From Resistance to Privilege: A narrative literature review on disconnection studies

Over the past decade, academic research has shown a markedly increasing interest in the concept of digital disconnection, a phenomenon frequently conceptualized as the disconnection turn. Despite the various methodological and analytical approaches examined by previous literature reviews, the field still lacks a clear thematic framework and a disciplinary definition for the several practices of disconnection examined by this literature. This narrative literature review addresses the growing academic field of disconnection studies, seeking to map the main thematic areas that have emerged in the literature and the meanings attributed to them by scholars. Utilizing a mixed (qualitative-quantitative) methodological approach on a corpus comprising 432 contributions, the study identified seven thematic clusters. The analysis phase yielded a conceptual map of the core thematic areas within the literature, complemented by an explanation of the distribution of articles in the corpus across the three ERC (European Research Council) domains. The clusters are subsequently synthesized in a two-dimensional analytical framework. This framework distinguishes ‘Disconnection as Resistance’ from ‘Disconnection as Privilege’, while also highlighting the difference between disconnection as a ‘Performative act’ and disconnection as a ‘Collective issue’. The findings provide a theoretical framework for understanding the main conceptual approaches emerging in disconnection literature, while simultaneously offering a broader critical perspective of the structural factors that regulate disconnection practices in the age of platform society.