Precarious ageing with media and warm experts

The ”warm expert”, defined by Bakardjieva (2011), plays a central role in everyday life for those elderly citizens, who cannot on their own manage the digital communication with public authorities: The elderly turn to ”warm experts” for help, hereby allowing the person assisting them to acces their private documents concerning for instance health and finances. Drawing on interviews with both low-income seniors living in subsidized housing complexes in Copenhagen SW and with a ”warm expert”, Kitt Kjærulf who runs the IT-Help in the area, the presentation focuses on the elderly’s everyday life with media and mediatized communication with public authorities and considers the role of the warm expert herein.