I Love You, Let's Share Calendars: Calendar Sharing as Relationship Work

摘要

While there has been substantial research into the use of online calendar systems (OCS) within organizations and families with children, no research focuses on adults without children. In our study, we focus on these OCS users' practices of calendar sharing as relationship work, the continually negotiated practice of managing friendships and intimacy. We conducted semi-structured interviews as part of a qualitative user study of Google Calendar users. We report the calendar sharing behaviors and strategies of our participants, who maintain multiple calendars for different purposes and with different users, communicating factual and emotional information through their calendar events. We contribute new knowledge by discussing four strategies derived from our participants' calendar sharing and relationship work activities.