Postdigital Territoriality: Disentangling from Digital Media as a Return to Place

Abstract

People adopt geographical strategies to distance themselves from digital sociality. Rather than merely turning off devices, they engage in a broader, more durable project of disentangling. This effort responds to the homogenizing, standardizing forces of connective media and their coercive entanglements: socially normalized routines of personal media use, hybridizations of human agency with communication technologies, and digitally mediated activities that generate predictive and prescriptive products. Geographical attention to disentangling is merited by the fact that it comes in local variants and brings questions of place and human territoriality back onto the agenda in significantly new ways as part of a postdigital territoriality. We offer two vignettes revealing place’s role as protective, with its territoriality drawing a line around the self. We argue that postdigital territoriality inevitably reflects a differentiated terrain of gender, income, profession, and other elements of positionality.

人们采用位置策略来远离数字社会性。这不仅是关闭设备, 还包括更广泛持久的“剥离”。这一行为, 回应了媒体及其强制关联的同质化和标准化力量, 包括：使用个人媒体的社会规范化惯例、人类媒介与通信技术的结合、预测性和规范性产品的数字生产行为。应当从地理上关注剥离, 因为它以本地化形式出现, 并以全新的方式将后数字领地性的地点和人类领地性问题重新提上议程。我们提供了两个短文, 揭示了场地的领地性范畴及其保护作用。我们认为, 后数字领地性不可避免地反映了性别、收入、职业等位置性的差异。

La gente adopta estrategias geográficas para distanciarse de la socialidad digital. En vez de limitarse a apagar los dispositivos, las personas se involucran en un proyecto más amplio y durable de desvinculación. Este esfuerzo es una respuesta a las fuerzas homogeneizadoras y estandarizantes de los medios de comunicación conectivos y sus enredos coercitivos: rutinas socialmente normalizadas para el uso personal de los medios, hibridaciones de la agencia humana con las tecnologías de la comunicación y actividades digitalmente mediadas que generan productos predictivos y prescriptivos. La atención geográfica al desentrañamiento se amerita por el hecho de que se presenta en variantes locales, y aporta interrogantes de lugar y territorialidad humana a la agenda en modos significativamente novedosos, como parte de una territorialidad posdigital. Ofrecemos dos viñetas que revelan el rol protector del lugar, cuya territorialidad dibuja una línea alrededor del yo. Sostenemos que la territorialidad posdigital inevitablemente refleja un terreno diferenciado de género, ingreso, profesión y otros elementos de posicionalidad.

Key Words:

• digital disconnection
• digital geographies
• disentangling
• place
• territoriality

关键词:

• 数字分割
• 数字地理
• 剥离
• 地方
• 领地性。

Palabras clave:

• desconexión digital
• geografías digitales
• desenredo
• lugar
• territorialidad

Acknowledgments

We appreciate Brian King’s generous editorial guidance and the insightful feedback from three anonymous reviewers, which made for a stronger article.

Notes

1 The project was entitled Music Ecosystems Inner Scandinavia (MECO) and funded by the European Union Interreg Research Programme, grant number 20201630.

Additional information

Funding

Parts of this study were funded by the European Union Interreg Research Programme, project ID 20201630.

Notes on contributors

Paul C. Adams

PAUL C. ADAMS is Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712. E-mail: [email protected]. His research explores communication processes revealed through various geographical frameworks.

André Jansson

ANDRÉ JANSSON is Professor of Media and Communication Studies and Director in the Center for Geomedia Studies, Karlstad University, Sweden. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests center on questions of media use, identity, and power from an interdisciplinary perspective.