This article attends to the idea of disconnection as a way of theorising people’s lived experience of social networking sites. Enrolling and extending a disconnective practice lens, we suggest that the disconnective strategies of suspension and prevention are operational necessities for those we might see as the users and owners of sites such as Facebook. Indeed, our work demonstrates that disconnection in these contexts need not be associated only with modes of resistance and departure, but can also act as socioeconomic lubricant.
This article conceptualises ‘participatory reluctance’ as a particular orientation to social media that problematises binarised notions of connection and disconnection in social networking sites. It qualitatively examines how the concept has functioned within gay men’s social networking service, Gaydar, among 18- to 28-year-old users of the site in Brisbane, Australia. Participatory reluctance is shown to be a central aspect of the culture of this space, fostered among the studied demographic by the convergence of the growing global push for marriage equality and increasing normalisation of the kinds of gay male identities commonly adopted among this group, with three key factors rooted primarily in Gaydar’s design: (1) young users’ perceptions of the site as a space for procuring casual sex, (2) their perceptions of the imagined user as embodying existing stereotypes of gay masculinity and (3) a lack of genuine alternatives in terms of niche digital spaces for gay men’s social networking.
Today we live in a time of unprecedented connectivity making it increasingly difficult to disconnect from the Internet. In this article we theorize that location-based technologies are transforming the practice of disconnecting from the Internet. To justify this claim we cross-articulate perspectives on disconnection and locative media studies, two scholarly fields in media studies that intersect with location and place. In a review of disconnection literature, we argue that views towards disconnection have been informed by changing perceptions of location and place in relation to Internet connectivity. Conversely, we observe locative media scholarship that has demonstrated the influence of location-based technologies in creating location-based connections that have become integral to Internet platforms and applications. We then synthesise disconnection and locative media studies to theorize the dynamics between the practice of disconnecting from the Internet, a physical location and a location-based technology. We first offer the concept of locative disconnection to describe the designation or localization of disconnective practice to a specific place. Secondly, we argue that location-based technologies are increasingly utilized to simulate locative disconnection in response to the spread of mobile connectivity and have the effect of making practices of disconnection easier, enforceable and more exclusive. Through the discussion of examples from leisure, entertainment and education, we demonstrate how locative disconnection is increasingly operationalized as both a luxury commodity and/or risk management tool and critically examine the threat and appeal of such technologies for governing populations and user behaviour.
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