Paradoxes of digital disengagement : : in search of the opt-out button / / Adi Kuntsman, Esperanza Miyake.

• Superior document: Critical digital and social media studies ; Volume 23
• VerfasserIn: Kuntsman, Adi,; Miyake, Esperanza,
• TeilnehmendeR: Miyake, Esperanza,
• Place / Publishing House: London : : University of Westminster Press,, [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: CDSMS (Series) ; Volume 23.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (xiii, 167 pages).

Life is increasingly governed and mediated through digital and smart technologies, platforms, big data and algorithms. However, the reasons, practices and impact of how the digital is used by different institutions are often deeply linked to social oppression and injustice. Similarly, the ability to resist these digital impositions is based on inequality and privilege. Challenging the ways in which we are increasingly dependent on the digital, this book raises a set of provocative and urgent questions: in a world of compulsory digitality is there an opt out button? Where, when, how, why and to whom is it available? Answering these questions has become even more relevant since the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, the book puts forward the concept of 'digital disengagement' which is explored across six key areas of digitisation: health; citizenship; education; consumer culture; labour; and the environment. Part I examines the difficulty of opting out of compulsory digitality in a world where most things are digital by default. From health apps, algorithmic decision-making to learning analytics, opting out comes with a set of troubling consequences. Part II turns to several examples of disconnection and disengagement. The chapters reveal how phenomena like digital detoxes, time-management apps and online 'green' spaces are co-opted by the very digital systems one is trying to resist. The book critiques issues relating to digital surveillance, algorithmic discrimination and biased tech, corporatisation and monetisation of data, exploitative digital labour, digitalised self-discipline and destruction of the environment. As an interdisciplinary piece of work, the book will be useful to any scholar and activist in Digital, Internet and Social Media Studies; Digital Sociology and Social Policy; Digital Health; Media, Popular and Communication Studies; Consumer culture; and Environment Studies.

Table of Contents

List of Figures -- Preface -- Introduction -- In Search of the Opt-Out Button -- CET 1 -- Digital Disengagement Beyond Social Refusals -- Digital Disengagement Beyond Motivations and Practices Networked Technologies and the Material (Im)possibilities -- of Disconnection An Elastic Continuum of Connection and Disconnection -- The Road Ahead -- Bibliography -- Part I: Where Is the Opt-Out? -- 1. Digital Health: Data Traps at Our Fingertips -- Introduction -- NHS Digital and the App Library: What Is One Opting Out Of? -- Between the Local and the Global, the Legal and the Technical Contact Tracing Apps and Performative Data Consciousness Individual and Collective Opt-Outs Conclusion: From Data Rights to Data Justice -- Bibliography -- 2. Automated Governance: Digital Citizenship in the Age of Algorithmic Cruelty -- Introduction -- The State's New Digital Clothes -- The State's New Digital Weapons -- Imagining Alternatives -- Conclusion: From Digital Violence to Digital Self-Defence -- Bibliography -- 3. Education in the Age of 'Corporate YouTube': Big Data Analytics Meets Instafamous -- Introduction -- Panopto: The 'Corporate YouTube' -- Educational Analytics: Data Mining and Measuring Pedagogical Success -- Insta-Teacher: Performance Monitoring the Performance of Pedagogy -- Opting In for Digital Disengagement -- Lecture Capture and the Captive Data Double': The Persistence of Data -- and Digital Rights -- Conclusion: We Don't Need No Education? -- Bibliography -- Part II: Digital Disengagement between Co-optation and Resistance -- 4. Consuming Digital Disengagement: The High Cost of Opting Out -- Introduction -- Cyclic Digital Double-Bind -- Consuming Digital Disengagement During Covid-19: Social Distancing and Contactless Connectivity -- Conclusion: The Self-Fulfilling and Self-Consuming Prophecy of Opting Out -- Bibliography -- 5. The Labour of Digital Disengagement: Time and the Luxury -- of Opting Out -- Introduction -- Moment Family: Digital and Affective Labour The Labour of Digital Re-Engagement -- The Luxury of Opting Out: Who Has the Time? -- Covid-19: The Visibility of Privilege -- Conclusion: The Hamster Work-Wheel of Digital Disengagement -- Bibliography -- 6. Digital Disengagement and the Environment: Solutionism, Greenwashing and Partial Opt-Outs -- Introduction -- Escaping the Digital into the Pastoral: The Semiotic Extractivism of Digital Detoxes -- Are Digital Technologies Here to Save the Planet? Environmental Sustainability and Digital Solutionism -- Partial Refusals -- The Pandemic and Beyond -- Conclusion: Digital Disengagement as Radical Environmental -- Responsibility -- Bibliography -- Conclusion: Paradoxes and the Elastic Continuum of Digital Disengagement -- So Is There an Opt-Out Button? Beyond Disconnection -- Revisiting Paradoxes of Digital Disengagement: Resistance, -- Compulsory Connectivity and Co-optation -- An Elastic Continuum Revisited: Expanding and Shrinking Possibilities of Opt-Out -- Opt-Out as a Path Towards Collective Justice Future Pathways Beyond Digital Inevitability -- Bibliography -- Index.