This document discusses social networking sites and disconnection. It begins by providing examples of how different social media sites describe themselves and their purposes in connecting people. It then reviews literature that has examined concepts related to connectivity on social networks. Next, it outlines a framework that was developed for understanding different modes of disconnection from social networks, including non-use of sites, disconnecting within a single site, and disconnecting between sites. The document concludes by discussing directions for future research on appropriation of social media to include disconnection.

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/