[Air-L] Cfp New paths and future trajectories in digital (dis)connection studies

[Ana Jorge]

New paths and future trajectories in digital (dis)connection studies:
unpacking the post-digital

Date: Monday, 7th of September 2026, 09:00 to 17:00
Venue: Masaryk University, Brno.
Deadline for Abstracts: April 1st, 2026

The full call is available as a PDF at:
https://ecrea2026brno.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/6.-CFA_ECREA26_Preconference_New-paths-and-future-trajectories-in-digital-disconnection-studies-1.pdf

*Rationale*
The fifth pre-conference on digital disconnection is an important
opportunity for scholars at all
career stages to reflect on how the individual and societal significance of
digital disconnection
is changing; what new discourses on disconnection are emerging in the
public debate, and how
the grounds of digital disconnection studies are shifting. The prescriptive
approach adopted by
several countries, through smartphone bans in schools and age restrictions
on social media
use, is reshaping research in this field, especially on how younger people
experience and make
sense of a form of forced disconnection.
The pre-conference has three main objectives:
1. To encourage empirical and theoretical discussions among scholars on how
varying
contexts, situations, actors, and agencies shape emerging pathways of
digital
disconnection in response to socio-cultural changes that increasingly
challenge the
normalization of digitalization as a dominant paradigm.
2. To foster networking to facilitate contact and career development for
scholars from
different cultural, geographical, and disciplinary backgrounds, ensuring
ongoing
continuity in nurturing exchanges of perspectives among researchers.
3. To promote partnerships and collaborations that compare and interweave
knowledge,
perspectives, methods, and future trajectories on disconnection studies.
The emergence of new crises and systemic challenges has unsettled the
long-standing
assumptions that have positioned ubiquitous digital connectivity as a
default lifestyle and an
organizing discourse. The backlashes of digitalization have led individuals
to rethink their
relationship with the online pervasiveness, reassessing the importance of
personal well-being,
social justice, and equity over the efficiency-driven logics often
associated with limitless
connectivity.
There is growing recognition that digitalization’s logics and affordances
have fostered
ambivalent experiences with social ties, societal issues, inequalities, and
contexts marked by
cultural differences and conflicts. In this scenario, digital disconnection
has emerged both as
a form of resistance and as a cultural response to the pressures exerted by
digitalization -
creating, paradoxically, new consumeristic demands, as labels like “digital
wellbeing” and
“digital detox” become increasingly commoditized.
Through diverse practices, tools, and strategies, individuals exercise
agency by negotiating a
balance between connection and disconnection, conflicting emotions, and
renewed
expectations toward digitally mediated life. However, questions of power,
responsibility, and
limits of individual agency remain on how to cultivate more ethical and
sustainable
relationships with technology.
Starting from these premises, the pre-conference invites participants to
reflect on:
a) how different socio-cultural, political, and economic contexts shape the
agency of
users and social groups, incentivizing or constraining disconnection
experiences and
habits;
b) the prominent role of institutional and socio-technical actors (such as
generative AI
platforms and algorithmic systems) in countering or fostering the decisions,
motivations, and practices related to digital platforms and their
affordances
disengagement;
c) critical perspectives on how the grounds of disconnection studies are
shifting due to
institutional, market-oriented, and political interferences that are
reframing
disconnection discourses and further popularizing and commodifying
disconnection
practices and experiences.
We welcome abstracts emphasizing the following dimensions, while noting
that contributions
are not limited to these themes:
• Theoretical advances, methodological and empirical challenges in digital
disconnection studies.
• Cross-cultural, cross-platform, and historical perspectives on
disconnection.
• Social, cultural, environmental, and professional motivations and
consequences of
disconnection practices, especially for understudied social groups.
• Contextual, economic, organizational, political, and institutional
interferences on
digital disconnection studies and practices.
• Emotional, affective, and psychological implications of disconnection
experiences.
• Social and collective dimensions of digital disconnection.
• Critical perspectives on the role that public and private actors have on
promoting/countering digital disconnection and on how this shifts the
grounds of digital
disconnection studies.
• Intersectional approaches to digital disconnection practices (e.g.,
ethnicity, gender,
class, age, neurodivergence…).


*ABSTRACT SUBMISSION*The conference is based on non-anonymous abstracts of
no more than 350 words.
Submit abstracts to https://forms.gle/kRKQ1fBR125s59kH8 by April 1st, 2026.
Contact person: francesca.ieracitano at uniroma1.it
Abstracts will undergo a review process by the organising committee.
Decisions on acceptance will be communicated by April 23rd, 2026.

*Organizing committee members:*
Marie Colombe Afota (University of Montreal)
Piermarco Aroldi, Barbara Scifo (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of
Milan)
Alex Beattie (Victoria University of Wellington)
Arianna Bussoletti, Francesca Comunello, Francesca Ieracitano (Sapienza
University of
Rome)
Ana Jorge (Lusófona University)
Monica Marra (INAF- Italian National Institute of Astrophysics)
Mora Matassi (Universidad de San Andrés)
Minh Hao Nguyen (University of Amsterdam)
Francesca Pasquali (University of Bergamo)
Sara Van Bruyssel, Mariek Vanden Abeele (Ghent University)


*The pre-conference is endorsed by the following ECREA sections and
TWGs:*-Digital
Culture and Communication;
-Audience and Reception Studies;
-Gender, Sexuality, and Communication section;
-TWG on Aging and Communication Studies
-TWG on Media & Intimacy.

*Fees*: No fee is requested for participants