1. Strategies for the suspension and prevention
of connection: Rendering disconnection as
socioeconomic lubricant with Facebook
Ben Light @doggyb
Elija Cassidy

2. The Connectivity Conundrum
Facebook
helps
you
connect
and
share
with
the
people
in
your
life.
Capture
and
Share
the
World's
Moments
Instagram
is
a
fast,
beautiful
and
fun
way
to
share
your
life
with
friends
and
family.
Welcome
to
LinkedIn,
the
world's
largest
professional
network
with
250
million
members
in
over
200
countries
and
territories
around
the
globe.
Our
mission
is
simple:
connect
the
world's
professionals
to
make
them
more
productive
and
successful.
Twitter
helps
you
create
and
share
ideas
and
information
instantly,
without
barriers.
Twitter
is
the
best
way
to
connect
with
people,
express
yourself
and
discover
what's
happening.
YouTube
allows
billions
of
people
to
discover,
watch
and
share
originally-­‐
created
videos.
YouTube
provides
a
forum
for
people
to
connect,
inform,
and
inspire
others
across
the
globe
and
acts
as
a
distribution
platform
for
original
content
creators
and
advertisers
large
and
small.

3. Reassembling Connectivity
• Networked Society (Castells 1996)
• Networked Individualism (Wellman 2001)
• Networked Collectivitsm (Baym 2007)
• Networked Publics (Ito 2007; boyd 2008)
• Personal Connections in a Digital Age (Baym 2010)
• Connect and Create (Light et al 2012)
• Networked Masculinities (Light 2013)
• The Culture of Connectivity (van Dijck 2013)

4. Resistance and Appropriation
• Although social media and the networked publics they
are commonly associated with, might encourage a
particular line of appropriation (boyd 2008, boyd 2011),
or attempt to set the tone for use (Papacharissi 2009).
• It is also acknowledged that even though certain
technological arrangements may seek to engage
connectivity, users may not experience them as the
designer envisioned (Griffiths and Light 2008, Baym
2010, Light and McGrath 2010, Cassidy 2013, van Dijck
2013, van Dijck and Poell 2013).

5. Interrogating Disconnection
• encrypted pseudonyms on the French Minitel (Livia 2002)
• crypto-tagging, the use of face masking techniques, and the adjustment of audience settings (Lange 2007)
• discourses of digital inclusion and the digital divide (Hargittai 2007, Hargittai 2012),
• a lack of interest in SNS activity (Tufekcki 2008, Portwood-Stacer 2013)
• matrices of shades of use in comparison to heavy use (Hargittai and Hsieh 2011).
• not listening (Crawford 2009)
• fragmentation (Baym 2007)
• time out (Powers 2010)
• digital forgetting (Mayer-Schönberger 2011)
• private spheres of interaction (Papacharrisi 2010, 2011)
• Disconnect.Me (Karppi 2014)

6. Disconnective Practice (Light 2014; Light and Cassidy 2014)
• Disconnective Power
• Geographies of Disconnection
• Disconnectors
• Disconnection Modes
• Ethics of Disconnection
• Strategies - Prevention of Connection
• Strategies - Suspension of Connection

7. Disconnective Power
• 1DV: A has power over B because they can get B to
do something they would not do otherwise. (It is
made law that men cannot ride Salford public
transport in skirts)
• 2DV: Power is exercised where the scope of decision-making
is constrained and conflict suppressed. (Men
can only wear skirts on Salford public transport if they
are made of nylon)
• 3DV: Power is exercised by creating conditions so
that conflict does not arise in the first place. (Men
would never think of trying to board a bus in Salford,
wearing a skirt, because they are conditioned to think
this is not an option, and this is the case even though
they might enjoy it if they did it)
Dislike Buttons
Reject Friend
Reject Follower
Retweeting
Moderating Use
Historical Editing
Censorship
Functions
Resistance

8. Geographies of Disconnection

9. Disconnectors

10. Disconnection Modes

11. Ethics of Disconnection
• The exercise of editorial ethics which seeks to prevent harm to oneself and
others through the enactment of selective disconnection.
• Privately public and publicly private strategies Lange (2007), the deployment of
recontextualisation work and linguistic cover (Light 2014).
• Such acts could even be as simple as not posting about someone or not
tagging someone in a photograph with an SNS.
• Questions of how SNS themselves may cause harm where disconnection does
not occur are also raised – people’s experiences of uncensored shocking video
content for example.
• Ethical judgements may also be tied to notions of disconnection whereby a
person choosing not to connect for a given reason (such as not sharing a
serious health condition) is written into being as doing the right thing.

12. Disconnective Strategies of
Prevention of Connection
• Not friending
• Not playing Farmville
• Not liking
• Not linking
• Not tagging
• Linguistic cover

13. Disconnective Strategies of
Suspension of Connection
• Holding friend requests
• Half viewing
• Friend culling
• Media breaks

14. Disconnection as Socio-economic Lubricant

15. Moving forward
• Nuancing of appropriation to include
disconnection
• Serious attention to non-human
disconnectors
• site philosophies and
organisational policies
• infrastructures - 3g/4g, WiFi, app
stores, toilets, bus stops,
vehicles
• psychological aspects - lack of
emoticon use or xxx
• Roles of disconnection - practical,
economic, ethics, erotic
• Combining disconnective practice with
other theory

16. This work is based on the following publications
• Light, B. (2014). Disconnecting with Social Networking
Sites. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
• Light, B. and Cassidy, E. (2014) Strategies for the
Suspension and Prevention of Connection: Rendering
Disconnection as Socioeconomic Lubricant with
Facebook, New Media and Society 16 (7): 1169-1184
• Photocredits authors own except slide 1 (Guardian Image)
and: https://www.flickr.com/photos/122762863@N02/
galleries/72157643681239383/