It became evident that the most

influential actors in the German online discourse were taking a critical stance towards the

smart home. The analysis of sociotechnical imaginaries centers around the question of how

certain groups imagine society, and controversies about the relations between the state,

society, and technologies are always part of the processes of collective imagination (Beck

et al., 2021; Jasanoff, 2015). To capture the socio-technical imaginaries related to the smart

home, we focus our discussion on shared understandings of forms of social life and social

order that derive from our analysis.

The envisaged user role is an interesting entry point from which to identify the interrelation

between techno-scientific progress and the imagined social order. What we see regarding

the role of user is a deeply rooted skepticism which is uttered by actors such as netzpolitik

oder Peter_Schaar which correspond to the vibrant digital policy activism scene that is

existing in Germany (Löblich & Wendelin, 2012). It illustrates that smart home users are

conceived of as a vulnerable group and as citizens who are the target of state surveillance

and must be safeguarded by data protection law. This pint out to the vulnerabilities that

derive from smart home systems (B. Sovacool et al., 2021), which has been found in UK

with a special focus on gender aspects (Furszyfer Del Rio et al., 2021b). The discourse

coalitions that take a critical stance towards the smart home interrogate the promises and

prospects of the smart home with differing arguments and justifications. Our findings

correspond with issues that have gained increasing attention in current social science

research on the smart home, such as surveillance (Maalsen & Sadowski, 2019), privacy,

security and hacking (B. Sovacool & Furszyfer Del Rio, 2020), or exacerbating existing

household inequalities (Dahlgren et al., 2021). Our findings reveal that the difference

between users and citizens is crucial since citizens are a wider category than the user or

consumer because the category involves not only those who use or purchase smart home or

digital energy technologies but also those who are affected by them (Verhees & Verbong,

2015) or are designing them. Regarding the way smart home technologies are embedded

into everyday life, we can see that the smart home is viewed as a system that doesn´t have

much to do with how people really live or what their real needs are, but rather as a status

symbol or a means for social distinction. These issues can be strongly related to the overall

question of what role households as sociotechnical systems play and can play as a target of

environmental policies (Raven et al., 2021).

Accordingly, the question of whether the people are empowered or disempowered through

smart home systems in their homes is answered differently by the different discourse

coalitions. Actors that utter the “hackable”- and “fixable”-storylines, such as Chaos

Computer Club, heiseonline or Golem envision the citizens as competent with a high

technology affinity and able to solve the cyber security risks through learning and advice.

Those actors can be confined to the so-called "techie-szene" (Höfner & Frick, 2019) a tech

movement whose work focuses primarily on the realization of political and civil human

rights and the empowerment of people regarding digital technologies. This finding

underpins the notion that control of technology is crucial for the user role and that, for

example, more control is seen as empowering for users and therefore more desirable

(Hargreaves & Wilson, 2017). Furthermore, our findings shed light on the way alternative

futures are put forward within public discourse.

The "fixable" and "opportunity" discourse coalitions envision the smart home as a

customizable system that entails different possible socio-technical configurations. In line

with the perspectives of these discourse coalitions, the smart home does not necessarily

need to be a closed system, with proprietary software and hardware; it can be an open and

interoperable system instead. Although certain obstacles existed in the current smart home

market configuration, it was deemed feasible that the smart home could be designed,

configured, and used in an alternative way. This possibility opens the smart home approach

up for bottom-up and citizen-oriented perspectives towards the digitalized home associated

with the current discussion on opportunities for citizens to exercise agency in the energy

system through digital technologies (Judson et al., 2022). Such perspectives might provide

a counter-vision to the growing dominance of techno-hedonistic imaginaries (Dahlgren et

al., 2021) and industry-driven visions (Strengers & Nicholls, 2017a), which unsurprisingly

focus on the benefits of smart home systems.

The perspective on the smart home that becomes evident when comparing the storylines

and the discourse coalitions reveals a distinct perspective in the German debate regarding

changing state-society-relations in the digital age. This perspective corresponds with the

notion that, in the German discourse, digital sovereignty and data protection are

particularly prominently discussed issues (Lambach & Oppermann, 2022) that reveal

different affirmations towards techno-scientific progress. Thus, the two smart home

rejecting discourse coalitions, “threat” and “useless”, coincide with critical perspectives of

the smart home as a utopian domestic future that should turn us into good occupants

(Maalsen and Sadowski 2019). For the social order that is envisioned within German smart

home imaginaries, we can conclude that the smart home may entail state-society relations

that are imagined and perceived among certain social groups. The increase of state

surveillance is seen as a real threat, for example, when a state receives access to data from

voice assistants. The discourse in Germany illustrates that smart home systems can

contribute to changes in the relationship between the state and society. The sociotechnical

imaginaries of smart homes in Germany are multiple and contested and reveal major

societal challenges and power asymmetries associated with the digital transformation (ten

Oever, 2021).

2.2.8. Conclusion

Our paper analyzed the German (social) media debate over the hashtag #smarthome based

on Twitter data and related media content over two years. Using a combination of

quantitative network analysis with qualitative content analysis, we were able to reveal five

discourse coalitions that form around specific storylines. The five storylines “Threat”,”

Hackable”, “Useless”, “Fixable”, and “Opportunity” shed light on the distinct orientations

towards the future of different social groups. The multiple and contested sociotechnical

imaginaries related to smart home systems in Germany become evident through the results

of our NetDA and from our data that reflects how the discursive construction of the smart

home initially materialized.

We draw three main conclusions for the literature on digital energy and smart home

futures: First, the combination of qualitative network analysis with qualitative content

analysis provides a useful method in revealing sociotechnical imaginaries in emerging

public debates and the multiple and contested future orientations that are related to smart

home systems. Second, the envisioned smart home in Germany is highly contested, and

public discourse on social media is dominated by actors who critically interrogate the

promises and prospects of smart home futures. Our research enhances the discussions on

public views on smart home futures by showing what constitutes the contested smart home

futures and what storylines and justifications are associated with them. Our main

contribution to the literature on smart home futures is the empirical identification of

conflicting imaginaries (Benediktsson, 2021) about the smart home in Germany. Our

research shows the way different groups make sense of the role of smart home systems in

society and what perspectives and justifications can be found in the public debate in hybrid

media spaces in Germany. Looking at the different discourse coalitions allows for a

differentiated perspective on the way in which (part of) the public discourse evaluates the

distribution of risks and benefits of the smart home. Our research further reveals that

discussions on energy savings or environmental savings through smart homes, which are a

core issue in social science research on smart home (Pohl et al., 2021; Strengers et al.,

2020b; Tirado Herrero et al., 2018) are not discussed at all in the Social Media debate on

Twitter during the time period under study (2018 - 2019). This might be due to our

sampling process or due to the fact that the most central actors in this discourse were not

the ones talking about energy. Here it is important to notice that not alle actors were

included but only the ones which were central in terms of retweets. However, energy

related issues are an important aspect in smart home research, especially with the question

of how much net-energy savings can be really achieved (Pohl et al., 2021, 2022)

perceptions beyond energy-related issues, into which some studies have already given

some insights (Maalsen & Sadowski, 2019; B. Sovacool et al., 2021). Smart Home futures

research should also investigate social groups which reject or criticize smart home

developments instead of focusing on early adopters (Strengers et al., 2018) or industry

visions (Strengers & Nicholls, 2017b). It is time to focus more on the diversity of

perspectives and identify the contested visions and their underlying assumptions and

justifications. Third, our results illustrate the socio-material relations that are important for

smart home research, and which need to be given more consideration in future research.

The technical design of smart home systems (e.g. proprietary system vs. open source) is

also subject to discursive processes and shapes the public debate. Accordingly, the

question of who has the power to control smart home developments is very closely linked

to the perception of the role of smart homes within society. Consequently, the risks and

threats of smart energy technologies, which permeate public discourses and households,

should be taken much more into account in current energy policy and innovation policy

decisions. Actors from industry and policymakers who promote the smart home as a

solution to urgent societal challenges such as climate change seek to legitimize the smart

home (Rohde & Santarius, 2023b) while its negative consequences are disregarded. By

focusing on the conflicting imaginaries, we can contribute to critically interrogating those

dominant visions and creating a more nuanced perspective on smart home systems, which

should be much more recognized in policy priorities, research agendas, and funding

schemes.

2.3. Publication C: Emerging Sociotechnical Imaginaries – How the

smart home is legitimized in visions from industry, users in homes

and policymakers in Germany

2.3.1. Abstract

Debates about the digitally enhanced and “smart” home include different visions

associated with implementing digital technologies in private homes. This paper analyses

the “visions” put forward in Germany from smart home industry actors, users in smart

homes and policymakers and the processes through which legitimacy for the smart home is

created. When it comes to digital energy futures, the multiple ways in which visions

legitimize the uptake of emerging technologies belong to the driving forces in

institutionally stabilizing sociotechnical imaginaries. We identify legitimation strategies

that can be found within those visions. Our analyses are empirically based on a qualitative

content analysis of smart home marketing websites from the ten most common smart home

providers in Germany and on policy documents from German ministries, as well as on

qualitative interviews with German smart home users. We discovered four different

legitimation strategies that contribute to institutionally stabilizing emerging German smart

home imaginaries: cognitive/emotional alignment, solutionism, coupling with normative

goals and expert/scientific legitimation. Our findings reveal how visions that, in their

formation phase, are shared only between small actor collectives gain traction through

several legitimation strategies.

Keywords: Energy Futures, Smart Home, Sociotechnical Imaginaries, Visions,

Legitimation

2.3.2. Introduction

The idea of the automated and connected home is derived from different visions, ideas and

trends (Nyborg and Røpke, 2011) fueled by an overall ambition to address energy demand

problems and reduce household energy consumption and related greenhouse gas emissions

(Riekstin et al., 2020; Sintov and Schultz, 2017). Furthermore, the smart home is the

subject of ongoing discussions about the risks, promises (Chambers, 2020; Gram-Hanssen

and Darby, 2018; Sovacool and Furszyfer Del Rio, 2020) and visions regarding “utopian

domestic futures” (Maalsen and Sadowski, 2019).

Future studies have emphasized the role of expectations, visions and imaginaries in

shaping innovation processes (Konrad and Böhle 2019; Jasanoff and Kim 2015; Lösch et

al. 2019) and started to investigate their role in making and governing digital technologies

(Mager and Katzenbach, 2020). Those sociotechnical futures are multiple and contested,

and they structure which developments are considered relevant and urgent, possible or

inevitable (Konrad and Böhle 2019). When it comes to the practices of envisioning smart

home futures, research has shown how “existing scenario-planning and forecasting

methods employed in the energy sector envision, prioritize and limit possible futures”

(Strengers et al. 2019, p. 2214). Recently, increasing attention has been paid to the way

sociotechnical futures influence the actions, knowledge and decision-making (Lösch et al.

2019 p. 293) of the actors involved.

With a focus on legitimation strategies, we contribute to ongoing conceptual discussions

about how future visions grow into stabilized, collectively shared sociotechnical

imaginaries (STI) (Jasanoff, 2015; Rudek, 2022). Our contribution analyses visions for the

smart home that are constituted by the smart home industry, users in homes and

policymakers. We examine how those smart home visions are legitimized and argue that

these legitimation processes contribute to the institutional stabilization of emerging STI.

For this purpose, we address the following research questions:

• What visions of the smart home do the smart home industry, users in homes and

policymakers in Germany create?

• How is legitimacy created in those smart home visions?

With our investigation, we contribute to the research on public and expert imaginaries

(Cherry et al., 2017) and industry visions (Strengers et al., 2020b; Strengers and Nicholls,

2017a) about the smart home and the questions of “how materialized visions of the future

enable and enact political imaginations by challenging or justifying policy choices” (Beck

et al. 2021, p. 147). Our empirical work provides a better understanding of how different

actors in Germany seek to legitimize science and technology investment, design and

deployment (Eaton et al., 2014) by promoting visions of the smart home. The empirical

basis for our analyses comprises a qualitative content analysis of smart home marketing

websites from the ten most common smart home providers in Germany and of policy

documents from German ministries, as well as qualitative interviews with German smart

home users.

The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 gives a short overview of the literature on

smart home futures, and Section 3 illustrates the conceptual framework applied in this

paper. In Section 4, we describe our methodological research design, the empirical material

used and our sampling and analyzing approach. The empirical findings are shown in

Section 5 and analyzed within our conceptual framework in Section 6. Finally, we

conclude with implications for research on sociotechnical futures and digital technologies.

2.3.3. Envisioned Futures of the Smart Home

The social science research on smart homes embraces a wide range of studies, which can

be divided into conceptual, technical, predictive and evaluative studies (Gram-Hanssen and

Darby, 2018). Since we are interested in smart home visions and how they create

legitimation, we position our work as a conceptual and qualitative study. Within the

literature on energy futures more broadly (e.g., Grunwald 2011), we focus on smart energy

futures of the home (Strengers, 2016), which are sometimes also referred to as digital

energy futures (Dahlgren et al., 2020).

Smart home research from the UK has revealed several advantages proclaimed by smart

home advocates: energy saving (associated with ecological and financial advantages),

convenience and controllability, aesthetic and health advantages, social acceptance (status

consumption), entertainment, security and shopping (Sovacool and Furszyfer Del Rio,

2020). However, investigations on visions and their interconnections concerning the role of

smart energy technologies in everyday life have found that the possible energy and

sustainability outcomes are counteracted (Strengers et al., 2020b) by convenience

narratives that, together with the related devices, have an essential function in shaping

future practices within the home (Strengers 2013; 2016; Strengers et al. 2018; 2020). The

smart home is often justified and legitimized through a narrative of convenience that

promises to make life easier, better and more energy efficient (Strengers and Nicholls,

2017a). An inquiry into smart home industry visions in Australia reveals a broad vision of

pleasance with certain qualities such as aesthetic experience, customization and control,

convenience and simplicity or effortless energy-saving (Strengers et al., 2020b). One of the

most central results from research about smart home visions is the narrative of convenience

(Aagaard, 2021b; Strengers and Nicholls, 2017a) and that convenience is enabled and

enforced through interoperability (Aagaard, 2021b).

Other researchers have identified competing visions when it comes to the future of

housing, namely the low-tech building standard “Passivhaus” and smart homes as a vision

that promotes the high-tech and automated home where the occupant is disregarded

because he or she lack knowledge or skills (Cherry et al., 2017). Research on smart home

visions indicates, that users are often imagined to be passive and disengaged (Aagaard,

2021b). When it comes to the practices of envisioning smart home futures, research has

shown how “existing scenario-planning and forecasting methods employed in the energy

sector envision, prioritize and limit possible futures” (Strengers et al. 2019, p. 2214). While

the current literature on smart home visions focuses on either industry visions (Strengers et

al., 2020b; Strengers and Nicholls, 2017a) or on the role of convenience and how the users

are imagined (Aagaard, 2021b), we investigate visions from the smart home industry, users

of smart homes and policymakers to reveal overarching legitimation strategies.

With a focus on the emergence and legitimation of smart home visions, the research gap

we investigate is the question of how those visions become stabilized and what

legitimation strategies can be found in visions constituted by different actors. Recent

energy futures research still fails to consider the legitimation processes that contribute to

institutionally stabilizing STI. Our research contributes to studies that goes further than

simply describing existing imaginaries without answering how they become visible,

collective and institutionally stabilized (Rudek, 2022).

2.3.4. Conceptual framework: Visions, Sociotechnical imaginaries and legitimation

There is a long history of the concept of social imaginaries (Taylor, 2004) and imagined

communities (Anderson, 1991) and how they have been constitutive in the modernization

processes. Our study focuses on the constitution of the future and examines how actors

develop visions and constitute imaginaries of what the future will look like. Envisioned or

imagined futures can be understood as visions of a pretended future that are forcefully

driving innovative activity (Beckert, 2016). The prospective structures that those visions,

expectations or imaginaries entail shape scientific and technological developments

(Konrad and Böhle, 2019; van Lente and Rip, 1998). Those envisioned futures open up

space for action and seek to manage complexity and uncertainty (Beckert, 2016; Engels

and Münch, 2015), set agendas, create relationships, define roles and influence resource

allocation (Beckert, 2016). Since these imaginaries are collectively shared, the explicit

claims and implied framings they contain shape what developments are considered

relevant and urgent, possible or inevitable (Konrad and Böhle, 2019). Imaginaries do not

only mobilize diverse actors from different political and cultural backgrounds to move and

invest in emerging technology fields (Borup et al. 2006) but may also “stir public debate

on the desirability of what particular technologies might entail for society” (Konrad and

Böhle 2019: p. 102). We understand visions of the future as a society's, or a social group's,

distinctive orientation toward the future and “representations of how collectives want that

world to be” (Beck et al. 2021, p. 147).

Visions and Sociotechnical imaginaries

To investigate how visions of the future gain traction and shape the way people make sense

of emerging technologies, we make use of the following three concepts: Visions, STI and

legitimation. These concepts can help us explain the emergence of stabilized collectively

shared imagined spaces that may shape the path and pace of technology use, development

and deployment (Konrad and Böhle, 2019).

Visions can be described as desirable future images (Dignum et al., 2018) and anticipations

of futures that are desired by particular actors (Schneider and Lösch, 2019). Thus, visions

are often created and formulated by specific groups of actors, who have been described as

vanguards (Hilgartner, 2015). Visions can materialize in public images or documents that

can become performative beyond the group of actors creating the visions (Dignum et al.,

2018). For our research, visions provide the entry point because they can reveal the mutual

relation of ideas about the future and current states (Lösch et al. 2019).

STI are defined as “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed

visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and

social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology.”

(Jasanoff and Kim, 2015b p. 4). They show to what extent cultural orientations and social

norms are interwoven with the material world. With this concept, Jasanoff and Kim (2015)

further point out that collectively shared STI are anchored institutionally, (in formal and

informal rules, norms and cultural patterns/orientations) and materially (in artefacts,

objects, representations and infrastructures). STI can be observed when a vision is

communally adapted and institutionally stabilized (Jasanoff, 2015). Thus, visions are

considered components of imaginaries (Figure 7), i.e., different (individual) visions

together constitute STI when they are institutionally stabilized (Rudek, 2022). The

difference between visions and STI is the extent to which they are collectively shared, i.e.,

their relative stability in the social world (Hilgartner, 2015). STI “typically have relatively

longue durée histories and exhibit greater stability than do the numerous and often fleeting

visions of self-proclaimed sociotechnical vanguards” (Hilgartner, 2015 p. 35f.).

Legitimation as Part of institutional stabilization

The emergence of STI involves processes of institutional stabilization, which describe how

those visions are stabilized in rules, norms and cultural patterns. Successful future visions

act as interpretive schemas that order ideas, interests and normative orientations (Meyer

2019b, 2019a). They represent interpretative frames that facilitate how people make sense

of what certain technologies mean, what they stand for and what relevance they have for

different groups. (Meyer 2019b). When visions constituted by notions of techno-scientific

progress become anchored within collective meaning systems, we can observe an emerging

STI (Rudek, 2022). In our conceptual framework, STI are one element of certain

sociotechnical arrangements (Lösch et al. 2019) or sociotechnical configurations (Figure

7). Sociotechnical configurations are defined as a combination of different ideas, objects

and/or activities (Wittmayer, et al., 2020; Wittmayer et al., 2022) and are confined to

physical as well as non-physical elements. The emerging STI represent the imagined

spaces that are inseparably linked to the sociotechnical configuration and represent the

non-material side of technological systems (Jasanoff, 2015).

Figure 7: The institutional stabilization of sociotechnical imaginaries (own figure)

To understand the process of institutional stabilization of STI, we follow social

constructivist approaches and argue that the institutional stabilization of STI involves

legitimation processes, i.e., the maintenance of meaning accomplished through constant

interaction and language use (Berger and Luckmann, 1967), performance and

materialization. Performance involves material, symbolic or media representations that

implement and showcase the visions to a broader public (Quitzow and Rohde, 2021).

Materialization refers to the inscription of those visions into technical artefacts (Engels and

Münch, 2015), including algorithms and appliances. Those three processes overlap and are

not mutually exclusive but provide an entry point for identifying the emerging STI

(Quitzow and Rohde, 2021). The outcome of the processes can be described as

Performativity, which refers to the shaping characteristics of visions and the process when

visions become widely shared and are actively pursued (Dignum et al., 2018).

We focus our analyses on legitimation as a process of gaining (and maintaining)

legitimacy. Legitimacy can be defined as

“a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity

are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed

systems of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions.” (Suchman, 1995 p.

574)

It is “the product of an ongoing process of social negotiation involving multiple

participants” (Suddaby et al., 2017 p. 24). Consequently, legitimation is a process that is

socially constructed (Suddaby et al. 2017) and involves agency from different actors, who

seek to align new ideas within prevailing normative prescriptions (Suchman, 1995). Thus,

legitimation involves conscious actions by various actors, which encompass cognitive,

normative and regulative aspects (Bergek et al. 2008). We argue that, especially when it

comes to digital energy futures, the multiple ways in which visions legitimize the uptake of

emerging technologies are one of the driving forces for institutional stabilization.

When it comes to examining envisioned futures, legitimation’s role has been described in

Dignum et al. (2018) and Wahome and Graham (2020). We contribute to those endeavours

by empirically examining the legitimation strategies that can be found in smart home

visions constituted by certain collectives in Germany. In doing so, we identify the

imaginations and reveal the underlying normative rationales and justifications that those

visions entail. In line with STI being multidimensional (Cairns et al., 2021), and

overlapping with related concepts such as frames, narratives or storylines (Cairns et al.,

2022), we speak of emerging STI. Since emerging STI are collectively shared, they have

the power to govern related policy decisions and the distribution of risks and benefits

(Beck et al., 2021; Konrad and Böhle, 2019).

2.3.5. Methodology

Empirically analyzing visions and the emerging STI they constitute requires observing

how the visions move from individuals or small collectives to communities and their

leaders and to nation states (Jasanoff, 2015). Because we focus on the emergence and

stabilization of STI, we rely on a qualitative-interpretative research approach and analyze

the visions of three actor groups: the smart home industry, users in homes and

policymakers. Since the formation of visions differs between the actor groups under study,

we base our research on three different types of data: website content, interviews and

policy documents. With a qualitative-interpretative approach, we aim to reveal the

imaginative work of various social actors (Jasanoff, 2015), which in our perspective is

different for each actor groups. For the industry visions, marketing material, in the form of

website content, provides an established source to investigate how companies normalize

and legitimize the role of infrastructures and technologies in everyday life (Strengers et al.,

2020b). For users in homes, we identified the visions by investigating in interviews how

users make sense of what the smart home means for them. For policymakers’ visions, we

relied on policy documents because they are said to provide insights into the framing of

desirable futures and specific rhetoric and analogies that help identify the elements of the

imaginary (Jasanoff, 2015). Although these different sources are associated with several

limitations (see Section 0), we argue that the data we analyzed allows us to understand how

these visions are legitimizing the smart home and reveals these actor groups’ distinct

orientations towards the future (Beck et al., 2021).

Data collection and sample

Our empirical material contains twelve semi-structured interviews with smart home users

in Germany, a qualitative content analysis of the website content from the ten most

widespread smart home providers in Germany and policy documents from German

ministries (Table 6). We examined user visions (i.e., motivation, expectations and reasons

for buying and using smart home technology) through semi-structured interviews with 12

smart home users. The interviewees were a subsample from a quantitative survey among

smart home users in Germany (Frick and Nguyen, 2021). People interested in an interview

were able to provide their contact details in the online survey. The interview sample

consisted of people living in Germany using a smart home including a smart heating

control system. To balance the selection, we contacted people who stated in the survey that

they had many networked devices and spent considerable time with the smart home system

as well as those who stated that they did not have many devices (however, at least two

devices) and did not spend much time with the smart home system. We interviewed eight

men and four women. The interviews were conducted in 2019 and lasted between 15 and

45 minutes (see Appendix).

We asked the interviewees about how they had come to buy and install their smart home

devices, what their initial expectations had been and how they used the technologies in

everyday life. Since the interviews were part of an interdisciplinary smart home project

with diverse research aims, we also integrated questions about the presumed energy

savings, changing routines and lifestyle aspects such as entertainment or shopping related

to smart home technologies. We only conducted interviews with people who already used

smart home technologies and not with people who rejected smart home technologies. The

quantitative survey from which the interviewees were sampled had found that the surveyed

group showed significant motivations for technology enthusiasm and consumerism (Frick

and Nguyen, 2021; Pohl et al., 2022).

Actor group

Method

Analysed material

Year

Users

Qualitative interviews

12 interviews with smart

home users (subsample

from online survey)

(15 – 45 min)

Interviews conducted in

2019

Industry

Document review

Website content of the 10

most widespread smart

home providers in

Germany

Website content collected

in 2019 and 2020

Politics

Document review

17 policy documents from

German ministries

The sample contains

documents from

2018 - 2020

Table 6: Overview of empirical approach and data collection (see Appendix for details)

To identify the industry visions, we analyzed the website content of the ten most

widespread smart home providers in Germany (see Appendix for details). The providers

were identified by reviewing several smart home market studies and statistics about the use

of smart home products in Germany. In the next step, we reviewed the smart home

providers’ webpages that provided information about the smart home technologies. In

some cases, these webpages were separate websites; in some cases, the information was

integrated into the company's general website. We manually collected the available online

content in documents and converted it to pdf files so it could be handled with the

qualitative analyzing software MAXQDA. Our sample included 277 pages of marketing

material, including pictures and photos.

The policy documents were identified through the websites of several ministries in

Germany. We searched for “smart home” and “smart living” within the ministries' website

content and selected all relevant documents from 2018 to 2020. We selected only those

documents in which smart home or smart living was the core issue. For the respective

period, we only found relevant documents at the websites of the Federal Ministry for

Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) and the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer

Protection (BMJV). No relevant documents could be identified for the Federal Ministry of

Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) and none for the Federal Ministry for the

Environment and Nuclear Safety (BMU). Our final sample consisted of 15 documents

from the BMWi and 2 documents from the BMJV and included press releases, policy

papers and summaries or reports from recent surveys.

Data analyses

The evidence gathered was coded, organized and interpreted by making use of the

qualitative analysis software MAXQDA. The documents, marketing material and

interviews were coded iteratively and thematically using qualitative content analysis

methods (Mayring, 2015). Our research questions meant that the analysis was aimed at

identifying visions related to the smart home in Germany. The categories for the codes

were derived inductively from the material and were consecutively clustered and ordered

with a focus on risks, promises and patterns of justification. Guiding questions for the

analyses included what promises were articulated and what was deemed feasible, attractive

to certain audiences and attainable. We also looked for the normative rationales and

justifications and how legitimation for the smart home is created in the visions.

Limitations

The data collection and sampling process results in three main limitations. First, because

the purpose of the documents is different, the different use of language (especially in

online marketing content and policy documents) creates significant limitations regarding

the way the smart home technologies are described and interpreted. Second, the sample of

interviewees from the smart home survey creates limitations regarding the plurality of

perspectives represented in our research: people who do not use or even reject smart homes

are not represented in our research and the interviews can only provide evidence for the

perspective of the individual interviewees and not that of the whole household using the

smart home system. This limitation may create a bias towards perspectives that are more

optimistic and enthusiastic about this technology, ignoring the dynamics within families

and the consequences for vulnerable groups, such as children or women (Sovacool et al.

2021). Third, we only look at the German context. Consequently, our empirical findings

only show smart home visions that can be found in that national context.

2.3.6. Findings: German smart home visions from industry, users and politics

Industry vision: The comfortable, safe, simple and effortless smart home

The analyzed website content from the smart home industry reveals notions of comfort and

convenience, safety and a simplified life as the most occurring ones. Aspirations of raising

comfort and convenience create a vision of a home that “takes care of you” and provides

recreation while proclaiming that technology is doing the work for the residents. The home

is portrayed as a means of relief to its inhabitants and “takes the work off your shoulders

and becomes more comfortable all by itself” (Magenta Smart Home 2020, website

content). The proclamation of comfort is strongly related to aspects of recreation and

relaxed life. When they return home, the imagined residents want a release from their

generally stressful lives, and smart home technology is foregrounded as the way to achieve

a more convenient and carefree life. “When you come home after a long day, your home

welcomes you with light and a comfortable temperature” (Magenta Smart Home 2020,

website content). This vision is related not only to a relaxed and comfortable life but also

to ideas of convenience and a home that creates a sense of shelter and coziness. This notion

is strongly entangled with promises of the enhanced home: “Your home takes care of you

and offers a variety of improvements." (Magenta Smart Home 2020, website content)

The analyzed visions of smart home providers directly refer to the ubiquity of digital

devices, such as the smartphone, within everyday life and describe how people might

embed digital technologies into their daily routines: “Communicate with your house from

anywhere



…



. Your home awaits you: Heating, blinds and lighting can be controlled

smart.



…



Do you want to control your entire home technology with just one touch?”

(Gira 2019, website content). The smart home is depicted as the expansion of the

smartphone that fits perfectly into existing daily routines and enables a one-touch-control

approach to home technology. Such narratives of comfort and convenience have been

found in other countries as well (Strengers and Nicholls, 2017a) and, through automation

by personalizing the home and referring to the home as a place of retreat, paint a picture of

the smart home as an effortless path to comfort, convenience and relaxation.

Within industry’s visions, enhanced control through remotely accessing home automation

devices is a dominant notion that was employed by six out of the ten smart home

providers. Home is depicted as an image of a castle (Figure 8) that looks after everyone:

“With Bosch Smart Home, you can set up all-round protection for your home: against

dangers and for the health of the whole family. Smart Home security: a home that looks

after everyone” (Bosch Smart Home 2019, website content).

Figure 8: Marketing picture that says: “Safety has a home. Yours.” (Somfy 2019)

The technological possibilities of remote control combined with the installation of

surveillance technologies portray a home that is “save, connected and simple” and avoids

uncomfortable feelings of insecurity: “No more uncomfortable feeling about whether

everything is okay at home. With Magenta Smart Home you can always keep an eye on

your home and can feel relaxed and secure” (Magenta 2020, website content). Thus, the

industry's visions are creating a sense of urgency and necessity for the inhabitants to

enhance their homes through automation to make their lives safer and enable control from

everywhere at every time.

The smart home is depicted as a modern and up-to-date home that enhances the personal

safety of its inhabitants simply and without additional effort: “Technical progress makes it

possible: Nowadays you can successfully protect your home against burglars in just a few

steps and without much effort” (Magenta Smart Home 2020, website content). Beyond this

notion of modernization, we found descriptions of emotionalization: “Using smart systems

in your own home is about much more than just technology. It's about feeling. That's why

we wanted to know from our customers: 'What is your #smarthomefeeling?' ” (EQ3 Home

2019, website content). The linking of the smart home to emotions and the use of words

that are typically related to social relations (“your home awaits you”) can be interpreted as

emotionalization and a way to relate technology to personal feelings.

The smart home is envisioned by the industry as a way to facilitate everyday life and

reduce housework while, at the same time, saving energy, money and effort. The industry

presents connected technologies as an easy way to manage and control everything that is

going on in the house and simultaneously detect devices that waste energy:

“You keep an eye on everything […] even when it comes to power

consumption: graphically prepared data show you the current

consumption and whether the monthly costs are within the limit.

Possible power guzzlers are thus quickly detected and eliminated.”

(Innogy Smart Home 2019, website content)

Savings of energy and money are frequently associated with notions of a simple life, where

technology does the work for the residents and seamlessly supports them in saving time,

energy, and money The possibilities of remotely controlling what is happening within the

home are prominently addressed within the industry visions and positively presented

together with imaginations of social life and of how people can embed these technological

features into their social relations within the family:

“Your kids are proud. For a week now, they've been taking the bus

home alone after school. Because being picked up by mom and dad

has become embarrassing. Thanks to the Magenta SmartHome

compatible cameras, you can still be sure that they arrived home safe

and sound without embarrassing them.” (Magenta 2020, website

content)

This quote is a prime example of how social relations are envisioned by smart home

providers and how configurations are presented that depict the smart home as a

technologically supported enhancement of everyday life. Life should “become easier”, and

parents can use digitally connected technologies to take care of their kids and to monitor

their behavior within the home: “Children keep you on your toes - and thanks to your

networked home you are always one step ahead of the little ones” (Magenta Smart Home

2020, website content).

The industry vision of the comfortable, safe, simple, and effortless smart home embraces

notions of emotionalization (e.g., “your home awaits you”) and individualization while

creating a sense of anxiety and urgency. The notion of control and controllability and the

claim about a simpler, more relaxed and enhanced everyday life through technological

progress and the modernization of the home are the prevailing notions identified in our

analyses. The smart home is legitimized through personalization, e.g., a strong focus on

individual adjustments and a sense of emotionality to align the use of digital technologies

with everyday life routines and create a sense of simplification.

User vision: The Convenient, modern and controllable smart home

The user visions portray the smart home as convenient and comfortable and a technology

that supports the inhabitants and makes everyday life easier. The interviewed users of

smart home technologies in Germany articulate expectations of “safety and control” and

the possibility to have a “look at their homes from abroad”. The interviewed users can be

characterized as early adopters who promote the use of smart home technologies and do

not have a strong focus on risks or privacy issues, which are being increasingly discussed

in Germany (Pohlmann, 2021). Within the user visions, we observed similarity in several

notions of comfort and convenience to those in the industry visions. We interpret this issue

as a result of successful marketing strategies of smart home providers, at least among the

user groups we interviewed, which showed significant motivations towards technology

enthusiasm and consumerism (Pohl et al., 2022).

When asked about the reasons why they have a smart home system, the interviewees

answered that the possibilities of remote control make their lives more comfortable,

convenient and easier:

“Well, let me put it this way, it just makes you feel more comfortable.

There are a lot of things that you can do on the road. You can control

a lot of things with your mobile phone or tablet; you are more flexible

in that respect. And yes, it simply makes everyday life easier.”

(Interview #7)

Users often addressed issues of time savings and relief and perceived the smart home as

facilitating everyday life and reducing workloads:

“Well, it's a work release for me. Let's just say, something that makes

my job a little easier. Convenience, I honestly have to say. And

progress, I would also say.” (Interview 11#)

Opportunities for safety and savings were also proclaimed by the smart home users when

asked about what they expected from their smart home system before buying it: “I hoped

that I would feel safer because then I would know when someone tries to enter the

apartment and that it is possible to save electricity” (Interview #12).

The attribution of control and especially the possibilities of remotely controlling devices

within the home were frequently stated by users. They estimated increased control over

their devices and that they could control what is going on within their home:

“[…] that I have a central control unit for my devices via my

smartphone, which I always carry with me so that I can access these

devices at any time and check their status.” (Interview #8)

“And I've got pets, you can always look after. What about them?

That's a nice thing.” (Interview #11)

The vision of “safety and control” not only refers to technologically induced control but

introduces enhanced social control as well. The social relations within the home might

strongly be affected by smart home technologies because of their potential to surveil nearly

every aspect of home life. As one interviewee puts it:

“It's funny when the wife calls and says: ’Empty the dishwasher, I just

got a push message, the program is ready’. [Laughter]” (Interview

#2)

As our findings reveal, the vision of control and safety aligns with the technological and

social features of the smart home and contains possible changes in social relations within

the home through digital technologies. Users legitimize the smart home for its possibilities

to “enhance everyday life”, keep everything “under control” and make the home more

convenient.

Policy Vision: The ecological smart home, for climate protection “Made in Germany”

In Germany, the smart and connected home is considered an important economic sector

providing business opportunities for a wide range of companies. The market for smart

home technologies is expected to grow up to 47 per cent within the next years (BMWi,

2017). The term smart home is used synonymously with smart living, which is also the

name of the smart living business initiative (Smart Living Office) of the Ministry for

Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi). This initiative has set itself the goal of

“accelerating the transfer of innovations to the market, removing existing obstacles and

developing sustainable market strategies” (BMWi 2017, p. 5) as well as “providing

political support for the development of Smart Living” (BMWi 2017, p. 6). In this manner,

the Ministry is the most active in smart home developments, with a strong focus on

promoting economic development.

The analysed policy documents from the BMWi (17 documents) put a strong focus on the

potential of smart home technologies for reducing energy demand and contributing to

climate protection and reducing CO2 emissions. The climate protection focus is a core

issue in the policy documents and is mentioned frequently. The potential of smart home

technologies to help in reaching climate protection goals is put forth as a main argument

for promoting this technology. The concept of the smart home has even been

argumentatively connected to the Paris climate agreement:

“Since the beginning of December, negotiations have been taking

place in Madrid on how to achieve the goal of the Paris Climate

Agreement to limit global warming to less than two degrees. In

addition to their effectiveness, an important criterion for the success

of climate protection measures is the extent to which broad sections of

the population can accept and support the solutions. In this context,

technologies for the smart home have enormous potential.” (Smart

Living Office at BMWi 2019, p. 1)

At the same time, a position paper of the Smart Living Office at BMWi points out that

“currently [...] some legal, formal, and infrastructural barriers are still slowing down the

CO2 reduction potential of building automation and energy management systems” (BMWi

2020, p. 1). The smart home is envisioned as indispensable and one of the most important

technologies to reduce carbon emissions in the building sector.

The Smart Living Office at BMWi reveals the strong ties between the smart living industry

and the German ministry for economy and energy. The chief executive of the Smart Living

Office is, for example, the chairman of the Federal Association of German Housing and

Real Estate Companies e.V. (GdW). Consequently, it comes as no surprise that the

activities of the BMWi have a strong focus on fostering economic development of the

smart home sector in Germany and emphasizing potentials instead of risks. Expert

opinions and scientific studies with energy scenarios commissioned by the Smart Living

Office are used to underpin the promoted potentials:

“With building automation, digitalization is opening new options to

reduce greenhouse gas emissions from buildings in a cost-effective

way. Between 2.1 and 7.5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents can be

saved, depending on the level of equipment.” (Beucker and

Hinterholzer 2019, p. 8)

Simultaneously, Germany wants to position itself as a pioneer of secure and safe solutions

that protect consumer rights and rely on high standards concerning cyber security:

“Although other countries are already more advanced in some smart

living areas, the solutions from providers in Germany are particularly

convincing in terms of data protection and security.” (BMWi 2019, p.

The standardization strategy of the BMWi points out that a “Standardized communication

platform and the 'Privacy and Security by Design' approach can become the trademark

Made in Germany” (BMWi 2019, p. 16). Aspects such as consumer protection, data

security and product liability are also addressed in the two documents from the Federal

Ministry for Justice and Consumer Protection (BMJV). An important development was the

establishment of the “Gebäudeenergiegesetz” (Buildings Energy Act - BEG), which was

adopted at the end of 2020. This act marks an interesting development regarding the

institutional stabilization of smart home visions because it entails huge subsidies for digital

building technologies, including smart home technologies. Consequently, the industry

promoted these new funding opportunities as a great advancement:

“This is a big step for the entire industry and will ensure the success

of Smart Living in Germany. The BEG is a courageous and forward-

looking project that will provide the foundation for achieving the

climate targets in the building sector.” (Smart Living Office at BMWi

2020, p. 2)

Our findings reveal that policy visions focus strongly on climate protection as a crucial

goal in applying smart home technologies. Smart homes are envisioned as a means to

improve the market position for German smart home providers and simultaneously

contribute to national and international climate protection goals. In Germany,

developments that lead to an institutional stabilization of the smart home visions can be

observed, especially regarding the allocation of resources and funding schemes, e.g., the

BEG. Furthermore, the visions become anchored institutionally through standardization

strategies as well as through efforts to standardize smart meter infrastructure (Meister et

al., 2018).

2.3.7. Analysis and discussion: stabilization of emerging smart home imaginaries

through legitimation

Our empirical findings show the different promises, potentials and expectations that can be

found within the analyzed visions. The actor groups in our analyses can be regarded as

promoters of the smart home who advocate for the smart home. From industry and users in

homes, the smart home is envisioned as a technology that supports people in dealing with

social issues of everyday life and provides convenience, comfort and control. Policymakers

envision the smart home as a secure and safe solution that helps to save energy and

contributes to climate protection. Our empirical analyses showed that the envisioned smart

home is fueled by different legitimation strategies that, together, have the potential to

foster stabilized STI of digitalized homes in Germany.

To answer our second research question, we looked at the ways of legitimacy formation

through the visions and the related actions of various organizations and individuals

(Bergek et al., 2008). Legitimation is important for the institutional stabilization of

emerging imaginaries because it “justifies the institutional order by giving a normative

dignity to its practical imperatives” (Berger and Luckmann, 1967 p. 179). The normative

rationales and justifications we found in the smart home visions can reveal the ways of

reasoning and how benefits are naturalized (Jasanoff, 2015).

We identified four different legitimation strategies within the smart home visions: (1)

cognitive/emotional alignment, (2) solutionism, (3) coupling with normative goals and (4)

expert/scientific legitimation (Table 7). These strategies overlap and are not mutually

exclusive but are rooted in different legitimation sources.

Legitimation

strategies

Description

Elements of the

strategy in smart

home visions

Prominence and illustrative evidence

(1) Cognitive/

emotional alignment

Emphasize individuality and

flexibility and portray the new

technological solution as

adjustable to personal needs.

Envision the smart home as a

means to simplify, enhance

and support everyday life.

• Individualization

• Simplification

• Enhancement of

everyday life

The strategy of cognitive/emotional

alignment most prominent within the

industry visions and could also be

observed within the user visions.

Industry: “Using smart systems in your own

home is about much more than just

Align the affordances of the

smart home with individuals

and their cognitions, beliefs

and judgments.

technology. It's about feeling.” (EQ3 Home

2019, website content)

“[the smart home] takes the work off your

shoulders and becomes more comfortable all

by itself. (Magenta Smart Home 2020, website

content)

(2) Solutionism

Imagine the smart home as a

solution that can “re-capture”

control within the home

(burglaries, pets, children) and

achieve money- and time-

savings through technological

enhancement.

Provide a technical solution to

social problems within

households (such as social

control).

• Controllability

• Secureness

• Economization

The strategy of solutionism was found

within the industry visions and the user

visions.

Industry: “With Magenta Smart Home you

always have your home in view and can feel

relaxed and secure.” (Magenta 2020, website

content).

Users: “[…] that I have a central control unit

for my devices via my smartphone, which I

always have with me so that I can access

these devices at any time and check their

status." (Interview #8)

(3) Coupling with

normative goals

Envision the smart home as a

solution to urgent societal

challenges such as climate

change and environmental

protection.

Create legitimacy for the smart

home by referring to the

values of the broader social

environment.

• Energy savings

• Emission

reductions

• Climate

protection

The strategy of coupling with normative

goals is by far the most prominent within

the policy visions and can also be

observed, but to a lesser extent, within

the industry visions.

Policy: “[…] negotiations have been taking

place in Madrid on how to achieve the goal of

the Paris Climate Agreement to limit global

warming to less than two degrees. […] In this

context, technologies for the smart home have

enormous potential.” (Smart Living Office at

BMWi 2019: 1)

(4) Expert/scientific

legitimation

Provide evidence by using

scenarios, prospective

calculations and surveys to

justify the appropriateness and

need for the implementation of

the envisioned smart home.

• Forecast of

energy savings

and CO2-

emission

reductions

• Numbers and

statistics as

evidence

The strategy of expert/scientific

legitimation is by far the most prominent

within the policy visions and can also be

observed, but to a lesser extent, within

the industry visions (such as statistics of

burglaries).

Policy: “Between 2.1 and 7.5 million tonnes

of CO2 equivalents can be saved, depending

on the level of equipmen.t” (BMWi, Press

Release citing Beucker & Hinterholzer 2019)

Table 7: Strategies of legitimation within smart home visions in Germany

The first legitimation strategy is cognitive/emotional alignment. This strategy especially

refers to the emotional dimension employed within the visions that justify the smart home

as a way to simplify life and relieve the inhabitants from the burdens of everyday life. We

mainly found this strategy within the industry and the user visions in Germany. These

overarching notions of convenience, simplicity and control have been found in studies

from Australia as well (Strengers et al., 2020b). The strategy seeks to address individuals

and their cognitions, beliefs and judgments (Suddaby et al., 2017) and how technologies

are embedded in the meaning system. Digital technologies are said to enforce the

singularization of objects, subjects and the social in general (Reckwitz 2018) and entail

processes of aligning the affordances of the smart home with how people cognitively make

sense of the world. The smart home is portrayed as a way to enhance life through

individualization and simplification while relieving people from the burdens of everyday

life. The strategy contributes to the institutional stabilization of emerging smart home

imaginaries because it refers to the ways of reasoning (Jasanoff, 2015) and how people

make sense of what the technology means for them (Meyer, 2019).

The second strategy, solutionism, was found predominantly within the industry visions but

also within user visions. We named this strategy in this way because the concept of

solutionism is a concept or ideology. The concept of solutionism was first put forward by

(Morozov, 2013) and has been the focus of much research since. Solutionism is the

tendency to seek to solve problems without really questioning what makes them

problematic in the first place. Our analysis reveals that this legitimation strategy of creating

problems while at the same time providing a solution for the self-constituted problem can

be observed clearly within our analysis. Especially the industry visions create a sense of

urgency and necessity for smart home systems to protect people against threats that might

occur in the “world outside”. This strategy relates to the normative assumption about the

home and how the smart home affects social relations and the concept of home (Gram-

Hanssen and Darby, 2018). The smart home is portrayed as supportive and satisfying and a

way to re-capture control within homes.

The third strategy, coupling with normative goals, was found mostly within the policy

visions, where the smart home is related directly to achieving climate reduction goals.

However, in energy research, the climate promises of smart homes are regarded as

questionable, especially those concerning raising lifestyle expectations (Nicholls and

Strengers, 2019), which may undermine intended energy savings (Strengers et al., 2020b).

Normative goals such as climate protection and other “grand challenges” form a strong

basis for justifying new technologies. But often what it are underestimated are the long-

term effects that implementing a certain vision might have and the environmental burden

that all the new digital devices entail (Pohl et al. 2021). From that perspective, this

legitimation strategy might lead to material intense development paths and a so-called

“burden shifting” (Ipsen et al., 2019) instead of contributing positively to climate

protection goals.

The last strategy of expert/scientific legitimation seems to be relevant especially in phases

of technology development when there is little experience and experts are providing

information about performance and potential (Bergek et al. 2008). Within our analysis, this

strategy was mainly applied to provide support from scientists for the appropriateness of

the respective solution. The strategy is used to gain support for innovation policies that

promote the smart home and new funding and subsidy schemes. We also found this

strategy within the industry visions, where the need for smart home technologies is

justified by using statistics. This allocation of resources is an indicator of performativity

(Dignum et al., 2018), and the strong relations between ministries and the smart home

industry contribute to the institutional stabilization.

All these strategies contribute to stabilizing emerging smart home imaginaries through

legitimation. These legitimation processes foster the emergence of more stable STI. The

information on the prominence of the legitimation strategies within the visions (Table 7,

column 4) shows a difference between the actor groups. Industry and user visions are much

more consistent in how they legitimize the smart home. They both mainly refer to

individualistic promises and prospects and justify the smart home with improved

satisfaction of personal needs or the enhancement of the private household, aspects that can

be mainly found in the first and the second legitimation strategies. The legitimation

strategies 3 and 4, which were most prominent within the policy visions, focus more on

collective benefits for the environment or society as a whole. The policy visions also

emphasize more the ecological advantages of smart home technologies.

The four legitimation strategies show the multidimensional ways of reasoning and

justification that contribute to the institutional stabilization of emerging smart home

imaginaries. Industry and smart home users anchor their visions emotionally. Those

visions seek to shape individual perceptions about the role of technologies in homes.

Policy visions depict the smart home as a solution to societal and especially environmental

problems and thus seek to anchor smart home visions in collective meaning systems by

aligning the visions with prevailing norms and belief systems.

2.3.8. Conclusion

In our paper, we analyzed smart home visions from industry actors, users in homes and

policymakers in Germany. We found that the industry is envisioning the smart home as a

comfortable, safe, simple and effortless smart home and that users envision the smart home

as a convenient, modern and controllable home. Policy visions emphasize the ecological

contribution and imagine a smart home for climate protection made in Germany. We have

identified four strategies of legitimation in German smart home visions:

cognitive/emotional alignment, solutionism, coupling with normative goals and

expert/scientific legitimation. For the industry and user visions, the legitimation strategies

we identified refer more to the level of individual benefits and the enhancement of the

private household. The legitimation strategies of policy visions in Germany refer to

broader societal challenges and justify smart home technologies with normative goals such

as climate protection.

Our analysis makes two main contributions to current research. First, we show that the

under-researched field of legitimacy and imagined futures may provide important insights

into the institutional stabilization of emerging STI. The way smart homes are legitimized in

visions from different actors illustrates why those visions are able to influence policy

priorities, research agendas or funding schemes. Our research shows that legitimation

processes are an important part of the process of institutional stabilization, which makes

fleeting visions (Hilgartner, 2015) more collectively shared.

Second, we show that legitimation strategies from the smart home industry, users in homes

and policymakers in Germany downplay risks and challenges related to digitalized homes.

Our contribution, thus, illustrates how risks and benefits are distributed in emerging smart

home imaginaries. These legitimation strategies are contributing to the manifestation of a

smart home imaginary of techno-hedonism (Dahlgren et al., 2021). The focus of attention

is steered away from the negative consequences, such as domestic surveillance (Maalsen

and Sadowski 2019), control or abuse (Sovacool et al., 2021) or the redistribution of

control within households (Gram-Hanssen and Darby, 2018). Also disregarded are the

remaining challenges of intersecting inequalities related to gender, class or socio-economic

status, which are relevant to accessibility and the ways of engaging with smart home

futures (Dahlgren et al. 2021). Especially in German policy visions, the environmental

savings potentials of the smart home are put forward to justify the appropriateness of smart

home technologies and benefits are demonstrated through scientific evidence by using

scenarios and prospective calculations. This legitimation process is an important element in

facilitating policy implementation (Dignum et al., 2018).

Similar mechanisms have been identified for smart meter rollout in the UK, where policy

actors are actively engaged in legitimizing certain sociotechnical futures and play an active

role in the enaction of technologies (Hielscher and Kivimaa, 2019). The visions that, in

their formation phase, are only shared between small collectives of actors gain traction

through several legitimation strategies, which anchor those visions in collective meaning

systems and influence political priorities. The question arises of where the democratic

discussion should take place to weigh up advantages and disadvantages appropriately.

Further research should investigate if our legitimation strategies are applicable in other

fields, where emerging technologies are presented as a solution to the most pressing socio-

ecological challenges such as Smart Cities for Sustainable Urban Development (Angelidou

et al., 2018) or Artificial Intelligence for Sustainability (Vinuesa et al., 2020).

The role of legitimation in promoting digital (energy) futures and stabilizing shared

perceptions of futures that should or should not be realized is crucial for identifying who

owns the future that those powerful visions invigorate.

2.4. Publication D: Smart grids and institutional change: Emerging

contestations between organisations over smart energy transitions

2.4.1. Abstract

Smart grids are promoted as promising pathways for dealing with new grid challenges that

have arisen by the introduction of renewable energies. In Germany, increasing shares of

volatile renewables have led to a growing number of smart grid pilot projects and related

regulatory and market developments. Even though, much has been done to develop the

smart grid, significant difficulties remain, in particular, the re-negotiation of new roles and

responsibilities of the organisational actors involved. From a sociological perspective,

these shifts imply changes to current institutional arrangements within energy systems.

Drawing on new organisational institutionalism and a qualitative analysis of German smart

grid developments, this paper sheds light on organisations’ differing practices aimed at

creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions (i.e. institutional work). First, we show

how organisations’ existing roles, rules, norms, and beliefs are being challenged (or not)

through the rise of smart grid technologies and what contestations have arisen within the

smart grid field. Second, we analyse how organisations attempt to influence institutional

changes and identify five different forms of institutional work conducted by actors in the

German smart grid field. The paper demonstrates how organisations within smart grid

developments attempt to reconfigure institutional arrangements in diverging or even

contradictory ways. The paper reveals how the re-institutionalisation processes related to

smart grids require fundamental changes in the common meaning system. Implementing

these changes will remain a challenge if actors try to maintain existing institutional

arrangements.

Keywords: Smart Grids, organisations, institutional change, issue-based field, institutional work

2.4.2. Introduction

The German ‘Energiewende’ (sometimes called ‘energy turnaround’) has led to the need of

integrating fluctuating renewable energies into the German electricty grid. As part of these

developments, high expectations have been expressed when implementing smart grid

technologies to match renewable energy supply and demand. The basic idea of a smart grid

‘amounts to coupling the electricity delivery infrastructure with modern telecommunications

and sending technology (…) the real promise of the smart grid is the ability to process and

analyse large amounts of information’ (Blumsack and Fernandez, 2012, p. 61 p. 61) to cope

with the future energy supply challenges (Muench et al., 2014) and create a more sustainable

energy system (e.g. Clastres, 2011). Advocates consider smart grids as a solution for ‘almost

every thinkable energy issue’ (Verbong et al., 2013) but there is lack of a shared vision

(Tricoire, 2015) and common definition (Konrad and Scheer, 2015). In addition to offering

technological opportunities to integrate fluctuating renewable energy, smart grids are said to

solve a wide range of social challenges (Skjølsvold et al., 2015), such as enabling new

practices of flexible energy consumption (Smale et al., 2017). As argued by Lösch and

Schneider, future smart grid developments require substantial changes to existing

relationships, constellations and interactions of all actors (Lösch and Schneider, 2016).

Smart grid developments are referred to as all activities aimed at testing, demonstrating and

implementing smart grids. These developments profoundly challenge incumbent paradigms

and patterns of thought within the current energy system (Reetz and Göhlich, 2020). It is the

existing institutional order that is challenged and becomes the subject of ongoing

negotiations between actors in smart grid developments. For example, the shift from

centralised actors and structures to local self-organising structures implies a fundamental

change in common meaning systems. This paper aims to gain a better understanding of how

smart grid developments challenge existing institutional arrangements. Conceptually, our

work is based on organisational institutionalism, which is a sociological perspective on

institutions with a particular emphasis on organisations. We aim to show how organisations

involved in German smart grid developments engage in ‘institutional work’ i.e. trying to

actively shape the respective institutional changes so that they can take up their preferred

roles and responsibilities. Their endeavours have led to a multiplicity of aims, interests and

belief systems linked to smart grid developments that currently exist alongside each other.

In our analyses, we focus on the overarching contestations and forms of institutional work

that occur within the German smart grid field, of which pilot projects are an important part.

100

Although the key roles of institutions have been acknowledged in energy system

transformations (e.g. sustainability transitions have conceptually been founded on

institutional theory) (Geels, 2004), this conceptual framing has been under-utilised for some

time (Gailing and Moss, 2016). Several scholars have indicated the relevance of changing

institutional structures for the development of smart grids, or more generally smart energy

systems (Becker et al., 2016; Erlinghagen and Markard, 2012; Fuenfschilling and Truffer,

2014) and called for institutional theory to be brought into discussions on low-carbon-energy

transitions (e.g. Andrews-Speed, 2016; Nilsson et al., 2011). Recently institutional theory

and new institutionalism have received considerable attention for the way in which they

conceptualise socio-technical dynamics in energy transitions (Jehling et al., 2019), and there

is a growing body of literature applying institutional theory to energy transitions (e.g.

Andrews-Speed, 2016) or the adoption of smart technologies such as smart meters (Kallman

and Frickel, 2019). Since smart grids consist of diverse layers of socio-cultural processes

and organisations, all stakeholders, from energy suppliers to households, have to undergo

fundamental changes. These changes do not only have to do with their role but also their

routine practice and beliefs about how energy should be produced, transported and

consumed. Consumers are turning into prosumers, transmission system operators have to

coordinate flexible energy production, and energy suppliers have to introduce new ways to

incentivise flexible energy demand practices. As part of these on-going transformations,

actors alter their current positions and deal with conflicting interests (Schmid et al., 2016).

Crucial to implementing smart grids is the establishment of common rules about how the

activities and responsibilities of existing and emerging organisations (such as IT-developers

and start-ups) can be coordinated within a highly heterogeneous field (i.e. the smart grid

field consists of, for instance, energy suppliers, transmission and distribution system

operators, energy consumers, aggregators, and ICT/software and hardware providers).

Efforts to establish such rules have been subject to contestations due to diverse interests,

opportunities to benefit (or not) and different organisational cultures (e.g. start-ups versus

large established organisations).

This paper sheds light on the institutional change processes linked to German smart grid

developments in two ways. First, we analyse relevant contestations within the smart grid

field, and investigate how actors’ existing practices linked to their roles, norms and beliefs

101

are challenged (or not) through introducing smart grids. Second, we examine how actors

attempt to influence and/or steer these institutional changes. Conceptually, we draw on new

institutionalism to examine the institutional changes linked to smart grid developments. In

particular, we make use of the following three concepts: organisational field (DiMaggio and

Powell, 1983), or more specifically issue-based field (Hoffman, 1999), pillars of institutions

(Scott, 2008) and institutional work (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006). These concepts help to

develop an understanding of how the institutional order (i.e. institutionalised rules, roles and

belief systems) is being challenged through current smart grid developments, and how

organisations are attempting to influence efforts to advance smart grid deployments.

We address the following research question:

What challenges do organisations involved in smart grid developments currently

face and how do they attempt to engage in processes of institutional change?

We focus our analysis on the contestations between organisations, specifically formal,

complex or large-scale organisations, which are defined as social units characterised by a

planned order and goal-oriented activities(Mayntz, 1965). When we talk about actors and

actions, we refer to collectively organised actions taking place in and/or between

organisations and do not focus on individual users and their roles within smart grid

developments [4, 25–27]. The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: Section 2

provides information on smart grid developments in Germany and situates the paper in the

academic literature on smart grids. It is followed by an outline of the conceptual framework

(Section 3) and a description of the methodological approach (Section 4). Section 5 presents

the findings, including the relevant organisational actors and core contestations between

them within the smart grid field in Germany. Section 6 discusses the different forms of

institutional work identified and their relevance for smart grid developments. In conclusion,

we consider why the introduction of smart grids has not met initial expectations.

2.4.3. Background: Smart grid developments in Germany and the role of

Institutions

The growing penetrations of renewable and distributed energy resources pose significant

challenges for the stability, efficiency and reliability of existing energy system operations

(Gangale et al., 2017). In Germany, the share of renewable energy in electricity production

102

increased from 8.6% in 2002 to 50.5% in 2020

. Consequently, since 2008, the

implementation of smart grids has become one of the main issues in energy policy

developments and funding programmes in Germany. The first initiative to support smart

grids was a funding program called ‘E-Energy - ICT-based energy system of the future’

launched by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy (BMWi) in partnership with the

Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU).

Between 2008 and 2013, six smart grid pilot projects were initiated to establish several smart

grid model regions and develop recommendations for a smart grid roadmap. In 2011, the

German Federal Network Agency for Electricity, Gas, Telecommunications, Post and

Railway (Bundesnetzagentur) led an attempt to define smart grids and introduced a

distinction between smart grids (i.e. aspects related to network capacity) and the smart

market (i.e. aspects related to amounts of energy) (Bundesnetzagentur, 2011). The German

Federal Association of the Energy and Water Industry (BDEW) defined a smart grid as,

‘An energy network, which integrates the consumption and feed-in

behaviour of all market participants connected to it. It represents an

economically efficient, sustainable production system that has the aim

to create low level losses and high availabilities`



own translation



[30

p. 12].

In 2014 and 2015, a ‘Weißbuch’ (white book) and ‘Grünbuch’ (green book) called ´Ein

Strommarkt für die Energiewende` (an electricity market for the energy turnaround) was set

in motion. All interested stakeholders were able to formulate position statements linked to

possible changes to the electricity market design, capacity reserve solutions and/ or

balancing responsibilities. In 2016, the BMWi funded four regions within the SINTEG –

‘Schaufenster intelligente Energie’ (showcase intelligent energy) funding programme and

created a temporary regulation environment that allowed for ‘experimentation possibilities’.

These opportunities offered SINTEG participants to practically test new network operation

concepts, technologies, processes and business models. Another key step was the law on the

digitalisation of the Energiewende (LDW), which has predominantly regulated the rollout of

intelligent measurement systems (i.e. smart meters and related communication

infrastructures, such as smart meter gateways). Intelligent measurement systems are an

https://energy-charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE (asessed 15.01.2021)

103

important technological premise for facilitating bi-directional information flow within the

electricity system (Wang et al., 2019). Beyond these technological challenges, the

‘Barometer Digitalisierung der Energiewende’ (barometer digitalisation of the energy

turnaround) in 2018 identified ‘adherence to traditional structures and working methods’ as

a reason for the poor progress in smart grids developments [32 p. 67]. The latest report stated

that the ‘involved actors should overcome thinking and working in silos’ [33 p. 57].

The development of smart grids is not only a technological endeavour but also a social one

(Kumar, 2019). Energy supply systems are highly institutionalised, ‘they are full of

regulations, norms, and socially and culturally defined patterns of thinking’ (Wolsink, 2012,

p. 824 p. 824), which are potentially deeply challenged through smart grid developments.

New standards and regulations need to be developed, policies and market mechanisms have

to be adjusted, novel technologies require maturing (Zhang et al., 2017) and existing actors’

roles are being redefined within these developments. Reviewing smart grid projects across

Europe, Gangale et al. (2017) have suggested that the distributions system operators (DSOs)

will have to take a more active role in managing and operating their networks in order to

improve the efficiency, reliability and security of networks through smart grid technologies.

Grid operators are increasingly forced to conduct measures to redispatch and balance the

grid. Other organisations, such as technology manufacturers and information and

communication technology developers, have become increasingly interested in creating

smart grid technologies for the energy sector, bringing in novel technologies and business

models (Erlinghagen and Markard, 2012; Gangale et al., 2017). Existing demands and

expectations from a diverse set of actors draw attention to the fact that smart grid

developments are subject to societal negotiations processes in which actors bring their own

interests to the table (Stephens et al., 2015). The necessary coordination requirements

between heterogenous organisations and institutional changes that are part of these

negotiation processes pose huge challenges to the organisations involved (Skjølsvold et al.,

2015; Stephens et al., 2015). These changes include, for example, a paradigm shift from

centralised structures and markets to decentralised, regional and local self-organising

structures (Reetz and Göhlich, 2020).

So far, some of the social science research on energy transitions (e.g. Erlinghagen and

Markard, 2012) has highlighted the key role of institutions within smart grid developments

104

(e.g. Muench et al., 2014; Wolsink, 2012) and has argued that ‘the study of institutions must

therefore form a key component of analysis and policy formulation’(Andrews-Speed, 2016

p. 223). Scholars have investigated the roles of particular groups of actors such as new

entrants (Erlinghagen and Markard, 2012), incumbent utilities (Mah et al., 2013) and the

smart grid industry (Tricoire, 2015). Other research has focused on issues of trust and

confidence (de Reuver et al., 2016) to build actors’ relations and stressed the importance of

collaborations between actors (Büscher and Sumpf, 2015). Andrews-Speed (Andrews-

Speed, 2016) has argued for a broader institutional perspective that pays attention to political

and economic systems, which determine the pace and path of energy transitions in a

particular country. Institutional theory has also been applied to compare low-carbon energy

system transformations across countries (Jehling et al., 2019). Fuenfschilling and Truffer

(Fuenfschilling and Truffer, 2014) have provided some conceptual foundations for

explaining levels of structuration of socio-technical systems as ‘degrees of

institutionalisation’ and make use of the notion of ‘institutional logics’ to understand how

structures become established in energy transitions (Fuenfschilling and Truffer, 2016, p.

299). With this paper, we strengthen the recent ‘rediscovery’ of institutional theory

(Andrews-Speed, 2016; Becker et al., 2016; Jehling et al., 2019) for explaining change

processes linked to smart grid developments.

Although there have been some attempts to overcome these challenges in Germany, in depth

analyses of the reconfigurations and contestations between organisations that occur within

smart grid developments are still largely under-researched (Lösch and Schneider, 2017). Up

to this point, little research has gone into looking more closely at the forms of ‘institutional

work’ actors engage in and how they shape the course of institutional changes. We address

this gap by shedding light on the institutional change processes linked to German smart grid

developments in two ways. First, by showing how actors’ existing practices, roles and beliefs

are challenged (or not) through the introduction of smart grid technologies. Second, we

reveal how actors attempt to influence and/ or steer institutional changes. Drawing on new

institutionalism and examining smart grid pilot projects makes it possible to study the

processes of institutional change (including negotiations between organisations) and

practices of institutional work (including the ways in which actors maintain, disrupt and

create institutions).

105

2.4.4. Conceptual framework: Investigating institutional changes

Smart grid developments call for a change of existing institutions and institutional

arrangements (i.e. overarching rules and requirements such as regulations and standards)

(Scott, 2008) within the electricity sector. Due to these changes, organisations have to

undergo several adaptation processes, which could potentially hugely influence their day-to-

day operations, collaborations with other actors and business models (e.g. Gailing and Moss,

2016; Stephens et al., 2015). However, organisations do not have to accept these changes

without at least some resistance. They can actively attempt to shape negotiations and new

role allocations within these developments (Stephens et al., 2015).

To be able to examine these institutional changes, we draw on new institutionalism. At the

centre of this conceptual approach are questions that examine the way organisations respond

to institutional pressures (Meyer and Rowan, 1977), the varying institutions that structure an

organisational field (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983) and the ways in which different

organisations influence (and are influenced by) institutional changes (Hoffman, 1999;

Leblebici et al., 1991; Möllering, 2011). We make use of the following three concepts: a)

organisational field (DiMaggio and Powell, 1991), b) pillars of institutions (Scott, 2008) and

c) institutional work (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006) to analyse how institutionalised rules

are challenged through current smart grid developments and how organisational actors

attempt to influence efforts to advance smart grid developments.

Organisational fields have been conceptualised as a group of organisations that ‘in the

aggregate constitute a recognised area of institutional life: key supplier, resource and product

consumers, regulatory agencies, and other organisations that produce similar services or

products’ (DiMaggio and Powell, 1991, p. 64 p. 64). Rather than defining ‘a field around

companies with a common product or market’, Hoffman (1999, p. 352 p. 352) has stressed

that fields should be conceptualised ‘around issues that become important to the interests

and objectives of a specific collective of organisations’ (Hoffman, 1999 p. 5). Focussing on

issues allows for an investigation of how organisations can ‘compete over the definition of

issues and the form of institutions that will guide the organisations’ behaviour’ (Hoffman,

1999, p. 352 p. 352). The concept of ‘issue-based-fields’ aids the process of revealing greater

complexity in field formation and of describing and analysing the dynamics of an issue-

based field (Hoffman, 1999).

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The field is conceptualised within a wider organisational environment with several

institutions i.e. ‘regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive elements that, together with

associated activities and resources, provide stability and meaning to social life’ (Scott, 2008,

p. 56 p. 56). The regulative pillar describes the explicit regulative aspects of institutions.

Rules, laws, policies, control and sanctions are the key elements and mechanisms of

compliance that give meaning to these institutions. The normative pillar makes up the

prescriptive, evaluative, and obligatory dimensions of institutions. That pillar is connected

to values, social norms, duties, and role expectations i.e. what is considered appropriate

behaviour and can be directed at all actors of a particular field (Scott, 2001) The third pillar

in Scott’s conceptualisation of institutions is the cultural-cognitive one. This pillar relates to

the shared conceptions and frames with which the world is interpreted, or with which

meaning is given, such as symbols, discourses and cultural categories.

Considering that ‘in highly institutionalised systems, endogenous change seems almost to

contradict the meaning of institution’ (Scott, 2001, p. 187 p. 187), the explanations of change

within issue-based fields need to be able to conceptualise how institutions constrain actors’

behaviours and also how actors can be knowledgeable agents, who are able to influence and

change institutions (Leblebici et al., 1991). Thus, the question of institutional change has

always dealt with the ‘paradox of embedded agency’ (Battilana, 2006; Garud et al., 2007;

Holm, 1995). How is it possible that actors shape institutions whilst at the same time being

embedded in institutions that are regulative, normative and cultural-cognitively supported?

(Möllering, 2011). In this paper, to overcome the paradox of embedded agency, we draw on

the notion of institutionalisation (i.e. considering institutional changes as continuous and

never finished) and institutional work (i.e. as deliberate activities of individuals and/or

organisations that aim to create, maintain and transform institutions). Möllering (2011, p.

468 p. 468) has conceptualised institutional work as practices that are ‘the connecting

element between single actions and the overarching meaning system of the organisational

field (own translation)’ (see Figure 9).

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Figure 9: Institutional work as practices in an organisational field (adapted from Möllering (Möllering, 2011))

Institutional change does not primarily occur through external shocks, such as economic

crises (Meyer et al., 1990); it also derives from within the field. As Lawrence and Suddaby

(2006) point out and previous studies have shown (Leblebici et al., 1991), it makes sense to

explain changes in organisational fields through the emergence of alternative practices that,

over time, appear to actors to be more legitimate while the legitimacy of the previously

institutionalised practice is eroded as part of the institutionalisation process (Leblebici et al.,

1991). By adopting a practice perspective on institutions, Lawrence and Suddaby argue that

research can focus on ‘the knowledgeable, creative and practical work of individual and

collective actors aimed at creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions’ (Lawrence and

Suddaby, 2006, p. 12 p. 12).

In the paper, we draw on the notion of an issue-based field that is an institutionally defined

arena formed around contested issues where different actors attempt to shape field level

institutions through practices aimed at maintaining, disrupting and creating institutions. This

perspective provides a distinct view on institutional change processes that emerge from

within issue-based fields and can enrich current discussions about the ongoing social change

processes related to developing smart grids. In this paper, we investigate which activities,

referred to as acts of institutional work (referring to Zilber, 2013), organisations undertake

to influence the institutional order and accelerate or slow down smart grid developments.

Moreover, we investigate how organisations in the smart grid field coordinate these activities

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that is marked by uncertainties and try and shape institutional arrangements in relation to

their own interests.

2.4.5. Methodology

The fieldwork for this research has been conducted as part of the research project

`Energienetz Berlin Adlershof`. The aim of that project was to set up a multi-energy-

microgrid in an industrial and research park in Berlin. The challenge was to create networks

made up of different energy carriers that can support the balancing of fluctuating renewable

generation (Bschorer et al., 2019). Considering the focus of the paper on forms of

institutional work that are linked to actors’ ways of working and interacting with each other,

we draw on mixed-methods qualitative research: in-depth interviews and a document review.

We conducted 18 in-depth interviews between 2015-2018 with a diverse set of actors from

organisations linked to the Adlershof project and other German smart grid pilot projects (i.e.

two large smart grid implementation funding programmes called E-Energy and SINTEG)

(see appendix for detailed information about who was interviewed). The interview sampling

process was mainly purposeful sampling followed by snowball sampling (Patton, 1990). We

started with actors from the Adlershof pilot project and then asked the interviewees about

other relevant actors within the German smart grid field. We stopped interviewing once no

new actor group was suggested by the interviewees and themes within the interviews started

to repeat themselves (i.e. saturation point was reached). The sample includes research

institutions, transmission system operators (TSO), distribution system operators (DSO),

aggregators, ICT/hardware/software-providers, energy suppliers, commercial customers,

policy/public administration and a local district energy manager (see Appendix). The face-

to-face and telephone interviews lasted 1-2 hours. Interviewees were asked about their

definition of smart grids, their organisation’s response to the German smart grid agenda,

relevant actors they engage with (or not), and particular interests and activities they follow

to influence any developments. We did not interview private householders because our focus

was on organisations and their roles in smart grid developments.

We combined the interviews with a document review to reveal relevant policy activities for

smart grid developments in Germany. Documents included statement papers from different

organisations regarding the `law on the digitalisation of the Energiewende` and related press

109

statements. The sample of 41 documents included statements from TSO, DSO, associations

representing different sectors (such as ICT/hardware/software providers, retailers, energy

providers and municipally owned energy providers), public authorities and non-profit

associations.

The evidence gathered was coded and a thematic analysis was conducted, making use of the

qualitative analysis software NVivo. The analysis was carried out in two phases. First, we

used an inductive approach to identify empirical themes connected to smart grid

developments. Several themes emerged from this coding process, e.g. actors’ changing roles,

activities to prepare for the smart grid agenda and expected benefits associated with smart

grid developments. Second, we analysed the interviews according to theoretically informed

themes, including the examination of the issue-based field and forms of institutional work

related to regulatory, normative and cultural and cognitive changes. This in-depth analysis

allowed us to gain insight into the contested issues that are part of institutional change

processes connected to smart grid developments in Germany. The documents were analysed

for existing and expected contestations with a focus on changing roles and responsibilities

when it comes to smart grid developments. We did not focus our analysis on every single

social, technological or regulative issue (such as data protection regarding private

households) but turned our attention to contestations between organisations including their

interactions and relations when implementing smart grids.

2.4.6. Findings

To present our findings, we first provide an overview of the relevant actors in the issue-based

field. Then, we describe key contested issues and negotiations between different actors that

transpire when examining the institutional work undertaken to create, maintain or disrupt the

institutions within smart grid developments.

Smart grid actors within the issue based smart grid field (SGF)

The smart grid field is composed of all organisations that `in the aggregate constitute a

recognised area of institutional life` (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983, p. 148 p. 148). This

section provides an insight into the key constituencies of the German smart grid field, i.e.

relevant organisations interacting with each other. The German smart grid field is made up

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of organisations directly engaged in smart grid pilot projects (most relevant are the projects

within the E-Energy and SINTEG funding programmes) and organisations that are more

generally relevant for smart grid developments in terms of policy and market frameworks

and standardisation processes, such as ministries, regulatory bodies and associations (see

Table 1). The smart grid field is composed of more established energy actors (e.g. energy

providers, public authorities, DSOs and TSOs) and new entrance actors (e.g. ICT/hardware

and software providers, aggregators).

Organisations/

group of actors

Most relevant

organisations in Germany

Main role(s) in existing German electricity system

Politics/public

administrations

(e.g. ministries and

regulatory bodies)

• Federal Ministry for

Economic Affairs and

Energy (BMWi)

• Federal network Agency

(BNetzA)

• Federal Office for

Information Security

(BSI)

• Provide regulations and standards

• Initiate and implement legislations

• Control and approve grid usage fees

• Ensure the ‘proper’ operation of the electricity network

• Ensure IT- and data security (esp. with regard to smart meter

technologies)

Transmission

system operators

(TSO)

• 50 Hertz

• Amprion

• Tennet

• TransnetBW

• All 4 TSO engaged in

smart grid pilot projects

• Plan and maintain the high voltage grid

• Guarantee the uninterrupted exchange of electricity

• Ensure transmission grid stability despite fluctuating renewable

energies

• Coordinate transmission grid activities

Distribution system

operators (DSO)

• 883 organisations (to

some extend municipally

owned ,Stadtwerke`)

• 21 DSO engaged in smart

grid pilot projects

(including `Stadtwerke`)

• Operate (and sometimes own) energy distribution networks

• Ensure that generation and consumption levels are balanced at all times

• Coordinate distribution grid activities including sectoral coupling (e.g.

mobility, power-to-x, heat pumps)

Energy providers

• 4 large organisations in

Germany

(E.ON, Vattenfall, RWE,

EnBW) and several SME

(partly municipally

owned)

• 41 organisations engaged

in smart grid pilot

projects

• Organise the production and distribution of energy

• Produce centralised energy (e.g. coal- and gas fired power plants and

nuclear power plants)

• Produce decentralised energy (e.g. wind power, biogas, photovoltaic

plants, and heat-pumps)

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Table 8: Constituencies of the German smart grid field (italic entries: Number of organisations directly engaged in the

considered smart grid pilot projects).

Within the issue-based smart grid field, we have identified three core issues and

contestations: 1) Who should get access and manage the data derived from smart meters to

create smart grids? 2) Who should balance and decide on the flexibility of the distribution

network? and 3) Who should be involved in developing demand side innovations for energy

customers? Several other issues also emerged through the data collection and analysis (e.g.

A current statistic counts 906 electricity network operators, but it remains unclear whether transmission network operators are

included: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/173884/umfrage/zahl-der-unternehmen-in-den-einzelnen-marktbereichen-des-

energiemarktes/

Transport accounts for the remaining 2.3% of electricity consumption:

https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/236757/umfrage/stromverbrauch-nach-sektoren-in-deutschland/

Retailers

• 59 organisations9

• 5 Retailer engaged in

smart grid pilot projects

(some of them are

subsumed under energy

providers)

• Trade through buying and selling electricity on the market, from power

stations or other energy producers, and pay network fees for using

distribution networks

Aggregators

• 12 active aggregators

operating in Germany,

• 2 Aggregator engaged in

smart grid pilot projects

• Trade and supply energy without managing their own balancing groups

• Pool and market generation plants, flexible consumer and storage

systems

Industrial &

commercial

customers

• 10 organisations from

several industries

engaged in smart grid

pilot projects

• Consume electricity i.e. 73.1 % of overall electricity demand in

Germany (45.7 % industry, 27.4 % commercial)

• Make use of flexible energy demand through demand side management

Private customers/

households

• Private households &

neighbourhoods

• one housing cooperative

engaged in smart grid

pilot projects

• Consume electricity i.e. 24.6 % of overall electricity demand in

Germany10

• Energy prosumers (i.e. producing and consuming electricity)

Research

institutions

• More than 1000 publicly

finance ones in Germany

• 61 research organisations

engaged in smart grid

pilot projects

• Conduct research mainly within pilot projects on technological,

regulative, social and governance developments

ICT/hardware/

software providers

• 64 organisations engaged

in smart grid pilot

projects

• Provide ICT, hardware and software-solutions (e.g. smart meter, smart

meter gateway, communication interfaces, sensors, actors)

• Develop products and services (e.g. platforms, big data analytics, IoT,

IT-security and cloud solutions)

Associations

• More than 60 associations

within the energy sector

• 4 organisations engaged

in smart grid pilot

projects

• Represent the interests of their members from various sectors

• Engage in policy and market framework developments with regard to

smart grids (i.e. smart meter rollout, electricity market design,

standardization processes)

Other

• Consultant agencies

• Regional economic

development agencies

• 31 organisations engaged

in smart grid pilot

projects

• Conduct consultancy & research

• Provide funding

• Develop regional networks

• Encourage business developments

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security standards of smart grids). In this paper, we focus on the three issues because

interviewees mentioned them most frequently and they draw particular attention to how

institutionalised roles, rules and belief systems are being negotiated within smart grid

developments. The following three sub-sections illustrate how actors attempt to influence

and/or steer changes.

Who should get access and manage the data derived from smart meters to create smart

grids?

In Germany, the electricity grid is managed by four big TSOs and around 900 DSOs (in

2018, there were 883 DSOs

), which are responsible for managing the grid. During the

development of the regulatory instruments for the smart meter rollout, discussions emerged

about the costs and profits connected to the rollout. Beyond issues of general importance,

such as data protection and privacy that have also been discussed in other countries (Razavi

and Gharipour, 2018), the question of access to data was part of emerging contestations

amongst organisations between 2015 and 2018 in Germany. One of the core issues was to

decide which organisations, such as DSOs, TSOs, energy provider and/or aggregator should

gain access to the data collected by the smart meter. In Germany, the discussions especially

occurred between DSOs and TSOs. Although DSOs were responsible for installing the smart

meters and managing the repayment from consumers, the TSOs wanted to claim access to

the data collected by smart meters and promote their new role as ‘data platform operators’

within smart grids. These differing expectations about who would get access and manage

the data created a fundamental conflict between TSOs and DSOs that could be witnessed at

events organised by standardisation bodies (e.g. DIN, German Institute for Standardisation).

‘During events organised by the standardisation bodies that regulate

collaboration between TSOs and DSOs, sparks are currently flying.

The topic is filled with politics, who can get access to what type of

data.’ (Interview#12)

The TSOs argued that it makes sense to shift demand-side management responsibilities

connected with the smart meter rollout to them instead of leaving the responsibility with the

DSOs. Their main argument was that it is not efficient to build data management tools for

Bundeskartellamt. n.d. Number of electricity network operators in Germany in the years 2006 to 2018. statista. Access on 20 October

2020. available at https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/152937/umfrage/anzahl-der-stromnetzbetreiber-in-deutschland-seit-2006/

113

each of the nine hundred DSOs but rather to go for the notion of ‘concentration and

centralisation’ through the TSOs.

‘This was the big discussion […] if this new tool needs to be created

then it makes sense […] to build it once or four times rather than nine

hundred times.’ (Interview #3, TSO)

The DSOs tried to defend their responsibilities by referring to their existing expertise and

experience in interacting and managing their consumer base, as outlined by one of the DSO

interviewees, speaking about the future prospect of TSOs taking on board some of their

current roles:

‘I feel it is foolhardy for them to get access to our distribution

networks and even potentially control flexible consumers. They will

not be able to do this. There is a lot of politics involved in these

activities.’(Interview #14, DSO)

‘Regulations should not lead to existing contractual relationships

being unnecessarily blown up so that they become expensive and

impractical in their application. This will not increase the acceptance

of consumers and will enhance bureaucracy for all parties.’ ((VKU,

2015)

, Association of publicly owned companies)

The DSOs have felt disadvantaged through the proposal of the law, as outlined by the

Association of Municipal Companies (VKU) press release statement:

‘The VKU (...) views this proposal as a fundamental interference into

established roles that disadvantages DSOs. The grid balancing

responsibilities that currently lie with the DSOs would be transferred

to the TSOs.’ ((VKU, 2015), Association of publicly owned

companies)

The shift of responsibilities from DSOs to TSOs was also criticised by the Association of

Software and Service Providers:

‘The shift of competences from the DSOs to the TSO will affect the

DSOs in the future



…



In a more decentralised energy world,

responsibility should generally remain decentralised, which is why we

are very critical of the shift of responsibility’ ((VKU, 2015),

Association of publicly owned companies)

DSO & Public Utility Association

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Within the process, the DSOs put forward the argument that more actors need access to the

data for grid management purposes:

‘Only if the distribution network operator has unrestricted, prompt

and as direct access as possible to the relevant data will



the DSO



able to control the networks intelligently in future and thus make a

decisive contribution to the success of this transformation process

towards more decentralised structures.” ((VKU, 2015), Association of

publicly owned companies)

At that time, the four TSOs were partly privileged because they got funding from the

German government to develop data handling systems that allow them to get access to

aggregated data from smart meters for grid management activities, as suggested by one of

the TSOs interviewees:

‘They argued that they do not forbid DSOs to build their own system,

we just pay for it four times […] We do not want to act like Google

and make use of people’s data. We just consider it to be a regulatory

role. Any third party can make use of the data if they gain the

permission of the customer.’ (Interview #3, TSO)

These issues and negotiations illustrate the acts of institutional work that are conducted

within these change processes by the different smart grid organisations. TSOs have mainly

tried to create institutional arrangements to establish their new role within a smart grid (i.e.

owner and manager of data created by smart meters). They have made a case for the

centralisation of data management and concentration of financial resources to be able to

reconfigure the existing institutional settings in the energy sector (i.e. gaining access to the

distribution network and its customer base). The ‘centralisation’ argument has put the DSOs

in the position of defending the incumbent order (i.e. their existing roles and responsibilities

in managing the distribution networks). The final decision within this process, which was

achieved in 2019 was the concept of a star-shaped communication from smart meter

gateways, i.e. data is processed within smart meter gateway and only the actors who get

permission from the energy customer are able to access that customer’s data.

Who should balance and decide on the flexibility of the distribution network?

Since renewable energy is often produced within decentralised networks, the distribution

grid is strongly affected by the changes that go alongside smart grid developments. There is

a growing need to develop flexible networks within the distribution grid. At the moment, the

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role of the DSOs is to transmit energy and, as a result, keep the grid stable. In the future,

they will have to introduce new flexibility methods (e.g. demand-side response), creating

interconnections between ‘more intelligent’ energy producers and consumers. Discussions

surrounding the future role of the DSOs are often at the heart of smart grid developments

because their role must fundamentally change, albeit within the confines of existing

regulations, i.e. since the unbundling directive, implemented at the beginning of the 2000s,

DSOs have to operate independently of the local utility. Moreover, it remains unclear if the

DSOs (especially the smaller ones) are willing and able to fulfil these expected roles. For

this actor group, developing the capacity and resources to create smart grids still seems to

be a long way away, as one interviewee has argued:

‘For part of our field experiment in Lower Bavaria, there is a

medium-voltage grid where nothing is digital.’ (Interview #12,

Research Institution)

Current measuring instruments are relatively rudimentary when it comes to more

‘intelligent’ ways of balancing the grid. Numerous operations rely on reading the measuring

equipment manually and are far from being digitalised. Furthermore, our research has shown

that this actor group is comparatively heterogeneous, not only because of the size of the

distribution network and energy mix in the network or the ownership structures (i.e.

municipally or privately owned) but also with regard to the actors’ aims and strategies.

Actors’ interests, roles and aspirations towards a smart grid are extremely diverse (e.g. large

DSOs are pushing smart grid developments forward and smaller ones are much more

conservative). Shared visions are hard to develop across this group. Not all DSOs try to

prevent institutional changes towards smart grid developments. Some of the DSOs are

innovative and try to engage in pilot projects, as one interviewee has put it:

´But on the whole, in our pilot project, the DSOs definitely play a

driving role and are somehow visionary regarding these

developments´ (Interview # 12, Research Institution)

Current developments might be more challenging for smaller DSOs because of a lack of

financial or personal resources and because of the uncertainty regarding regulative

developments:

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`With distribution system operators, it is often more difficult because

the distribution system operators are also in a situation of

uncertainty´(Interview #1, Aggregator)

Another challenge is the coordination and management of grid bottlenecks i.e. grid

congestion can occur when grid overload makes it impossible for electricity to reach

consumers. If the TSOs want to be able to gain control to balance the grid and keep it stable

(in case of a huge amount of renewable energy), they might also cause balancing problems

for the distribution grid. At the moment, there is no coordination mechanism that DSOs and

TSOs draw upon to reach an agreement whenever these situations occur. The market

mechanisms to enhance grid flexibility are in tension with grid bottlenecks at the distribution

level:

‘One great challenge that we are currently dealing with and more

frequently have to engage with is that restrictions derived from the

DSOs i.e. bottlenecks within the DSO grid limit possible market

mechanisms.’ (Interview #2, Aggregator)

Discussions have arisen about how this problem can be tackled, and whether DSOs are able

and willing to solve it remains unclear. Having to balance the power flow within the grid

and market-related activities (such as demand side management and related business models)

have posed great challenges for the DSOs, in particular, in maintaining grid stability.

Ultimately, this stability remains a challenge for the implementation of smart grids and is

closely associated with discussions around expected actors’ roles in future smart grids.

‘The biggest challenge for developing a smart grid is (…) to manage

the complexity of bringing together the different actors involved and

varying incentives for actors so that everything [the whole grid] can

function in the end.’ (Interview #7, Policy/Public Administration)

Our empirical findings also illustrate that the DSOs are not one coherent group and that they

have been engaged in two different acts of institutional work. Some DSOs tried to maintain

existing ways of working in the energy sector, in particular, trying to emphasise their existing

expertise and capabilities in stabilising the distribution networks. Other DSOs (which can

also be energy providers since they sometimes belong to the same organisation, i.e.

municipally owned “Stadtwerke”) engaged in creating novel institutional arrangements by

trying to find new ways of managing the growing grid flexibility. Those DSOs do not want

to lose out on potential profits of future smart grid developments and thus engage in pilot

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projects to support capacity building. Since the organisations involved are facing uncertainty

regarding future developments of the institutional setting, they engage in diverging acts of

institutional work and act differently to cope with the uncertainties.

Who should be involved in developing demand side innovations for energy customers?

Smart grid development has opened up questions about how to promote greater flexibility at

the demand side and establish novel business models that create added value for customers.

Emerging actors have started to enter the field, such as aggregators and ICT-companies, who

have gained influence through creating a diverse set of novel technologies, business models

and value chains (Erlinghagen and Markard, 2012) e.g. the creation of virtual power plants

(VPP). These organisations frequently challenge the incumbent order by establishing their

new roles and practices within the energy system and engaging in institutional work aimed

at ‘disrupting’ existing institutional arrangements. Thus, they have questioned the existing

regulative institutions and tried to establish new business models and roles within the energy

market.

‘Our interest is to change the rules of the electricity market. In the

past, these rules were understandably made in the interest of the

producer and a centralised grid. We still are long way off from, let’s

say, the famous ‘level playing field’. We ask ourselves how we can

establish new business models and roles in the energy market.’

(Interview #2, Aggregator)

Another interviewee described how the organisation tried to influence the policy process

concerned with developing smart grids and explained that it wants to establish a novel role

for aggregators in the German energy market. It wants to get access to demand-side

management markets, which have, so far, been partly restricted to them:

‘To be able to push these topics [access of aggregators to demand

side management market], I am active in associations that attempt to

directly talk to ministers, regulatory bodies and commissions.’

(Interview # 1, Aggregator)

Since many organisations in the field face high levels of uncertainty regarding future

business models, market constellations and opportunities, there are opposing interests

between emerging actors, such as aggregators, and incumbent organisations, such as DSOs

and energy providers. For the aggregator, it is important to access the demand-side

management market by offering business models and gaining access to energy customers.

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But this interest collides with existing activities of energy providers. Energy providers

have tried to prevent new legislations aimed at opening up the energy market for more

actors (such as aggregators) and have thus engaged in institutional work to maintain

existing institutional arrangements. Aggregators have tried to influence legislation to

establish their role and engaged in institutional work aimed at creating new institutions.

The institutional work conducted by the actors involved addressed not only the regulative

dimensions of current institutions but also normative ones. To attempt to change the

normative institutional pillar, they developed industry sector guidelines, which defined

standardisation processes about how aggregators and energy providers should interact with

each other. The processes associated with developing these guidelines were highly

contested because of diverging actor interests:

‘Well, there are conflicting interests, that is clear. The starting

position is such that nowadays, the aggregator needs the approval of

the supplier and this should be changed now. Over the past eight, nine

months, there have been intensive discussions in the industry sector

about this topic… industry sector guidelines have been developed.

How can the aggregators be established in the balancing power

market so that they are no longer as dependent on energy suppliers as

they have been in the past and now but rather are able to act

independently?’ (Interview #2, Aggregator)

Another important actor group that has reconfigured the field is that of start-ups, including

ICT-companies, providing business models for flexibility management (e.g. new energy

retailers and electricity sharing platforms). These organisations frequently introduce novel

ways of finding solutions for flexibility issues and opportunities (e.g. flexible tariffs and

local electricity sharing networks). Moreover, actors within these organisations have

competences (such as programming and data processing skills) that influence field

developments (e.g. by creating new data-based business models).

‘Company (..) is an IT-business that also does a bit of work on energy.

For them, these products are not a problem. Let’s just roughly try it.

And this is a lot easier for smaller companies than for bigger ones.

Especially because the larger companies have been spoiled. And now

this is changing. But the people wrapped in cotton wool still are

around.’ (Interview #16, ICT/Hardware/Software Provider)

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Our findings indicate that the actors involved are engaging in different acts of institutional

work within the issue-based smart grid field. Whereas some emerging actors (e.g.

aggregators) aim to change regulative institutions (e.g. energy market rules), other actors

(e.g. mainly those entering the field from the start-up and IT-related sectors) create

institutions through developing new business models (e.g. flexible tariffs) and organisational

forms (e.g. energy-exchanging platforms). They establish new practices related to innovative

demand-side management and flexibility opportunities within smart grids. Since established

actors (e.g. incumbent energy providers) are engaging in institutional work to maintain the

institutional order (e.g. restraining access to balancing power markets), we want to show the

diverging forms of institutional work within the smart grid field, which we discuss in the

next section.

2.4.7. Discussion

The findings illustrate that, from an institutional perspective, the smart grid field in Germany

is still in the process of being re-institutionalised (Leblebici et al., 1991) and diverse

organisations are acting under conditions of field-level uncertainty (Engels and Münch,

2015). As previous studies have shown, institutional change processes are more likely to

occur in times ‘when no-one knows what will work and the field is ‘opportunity hazy’’

(Möllering and Müller-Seitz, 2018). This fuzziness is particularly true for the smart grid

field, where diverging visions exist of what constitutes a smart grid (Tricoire, 2015) and

different structural, functional and cultural features are possible (Sataøen et al., 2015). These

properties have opened up spaces for contested issues and negotiations over existing and

possible future institutional arrangements. Since the smart grid field is populated by ‘diverse

organisations, many of whom are invested in, committed to, and advantaged by existing

structural arrangements’ (Garud et al., 2007, p. 962 p. 962), diverse actors in the field

undertake different efforts to ‘create’, ‘maintain’ or ‘disrupt’ the existing institutional setting

(Lawrence et al., 2011). Drawing on research that has investigated institutional work

(Lawrence et al., 2011) and, in particular, on the work related to the semiconductor industry

(Möllering and Müller-Seitz, 2018), we have identified five different forms or ‘acts’ of

institutional work (Zilber, 2013) conducted by actors in the German smart grid field (see

Table 2). These acts are key to understanding the institutional change processes.

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Table 9: Forms of institutional work within the smart grid field

Forms of

institutional

work

Definition

Institutional

work

addressed

Occurrence within the

smart grid field

Illustrative evidence

derived from the data

Pooling

Actors channel resources

and concentrate financial

support to leverage the

contested space.

creating

• Contestation between

DSO & TSO

• Conflicting practices

• Slowing smart grid

developments

‘They argued that they do not

forbid DSOs to build their own

system, we just pay for it four

times.’ (Interview #3)

Playing up

Established actors use their

inherent competences and

legitimacy to perpetuate the

social order.

maintaining

• DSO are defending their

established role

• Playing up their distinct

competences regarding

grid management

‘This is a fundamental

interference into the

established roles’ (…) so (...)

in our opinion, the

transmission system operators

(underestimate) the complexity

in a distribution network’

(VKU, 2015)

Standardising

Actors introduce nascent

rules and standards to

reconfigure the field in

favour of their particular

interests.

creating

• Aggregators and energy

providers develop

guidelines and standards

for the industry sector

• Define new roles within

future smart grids

‘We worked together to

develop a guideline and

defined sector standards’

(Interview #2)

Advocating

Actors attempt to influence

legislation either to

maintain or create

institutions.

creating/

maintaining

• Energy providers

influence policy

developments to defend

their traditional business

models

• Aggregators aim to

influence policy

processes to stabilise

their new roles and

business models

‘To be able to push these

topics, I am active in

associations that attempt to

directly talk to ministers,

regulatory bodies and

commissions.’(Interview #2)

Gap Filling

(similar to

bootstrapping)

Introducing new

competences (from other

fields such as IT) and

showing unfamiliar ways

/defining new practices.

disrupting

• IT companies enter the

smart grid field with

new competences and

ways of doing things

(such as data-driven

business-models)

´New players see it more as an

opportunity to fill regulatory

gaps and develop new

business models´

(Interview #16)

Some of the field actors have been engaged in acts of pooling i.e. trying to concentrate

financial support and channel resources in favour of their own interests. Our findings have

shown that negotiations about the future role of DSOs were substantially influenced by the

distribution of financial resources for implementing data management systems to handle

energy data (linked to the smart meter rollout). In those negotiations, the four TSOs in

Germany argued for concentrating the resources connected to creating institutional

arrangements needed for the rollout, which greatly strengthened their position in the field to

manage and control the data. Such pooling acts are a tangible illustration of how

organisations, in this case the larger ones in particular, reconfigure the field in favour of their

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own interests due to a lack of a coherent vision (Tricoire, 2015) of what the smart grid should

be.

Another form of institutional work that we found is what we refer to as playing up, i.e.

established actors try to maintain the institutional order when it comes to introducing data

management platforms. They use their inherent legitimacy within the existing energy system

to argue that only they understand the complexity of the distribution grid operations. As a

form of institutional work, some actors have also been conducting standardising (van Doren

et al., 2020), which can be described as the introduction of ‘nascent rules and standards’ so

that some actions become normatively sanctioned within the field (Lawrence and Suddaby,

2006) and which is also used to reduce uncertainty (Suddaby and Viale, 2011, p. 424 p. 424).

To overcome the contestations, the energy providers and aggregators developed sector

guidelines, which function as a normative framework and provide orientation and a basis for

coordinating the activities. This form of institutional work is similar to what has been

identified as ‘creating normative networks’ (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006). By engaging in

this form of institutional work, the actors involved are mainly seeking to coordinate actions

between the organisations within the field or to create an institutional setting that provides

some kind of stability and direction for possible future business opportunities.

Acts of ´advocating´, which also have been identified by previous studies (Elsbach and

Sutton, 1992; Galvin, 2002) can be found as well. Our findings reveal that this form of

institutional work is not only attached to creating institutions but also to disrupting existing

institutional settings. In the German smart grid field actors (such as aggregators) try to

influence policy processes in order to create a regulative order in which they can establish

new roles for themselves within the energy sector. Other actors (such as the Federation of

Distribution-Net-Operators’ (German: VKU) conduct advocacy work against such

fundamental regulation in order to maintain their roles and responsibilities. Our findings

have shown that some actors have been very opportunistic in trying to identify gaps in

competences arising from smart grid developments and then attempting to fill them, in being

involved in gap filling. This form of institutional work is similar to what Möllering & Müller-

Seitz (2018) have called `bootstrapping` but, in the smart grid field, the focus is slightly

different to that in the semiconductor industry: Actors engage in self-starting action without

knowing what the future will hold and are filling gaps with new business models (e.g. selling

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energy with flexible tariffs or via peer-to-peer platforms) and unfamiliar ways of doing

things. These actors are crucial for the changes within the field because new actors with

novel ideas, competences and even distinct meaning systems are entering the energy sector.

As catalysts for change (Erlinghagen and Markard, 2012), these actors are populating the

field with their own visions and narratives (Vesnic-Alujevic et al., 2016), triggering the

reconfiguration of the established institutional setting.

These five forms of institutional work identified within the smart grid field in Germany are

neither exclusive nor overarching. But they do provide important evidence of the

heterogeneity of actors’ roles and the inter-organisational dynamics (Kallman and Frickel,

2019) within the smart grid field. No single organisation has been able to claim to have an

overarching vision (Tricoire, 2015) on what is really needed to develop a smart grid and

create a sustainable energy system in Germany. Many organisations involved in smart grid

developments face high uncertainties (Engels and Münch, 2015). As our findings reveal, the

organisations are engaging in different forms of institutional work regarding smart grid

developments and thus reflexively engage with the institutions that surround them (Suddaby

and Viale, 2011).

2.4.8. Conclusions

This paper shows how existing roles, rules, norms, and beliefs within and between

organisations are challenged (or not) through smart grid developments, and how actors try

to collectively shape institutional arrangements within energy systems’ transformations. In

the German smart grid field, we identified three core contestations amongst the organisations

involved, those related to the management of data, those related to responsibilities for

managing the growing flexibilities in distribution grids and those related to the division of

roles to develop demand-side innovations. Our empirical findings indicate that

organisations’ activities linked to these contestations are grounded in five different forms of

institutional work, namely pooling, playing up, standardising, advocating and gap filling.

We advance the social science research on smart grids in three different ways. First, we have

shown that analysing institutional work in issue-based fields provides a useful conceptual

framework to understand how organisations try to shape current smart grid developments

and legitimise some rules and norms over others (Ballo, 2015). This shaping and legitimising

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cannot be purely explained by a challenger-incumbent dualism (Kungl, 2014; Wassermann

et al., 2015). The heterogeneity of organisations’ aims, interests and belief systems, as

highlighted by our examination of institutional work, are key to understanding why smart

grid developments lag behind initial expectations. The rules (e.g. who gets access to the

market) and roles (e.g. who should handle the data and/or who should manage grid

flexibility) in future smart grids are not clearly defined and thus highly contested among the

organisations. The struggle is much more about an individual organisation’s interests than

about a wider governmental and/or public debate (Vesnic-Alujevic et al., 2016) as to what

constitutes a smart grid, the main purpose it should serve and how it could be organised.

Organisations that currently make up the German issue-based smart grid field provide some

evidence of ´who is actually benefiting from the ‘smart’ on the grids´ (Vesnic-Alujevic et

al., 2016, p. 24 p. 24) and that private-industry actors are one of these beneficiaries (Kallman

and Frickel, 2019).

Our second contribution relates to the idea that the development of digital infrastructure

´adds both complexity and uncertainty to the operation of the electricity system of the future´

(Pallesen and Jacobsen, 2018, p. 86 p. 86). Our findings have shown that the organisations

involved act in a field with relatively high uncertainty (Engels and Münch, 2015). These

uncertainties are created, in part, from the lack of clear regulative developments that would

allow organisations, for example, to create new rules to coordinate and manage grid

bottlenecks. To be able to overcome these uncertainties, organisations have engaged in

diverse forms of institutional work to define rules, roles and responsibilities for the

electricity system of the future. We argue that institutionalisation processes in the smart grid

field can be regarded as overcoming the current lack of coordination between the involved

organisations (Möllering and Müller-Seitz, 2018). To go beyond the pilot stage in smart grid

developments, there seem to be a profound need for public policy (Kumar, 2019) and a

shared and institutionalised vision as to how a smart grid should look so that it can contribute

to a low-carbon energy system.

Our third contribution relates to the idea that smart grids are incremental and context-related

endeavours (Kumar, 2019) as well as being socially constructed and institutionally

embedded (Wolsink, 2012). Our analysis has shown that changes linked to smart grid

developments are frequently linked to changes in rules (e.g. opening up the energy market

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for new actors such as aggregators) or norms (developing industry standards and guidelines

for smart grids). Established organisations such as DSOs and energy providers engage in

institutional work to maintain the existing institutional arrangements and, at the same time,

establish favourable roles for themselves in ongoing changes. Our findings indicate that the

developments related toto smart grids have much to do with changing the taken-for-granted

meaning systems within the energy system (e.g. by whom and how should it be organised

and run). New entrance organisations attempt to change the accepted meaning systems

(through, for instance, setting up energy exchange platforms), but the underlying cultural-

cognitive aspects of the institutional order in the current energy system are much harder to

reconfigure than the regulative and normative ones (Scott, 2010). Digital technologies allow

organisations to be connected with each other in novel ways (e.g. DSOs and TSOs) but

developing such connections does not necessarily go along with changes in the

organisations’ accepted belief systems (e.g. about their role in the energy system). Changing

accepted belief systems is key if new roles and responsibilities are to be defined and divided

between organisations. No organisation wants to give up its dominance and control over

managing certain aspects of the energy system, but preferably wants to gain new ones

through smart grid developments.

Changes to cultural-cognitive institutions such as meaning systems are key within

institutionalisation processes (Scott, 2010). Meaning systems consist of elements that

determine organisations’ perceptions of reality and sense making i.e. internal interpretative

processes that are shaped by external cultural frameworks (Scott, 2001, p. 57 p. 57).

Policymakers have often attempted to shape smart grid developments through bringing in

regulations (e.g. the German law on the digitisation of the “Energiewende”) not

acknowledging the need for changing the meaning system or patterns of thought of the

organisations within the German energy system. A recent study in Germany argued ´for such

a fundamental change to succeed, established patterns of thought must be identified and

overcome´(Reetz & Göhlich p. 6]. If the organisations do not collaborate in reorganising the

energy system, preferring to engage in institutional work to maintain existing institutional

arrangements, and if policymakers do not think beyond regulative changes, our findings have

shown that a situation emerges where those organisations seem to shape smart grid

developments in accordance with their own interests and accepted ways of working. It comes

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as no surprise that there currently does not appear to exist shared understandings of how a

low-carbon energy system based on digital technologies could be organised and

implemented.

Acknowledgements

This research received funding from the project “Energienetz Berlin Adlershof” (no.

03ET1038G) financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy

(BMWi). The authors are appreciative to the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and

innovation programme under grant agreement No 837498, SONNET and the German

Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under Grant agreement No

01UU1607B, ‘Digitalization and Sustainability’ which have supported elements of the work

reported here.

3. Overall Discussion and Conclusions

This chapter summarises the main findings of the publications in chapter 3.1 and describes

their contribution to research in the field. A critical reflection of the methods used is

provided in chapter 3.2, and a discussion of the results of the thesis is provided in chapter

0. The relevance of this contribution to current research at the interface of imaginaries and

energy is summarised in chapter 3.4., and the outlining of future research needs is

presented in chapter3.4. The final conclusions are drawn in chapter 3.5 with a special focus

on socio-ecological transformation processes. This is intended to embed the research

results in a larger context and to reflect on their interactions with aspects of sustainability.

3.1. Contributions to knowledge of the four publications

This section summarises how each publication contributes to the aim of the thesis and

shows key findings and their relevance for research on sociotechnical imaginaries of

digitalized energy futures (?). The aim of the thesis was to reveal how smart homes and

smart grids are envisioned and legitimised by different actors in Germany, and how

contestations between alternative visions influence collectively shared imaginaries of

digital energy technologies. By revealing processes through which imaginaries emerge and

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are legitimised, it is possible to uncover hidden assumptions about the interplay of future

society with future technologies and to gain insights into the actor constellations and

dynamics that take place when future visions circulate, are promoted, or develop. The

contribution of this thesis is thus to provide the first empirically grounded analysis of

future visions on digital energy technologies in households and related infrastructures in

Germany.

This work makes two main contributions to the research on sociotechnical imaginaries and

energy. Firstly, it provides a theoretical lens through which processes of emergence

(Publication A) and stabilisation through legitimation (Publication C) of sociotechnical

imaginaries can be analysed. It shows how sociotechnical imaginaries emerge through

urban laboratories as spaces for articulating and negotiating technological futures, as well

as implementing and showcasing them to a broader public (Publication A, Quitzow &

Rohde, 2021). It also uncovers the legitimation strategies that are pursued to collectively

share sociotechnical imaginaries (Publication C, Rohde & Santarius, 2023). The second

contribution is empirical: It provides rich insights into how the smart home is envisioned

by certain actor groups within the public debate in Germany. On the one hand, this thesis

shows that the envisioned smart home in Germany is highly contested, and public

discourse on social media is dominated by actors who critically interrogate the promises

and prospects of smart home futures (Publication B, Rohde et al., 2023). On the other

hand, this research sheds light on legitimation strategies from the smart home industry,

users in homes and policymakers in Germany, and how they are contributing to the

manifestation of a smart home imaginary of techno-hedonism (Dahlgren et al., 2021) while

downplaying risks and challenges related to digitalised homes (Publication C, Rohde &

Santarius, 2023). The third contribution is methodological and mainly derives from the

Network-Discourse-Analysis (NetDA) conducted in Publication B, which thus far has not

been used in this way to analyse sociotechnical imaginaries (or in other energy futures

approaches). This thesis shows that NetDA is an appropriate method to trace

sociotechnical imaginaries in public debates as well as the multiple and contested future

orientations that are related to certain kinds of digital technologies (Publication B, Rohde

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et al., 2023). The contributions to knowledge and key findings of the four publications that

make up this thesis are shown in the following paragraphs.

Publication A (Quitzow & Rohde 2022) analyses how urban smart grid futures are being

imagined and co-produced in Berlin, Germany. It is based on a discourse analysis of

relevant urban policy and other documents, as well as interviews with key stakeholders

from Berlins smart grid pilot sites. The research questions, which are addressed in this

paper, are:

• How are smart grids being locally imagined?

• Who is promoting these imaginaries?

• How does this relate to the global smart city paradigm?

For my thesis the first two research question play a key role, whereas the third question is

related to the core research aim of the thesis from my co-author Leslie Quitzow (Quitzow,

2022).

Key Findings include:

• Identification of three dominant imaginaries that relate smart grid technologies to

the city, promoting them as a) an environmental necessity for advancing Berlin’s

local Energiewende, b) an economic imperative to secure Berlin’s future as a

thriving metropolis, and c) an exciting experimental challenge to modernise the

city’s infrastructure.

• Berlin’s modern, eco-progressive smart grid imaginary is being mutually reinforced

by urban development narratives on the one hand and by implementation practices

on the other.

• Current smart grid imaginaries are emphasising (possible) technological benefits

instead of weighing them against the environmental costs of technological

expansion or the risks of digitally-born vulnerabilities.

Publication A shows that imaginaries of the future smart grid city are not only fueled by

urban (energy) policy but also gain traction through material manifestations in urban

laboratories. Furthermore this publication has shown that these imaginaries are thus

foreclosing debate about other pathways towards low-carbon urban development, such as

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digitally sufficient alternatives (Lange and Santarius, 2018) or smart grids as commons

(Hall et al., 2019).

Publication A contributes to the overall thesis aim by showing how smart grid imaginaries

emerge through (policy) narratives and urban laboratories and that these imaginaries are

confined to a relatively small group of experts, i.e. excluding citizens. This publication

contributes to the scholarship on smart grids and imaginaries by showing how such

imaginaries develop out of discursive processes and manifest in showcases and pilot

projects.

Publication B contributes to the overall thesis aim by giving insights into the public debate

about smart home futures on Twitter (now named X) and by analysing the discourse-

networks on a methodological basis using Network-Discourse-Analysis (NetDA). The

research questions in this publication are:

• Which actors dominate the social media discourse around smart homes in

Germany?

• How is the smart home discussed and imagined in the German (social) media

debate?

The publication identifies five discourse coalitions on the hashtag #smarthome that form

specific storylines. Key findings include:

• The empirical identification of conflicting imaginaries through Network-Discourse-

Analysis (NetDA).

• The identification of five discourse coalitions that form around the storylines

“Threat”,” Hackable”, “Useless”, “Fixable” and “Opportunity”.

• An illustration of how sociotechnical imaginaries of smart homes in Germany are

multiple and contested and reveal major societal challenges and power asymmetries

associated with the digital transformation.

Through the five storylines, the publication sheds lights on the distinct orientations towards

the future of different social groups and gives evidence that the interplay of technology and

future society are imagined very differently within the discourse coalitions. The

justifications and legitimation that are put forward for or against the smart home derive

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from distinct imaginations of the role the smart home might play in society. Whereas in the

"Threat" coalition users are viewed as citizens and a threat to the user is interpreted

equivalently as a threat to citizens and citizenship, the “Hackable” and “Fixable” coalitions

envision the citizens as competent with a high technology affinity and able to solve the

related cyber security risks through learning and heeding advice. By focusing on the

conflicting imaginaries, this publication can contribute to critically interrogating smart

home visions and uncovering social groups which reject or criticise smart home

developments. It also reveals that the (technical) design of smart home systems (e.g.

proprietary system vs. open source) is also subject to discursive processes and shapes the

public debate. In conclusion, the question of who has the power to spark the development

of the smart home is therefore closely interrelated to perceptions of the role of the smart

home in society.

Publication C makes a contribution to this thesis by showing the multiple ways in which

visions legitimise the uptake of the smart home and thus contribute to the institutional

stabilisation of sociotechnical imaginaries. The analyses of smart home visions in Germany

have three foundations: 1) a qualitative content analysis of smart home marketing websites

from the ten most common smart home providers in Germany, 2) policy documents from

German ministries, and 3) qualitative interviews with German smart home users.

Publication C addresses the following research questions:

• What visions of the smart home do the smart home industry, users in homes and

policymakers in Germany create?

• How is legitimacy created in those smart home visions?

These questions are of major importance, for example, for current policy processes in

Germany, where the implantation of smart home systems is subsidised.

Key findings are:

• The industry envisions the smart home as comfortable, safe, simple and effortless,

while users envision the smart home as convenient, modern and controllable.

Policy visions emphasise the ecological contribution and imagine a smart home for

climate protection made in Germany.

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• Four strategies of legitimation in German smart home visions can be identified:

cognitive/emotional alignment, solutionism, coupling with normative goals and

expert/scientific legitimation.

• In German policy visions, the environmental savings potentials of the smart home

are put forward to justify the appropriateness of smart home technologies and

benefits, as demonstrated by scientific evidence from scenarios and prospective

calculations.

The publication reveals that in Germany, policy visions' legitimation strategies link to

broader societal concerns and justify smart home technologies with normative aims such as

climate protection. On the other hand, the legitimation strategies discovered for the

industry and user visions are more focused on the level of individual benefits and the

enhancement of the private home. Climate protection and other "grand challenges" provide

a solid foundation for justifying new technology. However, the long-term impacts of

adopting a specific vision, as well as the environmental burden that all new digital gadgets

entail (Pohl et al. 2021), are overlooked. From this standpoint, such a legitimation strategy

may result in materially intensive development paths and so-called "burden shifting" (Ipsen

et al., 2019) rather than positively contributing to climate protection aims. Another

legitimation strategy that was found in the policy visions in expert/scientific legitimation

strategy, which is used to obtain support for innovation policies that encourage smart

homes and new financing and subsidy schemes. This resource allocation that takes place

alongside those legitimation processes is an indicator of performativity (Dignum et al.,

2018, Rudek 2022). Furthermore strong connections between ministries and the smart

home industry have been identified, which may contribute to the institutional stability of

sociotechnical imaginaries of smart homes in Germany. Here, we can see the actor

coalitions that are formed in order to promote a specific future that "ought to be attained"

(Beck et al., 2021).

Publication C shows how existing roles, rules, norms and beliefs within and between

organisations are challenged (or not) through smart grid developments, and how actors try

to collectively shape institutional arrangements within energy system transformations. The

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publication applies a distinct theoretical framework. Its contributions to this thesis are first

and foremost the empirical findings that derive from the analyses. This paper shows that

the ambiguity of smart grid visions (Tricoire, 2015), in which various structural, functional

and cultural elements are feasible (Sataen et al., 2015), has made space for contested issues

and negotiations over existing and potential future institutional arrangements. The research

question addressed in Publication C is:

• What challenges do organisations involved in smart grid developments currently

face and how do they attempt to engage in processes of institutional change?

The paper illustrates how organisations involved in German smart grid developments

engage in “institutional work”, (Lawrence et al., 2011) that is, how they actively shape the

respective institutional changes so that they are able to take on their preferred roles and

responsibilities, and how their efforts have resulted in a plethora of goals, interests and

belief systems associated with smart grid developments.

Key findings are:

• The identification of three core contestations amongst the organisations involved in

smart grid developments: 1) those related to the management of data, 2) those

related to responsibilities for managing the growing flexibilities in distribution

grids, and 3) those related to the division of roles to develop demand-side

innovations.

• The activities of collective actors related to these contestations are grounded in five

types of institutional work: pooling, playing up, standardising, advocating and gap

filling.

Publication D contributes to the current research on smart grids and energy system

transformations by illustrating that smart grid developments have a lot to do with altering

the taken-for-granted meaning systems within the energy system (e.g. by whom and how it

should be organised and run). If new roles and responsibilities are to be created and

distributed throughout organisations, changing accepted belief systems is essential.

Overall, the publications of this dissertation show different aspects of smart home and

smart grid visions and illustrate how actors try to influence debates about the desirable

future in their own interest. A critical analysis of digital energy futures can thus also help

to uncover the actor constellations, interests and underlying ideas that are associated with

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different visions. It can also help to shed light on the rationales why alternative visions are

conceded only limited consideration and which perspectives are excluded or missing from

the debate. This is particularly important for the ongoing power struggles associated with

the socio-ecological transformation (Mendez-Barrientos, 2021; Jäger & Schmidt, 2021;

Wahlsten, 2020), as these processes are very often about which actors claim to shape future

developments and with which legitimation patterns. Further discussions of the

contributions to current research are provided in chapter 0.

3.2. Reflection of methodological approach

The methods applied in this thesis are mainly composed of qualitative methods such as

interviews and document analyses. According to Jasanoff (2015) methods of interpretive

research and analysis that probe the nature of structure-agency relationships are best suited

for investigating sociotechnical imaginaries. With a qualitative-interpretative approach this

research refers to the notion that reality depends on its historical and social context. To

adress the strengths and weaknesses of both qualitative and quantitative approaches (Clark

& Creswell, 2008; Creswell, 2015; Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004) a mixed-methods

approach was used, to analyse the network-structures that are part of making imaginaries.

Those different methods are based on the same epistemological and ontological

perspective (Justesen & Mik-Meyer, 2012). This includes a social constructionist

perspective (Berger & Luckmann) and a sociology of knowledge approach to discourse

(Keller 2011). The foundation of this thesis was a consideration of discourses as

configurations of social realities that create and reinforce shared understandings of certain

facts, norms, values and orders (Keller and Truschkat, 2013). As such the research

approach of this thesis is concerned with revealing how social constructions,

objectivization, communication, and the legitimization of meaning structures occur (Keller

2011). Analyzing discourses through interviews and policy documents is a common

methodological approach in energy futures research (z.B. Vesnic-Alujevic 2016, Tozer &

Klenk 2018). Regarding the notion that imaginaries are by definition are group

achievements, the methods in this thesis aimed to capture the visions confined by certain

groups, as has been done in Publication C, where visions from users in homes,

policymakers and the smart home industry have been analyzed. However, the content

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analyzed in Publication C seeks to fulfill different purposes and thus the use of language is

distinct. Marketing material from smart home companies is written primarily by marketing

actors related to the technology industry, who are mostly enthusiastic about these devices

(Strengers 2020), which creates certain limitations. However, the analyses of marketing

and industry material has been regarded as a fruitful way to uncover visions in various

other studies on smart homes (Strengers & Nicholls 2017, Dahlgren et al. 2021) and can

reveal the collective envisioning of industry actors and their marketing units. Policy

documents are a different type of written text because they confine to political coordinated

perspectives and representations and might hide negotiations that were part of their

creation. Such a focus on documentary analysis has been criticized for implementing an

institutionalist perspective with a focus solely on expert imaginaries (Tidwell & Tidwell

2018). Therefore, we also interviewed users for Publication C (Rohde & Santarius 2023),

to widen the focus onto the people actually using smart home systems. The sample of

interviewees from the smart home survey, which was used for Publication C creates

limitations regarding the plurality of perspectives represented in our research. This creates

a bias towards perspectives that are more optimistic and enthusiastic about this technology.

However, since this thesis also looks at public debates in hybrid media spaces (Publication

B), it aims at widening the perspective beyond experts or actors which are more

enthusiastic about smart homes.

The combination of qualitative network analysis methods with a qualitative discourse

analysis approach was very ambitious and involved many iterations within the

interdisciplinary research team. There was need to consult experts in the field of social

media network analysis and many experimenting and testing was part of the research

process. This way of combining network analyses with qualitative discourse analysis is

quite novel in research on energy futures and has not been used in this way, up to our

knowledge. Through identifying differing and conflicting visions that form public smart

home imaginaries and the related discursive struggles this thesis shows how actors which

exert influence on the public debate can be linked to certain storylines. This linkage is key

for the analysis of sociotechnical imaginaries because it can provides insights on which

collectives share (or not) certain orientations towards the future (Beck et al. 2021). To

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enhance the future use of this methods it might be helpful to further implement this method

and develop methodological standards of how to conduct such an analysis.

3.3. Discussion of results

This thesis intends to answer the question of how smart homes and smart grids are being

envisioned and legitimised by different actors in Germany, and how contestations that

become apparent between alternative visions influence collectively shared imaginaries of

digital energy technologies. The findings of the four papers that make up the thesis show

the following several key insights.

Firstly both smart homes and smart grids are legitimized through prospective positive

ecological contributions that those technologies might entail, especially by policymakers.

Both smart grid and smart home visions are legitimised by overall ambitions towards

climate protection. Promoters of smart homes and smart grids emphasize the technological

possibilities and neglect risks and also ecological consequences, which may downsize the

positive outcomes for the climate (Ipsen et al., 2019; Pohl et al., 2022; Lange & Santarius,

2020) such as the global warming potential associated with smart metering infrastructure

and the use case of decentralized flexibility markets, amounting to an annual footprint of

513,679 t CO 2eq in Germany (Wohlschlager et al., 2021). Not only that ICT

implementation in households and electricity infrastructures is naturalized as inevitable,

there is a mutual enforcement of policy visions and economic imperatives of

competitiveness and eco-modernity. These justifications, however, have a prospective

character and do not represent proven savings: The patterns of legitimation show that

individual advantages on the one hand and collective advantages on the other are used in

legitimation strategies, accompanied by the support of expert opinions that are supposed to

present the advantages as plausible. These findings prove how prospective calculations and

scientific expertise are used to foster certain sociotechnical imaginaries. Users in homes

and policymakers in Germany downplay risks and challenges related to digitalized homes.

The focus of attention is steered away from the negative consequences, such as domestic

surveillance (Maalsen and Sadowski 2019), control or abuse (Sovacool et al., 2021) or the

redistribution of control within households (Gram-Hanssen and Darby, 2018).

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Secondly this thesis sheds light on smart grid and smart home visions from different actors’

perspectives and seeks to explore how those visions grow into institutionally stabilised and

collectively shared sociotechnical imaginaries. In doing so, it contributes to the research on

sociotechnical imaginaries and to smart home futures research through tracing the

development from vision to sociotechnical imaginaries and revealing both, the actor

coalitions and the patterns of justification and reasoning that are related to the processes of

the institutional stabilisation of imaginaries. Regarding smart grid imaginaries in the city of

Berlin, it is clear that these imaginaries depict urban smart grid technologies as a necessary

prerequisite for developing Berlin into a low-carbon city and that they are being pursued

and marketed by Berlin’s urban policy-makers, researchers and businesses. When it comes

to smart homes These results show how certain actor groups seek to foster certain positivist

smart grid imaginaries and downplay the risks (Vesnic-Alujevic et al., 2016; Luque-Ayala,

2014) and alternative pathways to urban energy arrangements. Meanwhile, imaginaries that

are developed, reproduced and publicly promoted through urban laboratories also reinforce

policy goals and strategies.

The third insight that this work can make relates to the countervailing features that can be

found in visions on smart technologies from different actor groups. An important finding

derives from the juxtaposition of the smart home visions and legitimation strategies

revealed in Publication C and the imaginaries in the public online debate that were found

in Publication B. The positivist notions of a techno-hedonist imaginary of the home

(Dahlgren, 2021) do not resonate with the perspectives that are found in public debates on

Twitter and related media spaces. In contrast, the public discourse (at least on Twitter) is

much more critical. It becomes apparent that the most influential actors in the German

online discourse take a critical stance towards the smart home. In imaginaries that are

circulated and accessed through public debates, the risks of smart home technologies. such

as surveillance (Maalsen and Sadowski, 2019), privacy, security and hacking (Sovacool

and Furszyfer Del Rio, 2020) are more widely discussed. There is evidence that there

coexist competing realities within public reasoning (Ballo & Vaage, 2021) and that social

order imagined in visions and forcefully promoted by dominant actors is regarded as a

136

threat to citizenship in the public debate. This shows the rise of conflicting imaginaries

(Benediktsson, 2021) about the smart home in Germany, and begs the question of which

alternative visions are being displaced with these dominant imaginaries. For, this

contestations are manifest in the ascendancy of certain discourses which foreclose some

futures whilst facilitating others (Brown & Rappert 2000). Thus, one may ask what form of

agency, citizenship (Ryghaug et al., 2018) or modes of interaction and involvement may be

accessible to so-called "smart" citizens (Ballo & Vaage, 2021).

The contribution this thesis makes to the research on sociotechnical imaginaries and energy

is the disentanglement of visions from different actors groups. It reveal that visions from

actor groups, which are committed to and advantaged by promoting digital energy

technologies are stabilized through mutually reinforcing of policies and implementation

practices processes (Publication A) and through legitimation strategies that foster stabilized

imaginaries. At the same time imaginaries on the smart home in Germany still remain

highly contested and although funding schemes and industry actors are supporting smart

home systems, in the public online debate remains a large skepticism. The overarching

finding in relation to the research question is therefore that critical debates about the future

of digital energy technologies are taking place, but the influence of critical perspectives is

not reflected in policy priorities or processes. The overarching imaginary of eco-

modernism prevails, and is stabilized and legitimized through various mechanisms, such as

real-life enactments (Publication A), scientific legitimation and coupling with normative

goals (Publication C) despite a deeply rooted skepticism amongst the digital policy

activism scene (Publication B) that exists in Germany. Furthermore, the implementation of

smart grid technologies implies changes to current institutional arrangements within energy

systems, that are highly contested, and actors involved try legitimizing some rules and

norms over others and thus try to shape smart energy developments (Publication D). As I

will show in the next section this leads to opportunities for further work at the nexus of

imaginaries, legitimacy, and institutional change.

137

3.4. Opportunities for further work

There has been done much research on (digital) energy futures and imaginaries and much

has been investigated up to this point. This thesis has contributed to this endeavour through

further developing the conceptional framework of sociotechnical imaginaries, with regard

to institutional stabilization through legitimitaion. And this work has shown how those

imaginaries can be traced through discourse-networks.

When it comes to the question of how visions grow into institutionally stabilized

imaginaries there remain certain conceptual issues, which can be adressed in further work.

Those issues relate to the performative power, institutionalization and the role of

legitimation. It has been shown in Publication C that dominant actors are able to shape

imaginaries in favor of their particular aims and interests, but it could be further developed

how legitimation is associated with power. For example, the question of how power

enfolds through processes of legitimation within the formation of imaginaries and how

actors are thus able to influence certain developments. The role of legitimation is worth

taking a deeper look in scholarship on imaginaries and energy because it also entails the

potential to shed light on processes of institutionalization that occur when imaginaries

become collectively shared. The analytical encounter for future research is not only to

describe how collective ideas are produced by different actors, but above all to

conceptualise their institutionalisation. The institutionalisation of socio-technical

imaginaries also describes the powerful conflicts and power relations that lead to the

implementation of certain ideas about the future, which are closely linked to cultural and

social norms and conventions. For imaginaries to have an impact in the present, they must

be incorporated in rules, norms and cultural orientations in society. Through processes of

institutionalisation, they become objectified social reality (Berger and Luckmann 1967).

Successful visions of the future act as interpretative schemata that arrange ideas, interests

and normative orientations (Meyer 2019b, 2019a). Sociological concepts of

institutionalization could provide a fertile ground to further adress this issue. According to

Berger and Luckmann, legitimacy plays a decisive role in institutionalisation processes

(Berger and Luckmann 1967). When it comes to digital energy futures, ecological benefits

138

(climate protection, energy savings) are put forward to legitimize the uptake of digital

technologies and serve as a driving force for an institutionalisation process of imaginaries

of eco-modernism.

Another future research potential which is closely related to institutionalization is the

question of the role that imaginaries and processes of envisioning play in configuring

certain institutional arrangements. As Hoffman et al. (2021) argued the agency involved in

those processes can be described as futuring. Publication D has focused on forms of

institutional work and their role in processes of institutional change. Future research could

connect sociotechnical imaginaries and institutional work, i.e., how do actors manage to

contribute to institutional change through imaginaries? When certain imaginaries of the

future become stabilized, they can impede institutional change or contribute to institutional

change. In research on the role of imaginaries in sustainability transformations, so-called

constitutional moments are considered important (Beck et al. 2021). They are said to be

able to analyze how "actors and communities assemble alternative plans of action as they

draw on competing sociotechnical imaginaries to frame sustainable futures and mobilize

support from new coalitions of motivations, meanings and ethical, social and political

concerns" (Beck et al. 2021 p. 148). But the question remains of how those shifts in

dominant framings and processes of policymaking can be achieved, regarding the insight

that powerful actors and actor-coalitions shape imaginaries in order to pursue their

interests. Institutional change processes always involve processes of de-institutionalization

(Oliver 1992). In order to disrupt the institutional order, processes of de-institutionalization

are of key interest. An interesting question for future research at the nexus of institutional

change & imaginaries could be how sociotechnical imaginaries contribute to maintaining,

creating, disrupting existing institutions. When it comes to questions of digital

transformation and the socio-material reconfigurations related to this transformation

conceptual considerations on institutional change processes and how they are related to

power, agency, legitimation could provide important insights beyond and/or related to

processes of futuring.

139

3.5. Conclusions and implications regarding socio-ecological

transformation processes

This research was interested in the ways in which certain actors envision and legitimize

smart home and smart grids. Furthermore, the thesis asked how contestations between

alternative visions influence collectively shared imaginaries of digital energy technologies.

In this final chapter the results of the work are reflected regarding current processes of

socio-ecological transformation and the challenges that are related to those processes. The

publications that make up this thesis have shown that smart homes and smart grids are

legitimized through prospective positive ecological contributions and individual benefits

and the enhancement of the private household. Furthermore, it revealed actor coalitions

and the patterns of legitimation that are related to the processes of the institutional

stabilisation of imaginaries. There can be observed the rise of conflicting imaginaries about

the smart home in Germany through a novel methodological approach of analysing

discourse-networks and several contestations that arise within smart grid developments in

Germany.

The results of this thesis have shown that very divergent, and contradictory, imaginaries

are associated with smart grids and smart homes in Germany. Smart grid imaginaries that

are driven locally (in Berlin) are promoted primarily by actors who are involved in pilot

projects. Those actors have an interest in the implementation of smart grids because it

serves their research interests or economic interests or actors who are pursuing a political

agenda along with it. As such, it becomes clear that these visions of the future always

conceal underlying negotiation processes and that the interests of powerful actors play a

significant role. Likewise, it could be illustrated that smart grid developments as such are

connected with diverse negotiation processes, and that actors try to influence these

developments in very different directions.

A key finding of this research is that potential environmental benefits are often used as a

legitimation to push visions that end up serving rather particular interests and are not

characterised by participatory processes. The legitimation of the smart home through

140

environmental benefits must be critically interrogated, because it remains contested wheter

those benefits can be fufilled. Regarding smart grid visions, it becomes equally evident that

small circles of experts are imagining and enacting an urban smart grid future that is driven

by techno-optimism. Few other perspectives are sought, and thus there is a lack of critical

negotiation. There is need for more broad and inclusive public discussion of the potential

marginalisation and exclusion in smart energy systems (Tarasova & Rohracher, 2023).

Since the smart grid field is populated by diverse actors, many of whom are invested in,

committed to and advantaged by promoting techno-optimistic smart gird imaginaries, this

question is strongly related to scrutinising existing power relations (Lösch und Schneider

2016). The interests of industry, research and the political agenda play an important role,

as could be shown with the example of smart grid visions in Berlin. Little space is given to

alternative futures and risks are ignored or neglected in favour of eco-modernisation

arguments. The advantages and disadvantages, both from a social and ecological

perspective should be weighed up much more strongly, especially when new funding

programmes and legislative processes are initiated. Here, for example, the topic of

sufficiency instead of efficiency could be moved more to the centre of the debate in the

future. At the same time, regarding smart homes, it becomes evident that the public debate

(on Twitter and related media spaces) is very much characterised by critical perspectives.

The impact that the smart home has on people and the relationship between the state and

citizens is a major topic in this public debate that has hardly been considered in Germany

so far.

Empirically, this dissertation was able to show the different qualities and roots of smart

home imaginaries in Germany and that the future of the digitalised home is very contested.

How actors will be able to create meaning for their visions of the future can be well

observed through the various legitimation strategies that have been demonstrated for the in

this work an enrich the scholarship on imaginaries and energy. Through these legitimation

strategies, visions that are aimed at the interests of certain actors are anchored in collective

meaning systems and can thus grow into a sociotechnical imaginary. This entails the

danger that risks and vulnerabilities of less powerful actors will be neglected or

marginalised, thus promoting techno-hedonistic visions. Although there is a reasonably

141

broad agreement on the necessity for large-scale change, the contestations on smart home

and smart grid futures highlight the persistent struggles regarding the extent, scope, and

goal of the change, how to govern the transformation, and whose agency matters in this

process (Wahlsten 2020).

This thesis contributes to the critical analysis of digital energy futures and has shown that

visions of smart grids and smart homes are very much developed by social groups, who

have been identified as very enthusiastic about technology and consumption (Frick and

Nguyen, 2020). The stabilization and institutionalization of these techno-optimistic visions,

e.g. in policies or funding programmes, entails the risk of replacing democratic processes

of negotiation with corporate dominance in everything from urban planning to private

lifestyles (Pasquale, 2018). Such visions are linked to narratives of competitiveness,

improved lives and climate protection and have the potential to contribute to the

emergence of sociotechnical imaginaries that enfold performative power through pilot

projects. Being co-produced through policies and implementation practices that are

mutually reinforcing each other, smart grid and smart home imaginaries are being nurtured

as much by environmental ideals as by the technical solutionism.

Alternative futures must therefore be given more consideration, because a sustainable

energy supply requires a social negotiation process in which all perspectives are equally

heard and taken into account. Ideas and interests from civil society actors or less influential

social groups such as children and young people, people with a migration background or

vulnerable groups should be included in the development and design of energy futures.

Also disregarded are the remaining challenges of intersecting inequalities related to gender,

class or socio-economic status, which are relevant to accessibility and the ways of

engaging with smart home futures (Dahlgren et al. 2021). This can only succeed if

prevailing techno-hedonist imaginaries and visions are questioned and their implicit

assumptions and promises are scrutinised, especially by political actors but also by

countervailing forces from civil socitey such as the Bits & Bäume Movement in Germany.

Energy policies as an important shaping social force are guided by techno-optimistic

promises and prospective calculations about environmental benefits. It is important to

142

critically interrogate if our energy futures should be primarily guided by entrepreneurial

and economic interests and research interests. Instead, visions should be mor inclusive

regarding vulnerable groups and groups for example exposed to energy poverty.

A recent report from Germany supports this demand and has found that groups that are

usually underrepresented in participation processes - the elderly, people with low levels of

formal education and low income - express a comparatively strong desire for more

participation (acatech & Körber Stiftung 2023). In summary, analysing the visions of

specific groups of actors and the public debate can provide important insights into the

interests, actors and legitimacy patterns associated with digital energy futures.

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5. Darstellung des Eigenanteils an den Publikationen

Die Publikationen dieser Dissertation sind in Co-Autor*innenschaft entstanden weshalb im

Folgenden mein Eigenanteil an diesen Publikationen gemäß § 2 (4) der aktuellen

Promotions- ordnung der TU Berlin ausführlich dargestellt wird. Für die übersichtliche

Darstellung werden diese Angaben im Anschluss in tabellarischer Form zusammengefasst

(Table 1).

Publikation A basiert auf den Arbeiten, die Leslie Quitzow im Rahmen ihrer eigenen

Dissertation durchgeführt hat. Die empirischen Erhebungen sowie die Auswertung und

Konzeption der Publikation erfolgte durch Leslie Quitzow. Die Erstautorin erstelle auch

den ersten Entwurf für den Artikel. Die Entwicklung des konzeptionellen Rahmens

erfolgte durch beide Autor*innen. Mein Beitrag bei dieser Publikation besteht

demensprechend vor allem in der Entwicklung und Weiterentwicklung des konzeptionellen

Rahmens. Darüber hinaus wurden die Discussion und die Conclusions zu gleichen Teilen

von den Co-Autor*innen verfasst. Die Überarbeitungsschleifen im Review-Prozess

erfolgten zu zwei Dritteln von Leslie Quitzow und zu einem Drittel von mir.

Publikation B wurde in Co-Autor*innenschaft mit Nikolaus (Nick) von Andrian und

Steffen Lange erstellt. Die Idee für das Paper entwickelte sich in einem Gespräch ziwschen

Nick und mir bei dem es um die Nutzung von digitalen Methoden für die

sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung ging. Daraus erwuchs die Idee eine Twitteranalyse zu

machen. Die Konzeption des Forschungdesigns erfolgte von allen Autor*innen

gemeinsam. Das konzeptionelle Framework wurde von mir entwickelt. Die Durchführung

der quantiativen Twitter-Netzwerkanalyse erfolgte zum größten Teil von Nick Andrian,

der diese auch als Teil seiner Masterarbeit verwendete. Die Verknüpfung der beiden

Methoden erfolgte vor allem von mir, ebenso wie die emprirische Auswerterung der

Tweets und der verlinkten Dokumente. Da diese Methode als neuartig zu betrachten ist,

wurden viele Konzeptionierungen und Entscheidungen im Autor*innenteam getroffen bei

den alle drei Autor*innen beteiligt waren. Das Schreiben des Artikels erfolgt überwiegend

(80%) von mir, während Nick Andrian vor allem den methodischen Teil für die

Netzwerkanalyse verfasste und Steffen Lange vor allem für kritische Reflexion und

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Kommentierung verantwortlich war. Die Findings, Discussion und Conclusions wurden

von mir verfasst. Die Überarbeitung innerhalb des Reviewprozesse erfolgte in erste Linie

durch mich, während Nick Andrian Verbesserung des Methodenkapitel (quantiativer Teil)

beisteuerte.

Publikation C basiert auf den Arbeiten im interdisziplinären Smart Home Projekt

innerhalb der Nachwuchsforschungsgruppe und wurde in Co-Autor*innenschaft mit

meinen Erstgutachter und Leiter der Nachwuchsforschungsgruppe Tilman Santarius

erstellt. Die Erstellung des Leitfadens erfolgte von beiden Co-Autor*innen sowie

gemeinsam mit Manuel Brümmer, der Teile der Ergebnisse (mit einem anderen Fokus) für

seine Bachelorarbeit nutzte. Die Idee und die Konzeption für das Paper, sowohl

methodisch als auch konzeptionell erfolgen von mir ebenso wie das Schreiben des Papers.

Der Co-Autor Tilman Santarius war insbesondere für Überarbeitungen und kritische

Reflexion zuständig. Die Überarbeitung des Papers im Rahmen des Review-Prozess

erfolgte durch mich als Erstautorin.

Publikation D wurde in Co-Autor*innenschaft von mir und Sabine Hielscher erstellt. Die

Idee und die Konzeption erfolgten von mir konzeptioniert, ebenso wie die empirische

Erhebung und die Auswertung der Interviews und der Dokumente. Die Entwicklung des

konzeptionellen Rahmens und die Erstellung des ersten Drafts erfolgte durch mich und die

weitere Ausarbeitung des Papers erfolgt durch beide Autor*innen in gleichem Maße. Die

Überarbeitung im Zuge des Review-Prozess erfolgte durch mich.

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Table 10: Eigenanteil an den Publikationen

Publikation & Titel

Autor*innen

Eigenanteil an den Publikation

Publication A

Imagining the smart city through smart

grids? Urban energy futures between

technological experimentation and the

imagined low-carbon city.

Leslie Quitzow

Friederike Rohde

Konzept/Theorieentwicklung,

Schreiben des Original

Manuskriptes, Schreiben und

Überarbeitung des Manuskriptes

Publication B

Threat, Fixable or Opportunity?

Contested smart home futures in the

German social media debate.

Friederike Rohde

Nikolaus von Andrian

Steffen Lange

Konzept, Methode, Analyse,

Schreiben des Original

Manuskriptes, Schreiben und

Überarbeitung des Manuskriptes,

Projektkoordination

Publication C

Emerging sociotechnical imaginaries–

How the smart home is legitimised in

visions from industry, users in homes

and policymakers in Germany.

Friederike Rohde

Tilman Santarius

Konzept, Methode, Analyse,

Schreiben des Original

Manuskriptes, Schreiben und

Überarbeitung des Manuskriptes,

Projektkoordination

Publication D

Smart grids and institutional change:

Emerging contestations between

organisations over smart energy

transitions

Friederike Rohde

Sabine Hielscher

Konzept, Methode, Analyse,

Schreiben des Original

Manuskriptes, Schreiben und

Überarbeitung des Manuskriptes,

Projektkoordination

164

6. Danksagung

An allererster Stelle möchte ich dem Menschen danken, ohne den diese Promotion absolut

undenkbar gewesen wäre. Dieser unglaubliche Kraftakt das Jonglierens zwischen Familie,

Promotion und Projektarbeit am IÖW in Pandemiezeiten wäre ohne dich, Michi nicht

möglich gewesen. Danke, dass du immer für mich und unsere Kinder Felipa und Milo da

bist und auch in schwierigsten Zeiten wie ein Fels in der Brandung unsere kleine Familie

zusammengehalten hast.

Doch auch ohne meine Nachwuchsforschungsgruppe Johanna Pohl, Maike Gossen, Vivian

Frick, Steffen Lange und Tilman Santarius wäre diese Arbeit nicht entstanden und ich

danke euch allen für diese schönen und einsichtsreichen Erfahrungen. Ich habe von und

mit euch sehr viel gelernt, hinterfragt und auch erkannt, was meinen zukünftigen Weg sehr

beeinflussen wird. Meinen Betreuer*innen Tilman Santarius und Cordula Kropp danke ich

für das konstruktive Feedback, Denkanstöße und das Vertrauen, eigene Ideen

weiterentwickeln zu können. Eine besonderes Dankeschön gebührt auch meinen Co-

Autor*innen außerhalb der Nachwuchsgruppe Sabine Hielscher, Leslie Quitzow und Nick

Andrian, mit denen die Zusammenarbeit unglaublich bereichernd und fruchtbar war.

Ich möchte mich bei meinen Eltern und meinen Geschwistern bedanken, dafür, dass sie in

meinem Leben sind und mich immer wieder ermutigt haben. Außerdem möchte ich den

tollen, klugen, umsichtigen und auch kritischen Menschen danken, die mich in meinem

Leben und Arbeiten begleitet haben, Tom, Jonas, Eva, Nidhi, Ina, Jessica, Sabine, Leslie,

Mandy, Kim, Gilles, Nici, Robert und Melli sowie meinen Kolleginnen Anja, Manuel,

Josi, Florian und Lea für die Unterstützung und Anne Mollen für ein finales lektorieren.

Meine Fähigkeiten wissenschaftlich zu Arbeiten und zu Denken habe ich vor allem Arnold

Windeler zu verdanken der mit viel Hingabe und kritischem Geist immer wieder das

soziologische Denken gefördert hat.

165

7. Eidesstattliche Erklärung

Hiermit erkläre ich an Eides statt, dass ich die vorliegende Dissertation selbstständig und

nur unter Zuhilfenahme der im Literaturverzeichnis genannten Quellen und Hilfsmittel

angefertigt habe. Alle Stellen der Arbeit, die anderen Werken dem Wortlaut oder dem Sinn

nach entnommen wurden, sind kenntlich gemacht.

Für die Arbeiten, die in Zusammenarbeit mit anderen Wissenschaftler*innen entstanden

sind, sind die jeweiligen Namen der Co-Autor*innen sowie mein Eigenanteil an den

jeweiligen Arbeiten gemäß § 2 (5) der Promotionsordnung deklariert.

Ich versichere außerdem, dass ich die beigefügte Dissertation nur in diesem und keinem

anderen Promotionsverfahren eingereicht habe und dass diesem Promotionsverfahren keine

endgültig gescheiterten Promotionsverfahren vorausgegangen sind.

166

8. Appendix

8.1. Appendix Publication A

Annex 1: Data related to each spatial level

Spatial scale

Number of

documents

Number of

interviews

Sum of documents

and interviews

City

Future sites

Smart grid pilot projects

Total

8.2. Appendix Publication C

Number

Gender

Frequency of interactions with

the smart home systems*

Date

Length

(mins)

male

high

06.03.2019