Kenzie Burchell and Adi Kuntsman in conversation about dis/connection, dis/engagement, and digital life.

Kenzie Burchell, the author of Constant Disconnection: The Weight of Everyday Digital Life (Stanford UP) and Adi Kuntsman, the co-author of Paradoxes of Digital Disengagement : In Search of the Opt Out Button (with Esperanza Miyake, Westminster UP) will discuss compulsory connectivity, disengagement and digital rights. Please join us to hear more about their two books, and explore how digital communication shaped and was shaped by the Covid-19 pandemic, global war and capitalism, and the rise of generative AI.

THE SPEAKERS

Kenzie Burchell is a Media Sociologist working at the intersection of everyday life, media practices, labour and technological change. As an Associate Professor at University of Toronto, his teaching and research span Journalism and Information Studies with additional focus on digital surveillance and identity in the context of disinformation, lawfare, and marketcraft. Over the last two years, Dr. Burchell has led the “Beyond Disinformation” research network bringing together scholars from the Universities of Manchester, Melbourne and Toronto to produce a recently published open-access policy document for the UK and Canadian governments.

Adi Kuntsman is Reader in Digital Politics at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK; author/editor of multiple monographs and edited collections; and a co-editor (with Erinma Ochu and Liu Xin) of a new book series, “Digital Materialities and Sustainable Futures” at Emerald. Adi’s recent work focuses on the right to ‘opt out’ of digital communication; environmental impacts of digital technologies and the need for digital environmental literacy; and the use of generative AI in times of wars and political violence. Adi’s new book, Digital Technologies, Smart Cities and the Environment: In the Ruins of Broken Promises(with Liu Xin, Bristol University Press) focuses on environmental harms of digital technologies and their use in smart cities.

THE BOOKS

Constant Disconnection: The Weight of Everyday Digital Life

Overflowing email inboxes, deluges of mobile phone notifications and torrents of social media posts—the flow of communication in its abundance is today’s individualized interface for interpersonal and professional practices. Communication technologies and their use are both the needle and the thread of the wider social tapestry of everyday contemporary life. This ever-changing communication environment is where the neoliberal economic policies of the West and the commercial imperatives of the platform and data-mining industries meet. It is where the contradictions they produce can be felt day-to-day by citizens-turned-users. How does it feel to live at the pressure points of intersecting economic realities and why does it matter? Drawing on a decade of sociological research in the UK and Canada, Constant Disconnection examines how individuals try to manage connection as participation in everyday life and how, on a larger scale, the ever-expanding knowledge, communication, and data-driven economies depend on the very pressures that result from our disparate communication needs.

Paradoxes of Digital Disengagement : In Search of the Opt Out Button

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.

 For those attending in Manchester: the event will be followed by lunch and networking until 1pm.