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Social media face criticisms about anticompetitive reach, addictive design, and toxicity to democracy, but disconnection practices—restricting, detoxing, deleting—often only reinforce these effects of social media. This book addresses the ambivalence, commodification, and complicity involved in attempts to separate from social media.
List of contents
Introduction: Reckoning with Social Media in the Pandemic Denouement
Aleena Chia, Ana Jorge, and Tero Karppi
Defining Disconnection
Why Disconnecting Matters? Towards a Critical Research Agenda on Online Disconnection Magdalena Kania-Lundholm
The Ontological Insecurity of Disconnecting: A Theory of Echolocation and the Self
Annette N. Markham
Desiring Disconnection
'Hey! I'm back after a 24h #DigitalDetox!': Influencers posing disconnection Ana Jorge and Marco Pedroni
Privacy, energy, time and moments stolen: Social media experiences pushing towards disconnection
Trine Syvertsen and Brita Ytre-Arne
Quitting Digital Culture: Rethinking Agency in a Beyond-Choice OntologyZeena Feldman
Designing Disconnection
Ethics and Experimentation in The Light Phone and Google Digital Wellbeing Aleena Chia and Alex Beattie
From digital detox to 24/365 disconnection: between dependency tactics and resistance strategies in BrazilMarianna Ferreira Jorge and Julia Salgado
Delaying Disconnection
Overcoming Forced Disconnection: Disentangling the Professional and the Personal in Pandemic TimesChristoffer Bagger and Stine Lomborg
Disconnecting on Two Wheels: Bike touring, leisure and reimagining networksPedro Ferreira and Airi Lampinen
Analogue Nostalgia: Examining Critiques of Social Media
Clara Wieghorst
About the author
Aleena Chia is lecturer of media, communications, and cultural studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her previous appointments include assistant professor at the School of Communication in Simon Fraser University. She researches cultures of creativity in digital game production, social media disconnection, and Silicon Valley spiritual subcultures. Her work has been published in the Internet Policy Review, Journal of Fandom Studies, Television and New Media, and American Behavioral Scientist.Ana Jorge is associate professor of media and communications at Lusófona University. Tero Karppi is associate professor at the University of Toronto. He teaches at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology and the Faculty of Information. He is the author of Disconnect: Facebook’s Affective Bonds (University of Minnesota Press 2018) and his research has been published in journals such as Theory, Culture & Society, Social Media + Society, and New Media & Society.
Summary
Social media face criticisms about anticompetitive reach, addictive design, and toxicity to democracy, but disconnection practices—restricting, detoxing, deleting—often only reinforce these effects of social media. This book addresses the ambivalence, commodification, and complicity involved in attempts to separate from social media.
