1. Social Networking Sites and
Geographies of Disconnection
Ben Light
Queensland University of Technology
@doggyb

2. The Connectivity Conundrum
Facebook
helps
you
connect
and
share
with
the
people
in
your
life.
!
The
ultimate
gay
social
network.
Are
you
looking
to
meet
new
friends,
find
a
partner,
or
just
hook-­‐up?
Fitlads
is
the
place!
!
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.

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)
• Networked Masculinities (Light 2013)
• The Culture of Connectivity (van Dijck 2013)

4. 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)

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

6. With an SNS
• Disconnection may translate into non-use where someone chooses, or is
precluded from engaging with a particular site. The position may be of
variable length.
I remember my ex-wife had a complete fit with me being on it.
Probably through some fit of jealousy, I had to delete my first
Facebook, you know, because she figured I was up to no good,
which I wasn’t. It was awful, probably her to be honest, but yeah
I had to delete it. And obviously we split up and I set it back up
again, and it’s all fine.
(Matt, Train Driver, 35-44)

7. Within a single SNS
• Choosing not to connect with
people or the functions and
features of a given space.
• This can happen before or after a
connection takes place or has
taken place.
!
!
!
!
• defriending, friend culling, rejection of follow requests, the hiding of posts, the hiding of
online status, the use of back channels like private messaging
• the enactment of functions that stem heavy friending practices
• failure of affective functions
• the use of sites without engaging their networking affordances

8. Between an SNS and another SNS, website or
application offering or attempting connection
• Choosing, or not begin allowed to
connect accounts between sites
• Rebuffing the possibility for logging
into another site or application using
the login credentials of a site
• Not using social sharing features
inscribed within sites beyond the
SNS in question

9. Between SNS and spaces
of the physical world
• Not using an SNS in physical
space - e.g. concerns about
safety, privacy or social
etiquette
• Creating a site of
disconnection in order to be
able to use an SNS in public
via the enrolment of physical
distance, objects and bodies
• Turning off location services
inscribed into a given SNS and
the non-completion of
geographic data fields required
for SNS profiles

10. 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

11. This work is based on the following forthcoming
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 (Forthcoming).
Photocredits authors own except: https://www.flickr.com/
photos/122762863@N02/galleries/72157643681239383/