Constant Disconnection
eBook - ePub

Constant Disconnection

The Weight of Everyday Digital Life

  1. 316 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Constant Disconnection

The Weight of Everyday Digital Life

About this book

The weight of constant digital connection is the default condition of working life, home life, and everyday personal life – driving us to engage more with platforms than with people, a new state of constant disconnection that we cannot escape. Overflowing email inboxes, deluges of mobile phone notifications and torrents of social media posts—the flow of communication in its abundance is today's individualized interface for interpersonal and professional practices.

Communication technologies and their use are both the needle and the thread of the wider social tapestry of everyday contemporary life. This ever-changing communication environment is where the neoliberal economic policies of the West and the commercial imperatives of the platform and data-mining industries meet. It is where the contradictions they produce can be felt day-to-day by citizens-turned-users.

How does it feel to live at the pressure points of intersecting economic realities and why does it matter? Drawing on extensive sociological research, Burchell examines how individuals try to manage connection as participation in everyday life and how, on a larger scale, the ever-expanding knowledge, communication, and data-driven economies depend on the very pressures that result from our disparate communication needs. With so much time spent managing the pressures of our communication environment, we often overlook the way media technologies produce systemic tensions that are reshaping how we interact with each other and what we understand to be social connection today.

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Yes, you can access Constant Disconnection by Kenzie Burchell in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Communication Studies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Preface: There Are Real People Here
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. Introduction: The Disconnected Sociality of Everyday Life
  9. 1. Economies of Communication Management
  10. 2. Managing Time
  11. 3. Managing Connection
  12. 4. Practicing Surveillance
  13. 5. Practicing Authenticity
  14. 6. Practicing Metacommunication
  15. Conclusion: To Count and Be Counted
  16. Notes
  17. Index