Research group for Media, Innovation and Contemporary Technologies

Dis/Connection in Everyday Life and Society - DIS/CO Lab

#DigitalWellbeing
#DigitalDisconnection
#DigitalCulture
#DigitalSpirituality
#DigitalHealth
#DigitalLiteracy
#WorkLifeBalance
#MediaMultitasking
#DigitalAcceleration

Being connected anytime and anyplace has become the norm in our contemporary society. This norm is both a bliss and a burden, making 24/7 connectivity very ambivalent: On one hand, we benefit from our social activities being freed from time and place constraints. We have direct access to contents, services and our network - without having to rely on middlemen or deal with gatekeepers. As a result we can more autonomously and flexibly manage our everyday life. On the other hand, we struggle to keep focus, spend more time online then we want, and struggle with the pressure to be permanently online and permanently connected. We have difficulty feeling present or in the moment in the offline world, and experience everyday digital harms, such as exposure to ‘picture perfect’ contents and polarized interactions on.

DIS/CO Lab investigates how people manage and negotiate the ambivalences that come with dis/connection in this 24/7 digital culture. We develop insight into what dis/connection means, how and why it affects health, social relationships and well-being, and which broader structural forces in society are implicated in how dis/connection manifests on the ground. To that end, we use both (digital) ethnographic and (computational) social scientific research methodologies to address media psychological, sociological and cultural research questions.

Goal/Mission

The mission of imec-mict is to empower people in a digital society. DIS/CO Lab contributes to that goal by developing greater understanding of what it means to ‘live a good life’ when anytime, anyplace connectivity has become the norm.

DIS/CO Lab seeks to support individuals, organizations and society on the quest towards digital well-being by critically examining what dis/connection means, and gathering evidence on how to optimally balance the benefits and burdens of 24/7 digital connectivity, among others through the strategic use of digital disconnection. In our exploration, we pay close attention to the ambivalences and dialectics that guide contemporary digital life. 

Armed with this evidence, DIS/CO Lab informs a wide variety of stakeholders, including citizens, organizations, technology developers and policy makers about how they can make the human relationship with technology happier and healthier. As such, our research can inspire people, organizations, and policymakers to create a more sustainable society.

Topics

  1. Digital Well-being

DIS/CO Lab examines how individuals understand and practice digital wellbeing, how unique constellations of psychological, technological and social-contextual factors explain when and why individual users succeed or fail in fostering it, and what longer-term outcomes, such as burnout or depression, are then associated with digital wellbeing.

  1. Digital Disconnection

DIS/CO Lab examines what digital disconnection means to individuals, how they negotiate it, and how the broader social structures of society are implicated in how digital disconnection is performed, organized and cared for. DIS/CO Lab also looks at the implications of a variety of technological and non-technological digital wellbeing interventions, for individual users, and by extension, for society.

  1. Digital Culture & Social Life

DIS/CO Lab examines how 24/7 connectivity has re-shaped our culture, with a particular emphasis on the impact of mobile communication on our social life and relationships. In that context, DIS/CO Lab looks at practices such as the use of smartphones during co-present interactions (phubbing) and the use of mobile communication in the work place (media multitasking), home and leisure environment. We also explore how AI becomes embedded in social life and social relationships, among others in the form of companionship robots.

  1. Digital Spirituality

DIS/CO Lab examines how the digitization of society intersects with cultural values. We explore how humans seek and find meaning in life, among others by exploring phenomena such as life coaching and religion in every day digitized life.

Contact

DIS/CO lab is part of the research group imec-mict at the Department of Communication Sciences, University of Ghent.

For more information, contact mariek.vandenabeele@ugent.be