Politicians are decision-makers responsible for policy and opinion leaders with unique powers to construct challenges and problems as political. An emerging problematic issue pertains to users’ experiences of digital overload and invasive media (Syvertsen 2020; Lomborg and Ytre-Arne, 2021). Existing studies report that users struggle to self-regulate their digital media use – or ‘disconnect’. This relates to how connectivity platforms develop increasingly advanced techniques to keep them from logging off (Karppi 2018; Zuboff, 2019; Ytre-Arne et al., 2020).

This article aims to unpack how politicians understand problems about digital overload and invasive media and to what degree they regard digital disconnection as a potential political issue. We have selected Norway as our case country because of the population’s level of digital connectivity and the tradition of media regulation in the Nordic region (Syvertsen et al., 2014). Based on 16 research interviews with politicians and think-thank experts and a document analysis of official party-political platforms, we ask to what degree the politicians experience digital overload and invasive media as problematic, and if so, whom they believe is responsible for causing and solving the problems, and what specific solutions they suggest to the issues. In addition to digital disconnection literature, we draw on theoretical perspectives from media policy, political theory, and responsibilization.

Key findings indicate that politicians regard digital overload and invasive media as highly problematic. However, they are reluctant to suggest political interventions as solutions to these problems but rather place responsibility on the users and the platform industries. The politicians struggle to imagine political interventions that could help users disconnect while respecting personal authority and are doubtful about their power vis-à-vis the global tech companies. The article concludes with a critical discussion about the politicians’ acceptance of the neoliberal idea of responsibilization. This ultimately produces a reluctance to discuss disconnection as a political issue, not just an individual challenge.

Hitherto, and mainly by way of ethnographic studies, mediatisation research has informed us regarding the relevance, influence, and role of media in various spheres of social life. Less is known, however, about how mediatisation is discursively constructed. The relevance of constructivist approaches to mediatisation has been explicated, e.g., by Krotz (2017), who calls for critical mediatisation studies that consider the economic interests of mediatisation stakeholders, including the ICT industry. Against this backdrop, this article scrutinizes what the alleged 'mobility revolution' entails according to some who would benefit most from such a revolution. More concretely, the article studies the discursive practices of three leading corporations in the mobile communications sector: IBM, Huawei,and Ericsson. Stimulated by critical mediatisation theory as well as related accounts of the (technology) discourse-reality relationship, the article asks: if mobile media changes 'everything' in life-whose lives are being changed? If mobile media are 'indispensable' to modern ways of living-what are they supposed to do? Ultimately, the article speaks to the theme of this thematic issue by interrogating how contemporary mobile technology discourse contributes to the (re-)production of social space. Findings suggest that mediatisation is constructed as the response to an internal human drive for connectivity and as an inexorable natural force. Three sub-discourses on mobile technology are identified: 'technologies of cosmos', 'technologies of self', and, ultimately, 'technologies of life'. Altogether, these sub-discourses disclose and reinforce the hegemonic nature of mediatisation by communicating the indispensability of mobile media in modern-notably, urban and privileged-lives. In addition to providing answers to the study's empirical questions, the article includes a discussion about the potential implications of existing discourse overlaps between ICT companies and mediatisation theorists, as well as a sketch for an agenda for the 'discursive turn' in mediatisation studies.

When the ‘World Wide Web’ started to mature, the ‘information revolution’ was celebrated by researchers, politicians, policy makers, and others. Today, a new kind of technologically driven revolution is said to emerge: the ‘mobility revolution’. Unsurprisingly, the revolutionary potentials of mobile media tend to be particularly promoted by ICT companies. By all means, ICT corporations have a stake in marketing their technological gadgets as useful. Beyond this, however, they have an interest in constructing and safeguarding the idea of media as indispensable; as things necessary to lead a good life. While heavily promoted by technology producers, the media indispensability trope is not exclusive to the ICT industry. Rather, the trope also occurs in media research and in mediatization theory especially. Although there are still many suggestions as to how to define ‘mediatization’ (cf. Lundby, 2009; Hjarvard, 2013; Couldry & Hepp, 2013; Hepp & Couldry, 2016; Ekström et al, 2016; Krotz, 2009, 2017), some researchers foreground media indispensability as key to the concept. Jansson argues that ‘Today, we can see that media are generally, and to an increasing extent, perceived as indispensable to the interactions between individuals and groups’ (2015a, p. 380). Notwithstanding other areas of potential dispute, then, mediatization researchers and the communications industry unite in the recognition of technology as agents of social change. As noted by Krotz (2017), mediatization is not a natural, automatic process, but accomplished by humans. As such, he argues, it ‘must be reconstructed critically in order to find the points where the civil society was not asked’ (p. 114). Krotz calls for critical mediatization studies that consider the economic interests of mediatization stakeholders, including the ICT industry. My paper responds to recent calls for critical mediatization studies (see also Jansson, 2018), by scrutinizing the discursive practices of three leading corporations in the ICT sector: IBM, Huawei, and Ericsson. My overall objective is to approach the ‘mobility revolution’ from a constructivist standpoint in order to inspect what the alleged, media induced, social transformations entails according to some of those who would benefit the most from such a revolution. Stimulated by mediatization theory as well as related accounts of the (technology) discourse-reality relationship (e.g. Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Williams, 1974; Pinch & Bijker, 1984; Marvin, 1988; Fisher, 2010), this paper asks: if mobile media changes ‘everything’ in life – whose lives are being changed? If mobile media are ‘indispensable’ to modern ways of living – what are they supposed to do? Addressing these questions, the paper ultimately informs us about how mediatization is discursively constructed and sold to people.Findings suggest that mediatization is embraced and sold back to consumers as the response to an internal human drive and presented as an inexorable natural force. Three sub-discourses on mobile technology are identified in the empirical data set: ‘technologies of cosmos’, ‘technologies of self’, and, ultimately, ‘technologies of life’. Altogether, these sub-discourses disclose and reinforce the hegemonic nature of mediatization by communicating the indispensability of mobile media in modern – notably, urban, middle-class – lives.

Today’s converging entertainment industries create transmedial brand worlds in which consumers are expected to become deeply immersed. Integrated marketing campaigns connected to these worlds invite consumers to act as ‘co-producers’. While such an altered consumer identity has been taken as evidence of enhanced consumer agency, it has also been recognized as a source of consumer exploitation.

The conference presentation was based on findings from the author's thesis, More than meets the eye: Transmedial entertainment as a site of pleasure resistance and exploitation (2012), which analyzes the increasingly ambivalent power relationships that exist between agents in the contemporary entertainment industry and their most dedicated customers – the fans. The study employs a multiperspectival theoretical framework, in that cultural studies theory is combined with perspectives from political economy. Existing theory on transmedial textuality, branding, and fandom is applied to one particular franchise, Hasbro’s Transformers. This world, home of both industrial and fan-based creativity, is studied through analyses of official and unofficial content as well as through interviews with professionals and fans.

The case study shows that companies and fans contribute to the building and promotion of the Transformers brand world – in collaboration and in conflict. While fan productivity occasionally takes place without direct encouragement from the companies involved, it is also largely anticipated and desired by marketers. The findings suggest that consumer enjoyment potentially translates into industrial benefits, including free brand promotion. Ultimately, the study acknowledges transmedial brand worlds as, simultaneously, sites of pleasure, resistance, and exploitation.

Convergence has become a buzzword to explain all sorts of processes in contemporary society. Predominantly, the concept has been used to signify ongoing changes in how media content is being produced, distributed and consumed. In this paper, I present some initial

findings from my ongoing dissertation project. The entertainment franchise Transformers, which is used as a case-study in my research, seem to indicate that present-day marketing practices used to promote transmedial brands (such as the Transformers brand) contribute to a convergence of media content. By the utilization of various activities to extend and promote

the brand, such as transmedia storytelling, licensing, cross-promoting and a mixture of clever marketing initiatives, the boundaries between entertainment and advertising tend to become indistinct, if not dissolved entirely

Today’s converging entertainment industry creates ‘transmedial’ brand worlds in which consumers are expected to become immersed. Integrated marketing campaigns connected to these worlds encourage various kinds of consumer productivity and invite consumers to partake in brand-building processes. Consumers, thus, are increasingly counted on to act as co-producers of contemporary entertainment. While such an altered consumer identity has been taken as evidence of enhanced consumer agency, it has also been recognized as a source of consumer exploitation. 

This thesis aims to further our understanding of the increasingly ambivalent power-relationship that exists between agents in the entertainment industry and their most dedicated customers – the fans. The study employs a multiperspectival theoretical framework, in that cultural studies theory is enriched with perspectives from political economy. This integrated approach to the object of study yields a better understanding of the values of consumer activity, and fan productivity in particular, to industry and consumers respectively.

The study applies existing theory on transmedial textuality, branding, and fandom to one particular franchise, Hasbro’s Transformers. This brand world, home of both industrial and fan-based creativity, is studied through analyses of official and unofficial contents, and through interviews with professionals and fans. The focus is on the brand environment established around the first live action film ever made within the franchise. Special attention is given to the all-encompassing film marketing campaign that contributed to forming this environment and to fan productivity taking place in relation to it. 

The case study shows that companies and fans contribute to the building and promotion of the Transformers brand world – in collaboration and in conflict. While fan productivity occasionally takes place without direct encouragement from the companies involved, it is also largely anticipated and desired by marketing campaigns. The findings suggest that consumer enjoyment potentially translates into industrial benefits, including free brand promotion. Ultimately, the thesis acknowledges transmedial worlds of entertainment as concurrent sites of pleasure, resistance, and exploitation.

Today’s entertainment industries encourage consumer activity as a way to gain brand loyalty. Participatory marketing campaigns are calculated to promote such activity, especially when designed as transmedia entertainment and require various types of play labor. This paper seeks to add to our mounting yet still limited understanding of industry branding practices in an era of media convergence and against the background of recent theoretizations on the ‘new’ active consumer. Ultimately, awareness of such practices will help us understand the increasingly complicated relationship between producers and consumers of mediated entertainment. The paper is based on empirical data that were generated by the author in relation to her PhD thesis. Focusing on a specific marketing campaign that was launched in support of Michael Bay’s and Steven Spielberg’s 2007 Transformers film, the paper argues for the need to make manifest the interplay between the pleasurable and, at the same time, potentially exploitive traits of consumer activity in general and of fan productivity in particular.

This paper draws on empirical insights from two ongoing research projects, both of which are concerned with how we live and work with – or without – digital media: Hot desks in cool places: Coworking spaces as post-digital industry and movement (Karlstad University, PI André Jansson) and Intrusive media, ambivalent users, and digital detox (Digitox) (University of Oslo, PI Trine Syvertsen). With cues taken mainly from multi-sited ethnography in coworking spaces and qualitative interviews with (dis-)connected knowledge workers, I inquire about top-down and bottom-up forms of boundary work that are undertaken to produce particular workstyles and workspaces. I pay particular attention to expressions of what I shall call ’the post-digitalization of work’; that is, to the socio-spatial shaping of contemporary (knowledge) work by disconnectivity ideals and feelings of digital unease. 

Hitherto, and mainly by way of ethnographic studies, mediatization research has informed us about the relevance, influence, and role of media in various spheres of social life. Less is known, however, about how mediatization is discursively constructed. The relevance of constructivist approaches to mediatization has been explicated e.g. by Krotz (2017), who calls for critical mediatization studies that consider the economic interests of mediatization stakeholders, including the ICT industry. Against this backdrop, this paper scrutinizes what the alleged ‘mobility revolution’ entails according to some of those who would benefit the most from such a revolution. More concretely, the paper studies the discursive practices of three leading corporations in the mobile communications sector: IBM, Huawei, and Ericsson. Stimulated by critical mediatization theory as well as related accounts of the (technology) discourse-reality relationship, the paper asks: if mobile media changes ‘everything’ in life – whose lives are being changed? If mobile media are ‘indispensable’ to modern ways of living – what are they supposed to do? Ultimately, the paper speaks to the theme of this special issue by interrogating how contemporary mobile technology discourse contributes to the (re-)production of social space. Findings suggest that mediatization is constructed as the response to an internal human drive for connectivity and as an inexorable natural force. Three sub-discourses on mobile technology are identified: ‘technologies of cosmos’, ‘technologies of self’, and, ultimately, ‘technologies of life’. Altogether, these sub-discourses disclose and reinforce the hegemonic nature of mediatization by communicating the indispensability of mobile media in modern – notably, urban and privileged – lives. In addition to providing answers to the study’s empirical questions, the paper includes a discussion about the potential implications of existing discourse overlaps between ICT companies and mediatization theorists, as well as a sketch for an agenda for the ‘discursive turn’ in mediatization studies.

In post-digital capitalism, digital disconnection is not merely a “luxury” but also an obligation. Aiming to re-contextualize digital disconnection outside of digital detox resorts, social media, and elitist activism, this article asks how the ongoing disconnection turn affects how we (think about) work. With cues taken from digital disconnection studies and (digital) work/labour research, I inquire three facets of disconnective work. I elaborate, firstly, what disconnection might mean for work, as I scrutinize ideals pertaining to “deep” and “slow” work. Secondly, I unveil how disconnection may materialize at work, as I inspect “the post-digital workplace” and “disconnective technologies of work.” Thirdly, using “The Post-Digital Housewife” as a rhetorical figure for grasping the daily, typically unpaid, work that the disconnection turn makes acute, I recognize disconnection as work. The article concludes by presenting four dialectics of disconnective work, which serve to remind us of the paradoxical role of disconnection in processes of empowerment and exploitation.

This paper deals with the transformation of work under the pressures of mediatization. Mediatization is here understood as a historical process of media-induced change that establishes tensions between emancipating forces and increasing socio-technological dependence. The paper seeks to make sense of mediatized work and its implications by covering forms of work that has either been reconfigured through changes in the media system or developed as a direct response to mediatization and the accompanying post-Fordist regime of work.

Over the last decade, mobile media technologies have come to transform the ways in which we organize life and work. Inventions like the smartphone and the spreading of free Wi-Fi networks – technologies which allow us to “stay connected” while on the move – affect how we plan and perform our everyday activities as well as how we handle relationships. Employing a theoretical framework centered on the notion of ‘the mediatization of labor’, my conference contribution focuses on the overarching question of how mobile media technologies impact on working life itself and on work/life balance. For the specific category of people who work partly internationally, access to new media can be assumed to be particularly crucial for the organization of personal- as well as working life. The empirical data upon which my contribution is based consist of 10-15 qualitative interviews, conducted with international business elites working in the private sector. For this group of workers, the time spent away from both workplace and home seems to become a time of self-negotiation; a time when questions of who to stay in touch with, when, and to what extent need to be answered in ways that please all parties involved. My preliminary results indicate that expectations of connectivity are set by both employers and family members, and that the connectivity enabled by mobile media technologies is understood by the respondents as a precondition for an international high-level career.

Current research suggests that coworking spaces (CWS) both respond to and legitimize work precarization. This is an important critique. Less acknowledged, however, is the fact that CWS also (re)produce eliteness. Thus, to the aim of offering perspectives that remain underrepresented in CWS research, I here scrutinize CWS as promotors of class privilege. I build my case on the premise that class privilege has to do with more than merely economic superiority and seek to dismantle, in particular, the role of geomedia technologies in the (re)production of CWS eliteness. With clues derived from a literature review as well as analyses of real-life cases, I here recognize CWS as places of elite (non-)consumption, as hubs of elite mobility, as nodes in elite networks, and, ultimately, as elite territories in the (super-)gentrified geomedia city. I end my article by reflecting on the dialectics of CWS eliteness, thereby suggesting how precariousness and eliteness are interlinked.

This paper draws on the concepts of territoriality and the postdigital as well as preliminary empirical insights from a multi-method study, combining discourse analysis and multi-sited ethnography in a number of coworking spaces. The paper inquires about manifestations of top-down workplace territoriality, with a focus on the role of media (non-)use in the diversification of space.  

Durable media franchises are inevitably sites of change. For creative or commercial purposes, they tend to change both in terms of what commodities they hold and what stories they contain. This paper analyses Hasbro’s Transformers by way of a combined theoretical framework that considers franchise changes in relation to both ‘world-building’ and ‘brand-building’. While each concept has gained increased scholarly attention recently, they are rarely or only superficially combined in the existent literature on media franchising. The paper argues that this combination of theory allows us to, on the one hand, understand how franchises like Transformers are constituted both as ‘story-worlds’ and ‘brand-worlds’, and, on the other hand, detect potential power asymmetries in the industry/fan relationship. The Transformers case study makes evident that the processes of world-building and brand-building are not always easy to combine in ways that satisfy both companies and audiences.

The maturation of mobile, convergent, and place-contingent technologies has inspired researchers from different fields to re-imagine the relationship between geography and media. Recently, the linking of site-specific media and mediatized places culminated in the overarching concept that sits at the midpoint of this special issue: geomedia. While the majority of work within geomedia studies focuses on contemporary developments, thereby offering snapshots of geomediatization processes as these currently manifest themselves, this volume wants to address the nexus of geography and media from a decidedly historical perspective. Doing so, we hope to inspire a historical turn in geomedia studies as well as contribute to the ongoing discussion about how to define geomedia (studies) beyond (the study of) particular technologies or media genres. By boldly uprooting the geomedia concept from its contemporary, predominantly digital, framework, the contributions gathered here encourage us to map the trajectories of geomedia, to challenge "geomediatization realism," to remedy epistemological biases, and to further articulate the postdigital.

Geomedia, representing an epochal shift in spatial mediations and spatialized media, changes daily life. This future-directed thematic issue advocates for contextualized understandings of geomedia that transcend contemporary hegemonic representations of technology. It recognizes the transformative powers of geomediatization processes and asks what “geomedia futures” such processes might bring about. Bridging critical geomedia studies and critical future studies, it challenges dominant narratives about tomorrow’s technological society and promotes the exploration of diverse, equitable, and sustainable futures with and under geomedia. Through numerous methodological approaches, the collected articles examine the role of geomedia in contexts such as urban planning, tourism, surveillance, governance, and policy. The thematic issue emphasizes the importance of envisioning alternative futures that resist technological rationalization and unethical exploitation of geospatial data, supporting more inclusive and human-centered mediatized places. This work contributes to ongoing debates in geomedia studies, highlighting the need for critical and interdisciplinary approaches to understand and shape our technological future.

This chapter assesses the social consequences of transmedia as a regime of cultural circulation through two thematic lenses: work and tourism. Based on our previous fieldwork, as well as the work of others, we hold that transmedia feeds into and provides new facets to geo-social de-differentiation as diagnosed by postmodern (or, “late-modern”) sociologists in the 1980s and 1990s. This means, above all, that social realms that used to be delimited in time and space are increasingly open-ended, which, in turn, has a profound impact on how relations between self and society are negotiated. Focusing on work and tourism, we try to show how people’s engagement with transmedia fuses realms that were once taken as the moral and social opposites. On the one hand, “transmedia work” denotes a social condition marked by the growing prominence of strategic recognition work and liquid boundaries between leisure and labour. On the other hand, “transmedia tourism” captures not just the growing presence of touristic expressivity in everyday life, but also the growing day-to-day significance of logistical practices - which ultimately constitute another kind of work - in the creation of tourism phantasmagoria. The chapter begins with a positioning of our analysis in relation to the theoretical discourses of transmedia and postmodern de-differentiation. The following two parts use empirical examples to tease out the characteristics of “transmedia work” and “transmedia tourism”, respectively, as increasingly liquid and contradictory social terrains. In the final section we bring together the discussions into an argument concerning (1) the prospects of revisiting postmodern theory as a way of conceptualizing social consequences of transmedia and (2) the relevance of strategic recognition work and logistical work as complementary perspectives for grasping the role of transmedia in the formation of contemporary selves.

In Transmedia Work Karin Fast and André Jansson explore several key questions that frame the study of the social and cultural implications of a digital, connected workforce. How might we understand 'privilege' and 'precariousness' in today's digitalized work market? What does it mean to be a privileged worker under the so-called connectivity imperative? What are the social and cultural forces that normalize the appropriation of new media in, and beyond, the workplace? These key questions come together in the notion of transmedia work - a term through which a social critique of work under digital modernity can be formulated. Transmedia work refers to the rise of a new social condition that saturates many different types of work, with various outcomes. In some social groups, and in certain professions, transmedia work is wholeheartedly embraced, while it is questioned and resisted elsewhere. There are also variations in terms of control; who can maintain a sense of mastery over transmedia work and who cannot? Through interviews with cultural workers, expatriates, and mobile business workers, and ancillary empirical data such as corporate technology and coworking discourse, Transmedia Work is an important addition to the study of mediatization and digital culture.

Coworking spaces are contradictory places. Typically, they are constructed as connected, domestic-like places for hard work and as recreational, aestheticized destinations for individuals in search of work-life balance and opportunities for partial disconnection. This article contributes an immanent critique of coworking spaces through the overarching notion of “coworking space territoriality”. Our point of departure is the concept of post-digital territoriality, which captures how individuals and organizations in various ways try to counter the downsides of escalating digitalization and reclaim a sense of bounded place. To further elaborate the subversive potentials of coworking spaces, however, the “post-digital” is brought into dialogue with “post-work” and “post-tourist”; two other “post-” concepts that contain ideas and practices that characterize the contradictory nature of coworking spaces. At the intersection of all three facets of territoriality, we argue, the coworking space emerges as a spatially and socially bounded comfort zone. The suggested approach informs the ongoing conversation about the ambiguous role of coworking spaces in broader transformations of society, especially in terms of social inclusion and exclusion. The theoretical arguments are anchored in a substantial literature review as well as in first-hand empirical data from a “hot-desking ethnography” covering ten different coworking spaces in Oslo, Denver, and Palma de Mallorca. 

This book introduces and develops the concept of geomedia studies as the name of a particular subfield of communication geography. Despite the accelerating societal relevance of 'geomedia' technologies for the production of various spaces, mobilities, and power-relations, and the unquestionable emergence of a vibrant research field that deals with questions pertaining to such topics, the term geomedia studies remains surprisingly unestablished. By addressing imperative questions about the implications of geomedia technologies for organizations, social groups and individuals (e.g. businesses profiting from geo-surveillance, refugees or migrants moving across national borders, or artists claiming their rights to public space) the book also aims to contribute to ongoing academic and societal debates in our increasingly mediatized world.

The report Mediatization of Culture and Everyday Life commissioned by the sector committee Mediatization of culture and everyday life of the Riksbanken Jubileumsfond provides a comprehensive overview of current Swedish mediatization research focusing on culture and everyday life in and beyond the field of media and communication studies. Based on a broad mapping of research projects financed in Sweden that are tackling questions of media-related change, the report provides insight into a still evolving area of investigation. The two parts of the report firstly provide a discussion of the state of the art of mediatization research and a review of relevant Swedish research projects to secondly present a number of outstanding research environments engaging in research of mediatization of culture and everyday life. The report concludes with outlining topics that have been overlooked in the area so far. Especially the discussion of temporal aspects of media-related change is pointed out as a gap in current research efforts.

This study sets out provide an understanding of internationally mobile life-conducts from a perspective that takes into account social costs that come with being away from localized, everyday life. We show that mobile elites are oftentimes reluctant travellers. A way of coping with the existential dilemmas of being away is to stay connected with family and friends with technologies of communication, which are deployed by the mobile elite under the regime of what Tomlinson calls “technologies of the hearth”. Furthermore, few informants ascribe any value to travelling in itself. Cosmopolitanism can here be understood as a form capital rather than a way of immersing the self into the culture of the other. We arrive at the concept of elastic mobility, which highlights central push-and-pull processes within mobile life-conducts. The concept forwards a perspective on the social consequences of globalization that goes beyond contemporary “flow speak”.

This study sets out to provide an understanding of internationally mobile elites from a perspective that takes into account the social costs that come with being away from localized, everyday life. We show that mobile elites are often reluctant travellers and employ Bude and Dürrschmidt’s notion of ‘transclusion’ to understand the often-unrecognized ambivalence of mobile lifestyles. One way of coping with

the existential dilemma of being away is to stay connected with family and friends through technologies of communication, which are deployed by the mobile elite under the regime of what Tomlinson calls ‘technologies of the hearth’. We arrive at the concept of ‘elastic mobility’, which highlights central push-and-pull processes in mobile lifestyles. The concept forwards a perspective on the social consequences of globalization that goes beyond contemporary ‘flow speak’.

Disconnecting from digital media is often mentioned in the public debate as a way of improving quality of life, productivity, sustainability, and so forth. However, not everyone can afford to disconnect, and media morality varies across social space. Based on data from a national Swedish survey (2019), this chapter applies correspondence analysis and a Bourdieusian theoretical framework to chart the extent to which different social groups prioritize disconnecting in different places, and the forms of digital unease associated with smartphone use. Such preferences are mapped onto a social space constructed around the distribution of economic and cultural capital in Swedish society, also illuminating how disconnection practices correspond to other lifestyle practices. The analysis reveals that the handling of digital (dis)connection (in different places) plays into overarching patterns of taste and cultural distinction. As such, disconnection manifests as an emerging moral-symbolic battleground in affluent societies.