The paradox and continuum of digital disengagement : denaturalising digital sociality and technological connectivity
Kuntsman, Adi and Miyake, Esperanza (2019) The paradox and continuum of digital disengagement : denaturalising digital sociality and technological connectivity. Media, Culture and Society, 41 (6). pp. 901-913. ISSN 0163-4437 (https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443719853732)
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Abstract
This theoretical intervention puts forward a concept of ‘digital disengagement’ to discuss new socio-cultural, economic and political demarcations and implications surrounding the relationship between digital media, culture and society. At present, despite a proliferation of calls to reduce both the range of digital devices and communication platforms, and the time spent using them, and despite a growing body of academic work on disconnection or opt-out, disengagement from the digital is still conceptualised by media research as a spatiotemporal or an ideological aberration. To challenge this framework, we propose a paradigmatic shift. We invite digital media scholarship to denaturalise the digital by centring digital disengagement both as a complex phenomenon currently unfolding and as a conceptual entry point into thinking about sociality, agency, rights and everyday life more broadly. Mobilising digital disengagement as a theoretical lens, our piece provides the following: first, we critically assess the prevalent conflation of digitality with social networking, which leads to a limited understanding of disengagement as being only about disconnecting from social media platforms. Second, we challenge the normalisation of the technological in practices of disconnection, arguing instead that disengagement might be structured, but should not be determined, by the technological.
ORCID iDs
Kuntsman, Adi and Miyake, Esperanza ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5504-7648;-
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Item type: Article ID code: 72081 Dates: DateEvent1 September 2019Published30 May 2019Published Online30 April 2019AcceptedSubjects: Social Sciences Department: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS) > Humanities > Journalism, Media and Communication Depositing user: Pure Administrator Date deposited: 17 Apr 2020 10:18 Last modified: 26 Nov 2024 06:51 Related URLs: URI: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/72081