Digital (Dis)connection, Agency, and Imagination in a French Rural Community

Common to scholarly analyses of the “digital revolution” is their inclination to deploy technology—the platforms, their affordances, the virtual spaces they create—as the main entry into evaluations of digital media’s impact on socio-cultural organization. While certainly useful in helping us unders...

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Main Author: Fabienne Darling-Wolf
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publishing 2025-01-01
Series:Social Media + Society
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241311962
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author Fabienne Darling-Wolf
author_facet Fabienne Darling-Wolf
author_sort Fabienne Darling-Wolf
collection DOAJ
description Common to scholarly analyses of the “digital revolution” is their inclination to deploy technology—the platforms, their affordances, the virtual spaces they create—as the main entry into evaluations of digital media’s impact on socio-cultural organization. While certainly useful in helping us understand the dynamics of digital practices and spaces, these narratives often fail to provide a fuller portrait of individuals’ broader relationship to the technological world shaped not (only) by their digital media use (or lack thereof) but also by their mere awareness of the existence of digital tools. Drawing from 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in as small rural community in France, this project starts sketching such a portrait. Inspired by theories of mediation that encourage us to “rediscover” people as a methodological starting point by moving our focus from object (media) to process (mediation), it explores how residents experience, enjoy, resist, and negotiate the impact of digital and social media on the community’s culture, identity, and social organization.
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spelling doaj-art-02890ebfea80447c8b69aa46e22660552025-08-20T02:35:39ZengSAGE PublishingSocial Media + Society2056-30512025-01-011110.1177/20563051241311962Digital (Dis)connection, Agency, and Imagination in a French Rural CommunityFabienne Darling-WolfCommon to scholarly analyses of the “digital revolution” is their inclination to deploy technology—the platforms, their affordances, the virtual spaces they create—as the main entry into evaluations of digital media’s impact on socio-cultural organization. While certainly useful in helping us understand the dynamics of digital practices and spaces, these narratives often fail to provide a fuller portrait of individuals’ broader relationship to the technological world shaped not (only) by their digital media use (or lack thereof) but also by their mere awareness of the existence of digital tools. Drawing from 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in as small rural community in France, this project starts sketching such a portrait. Inspired by theories of mediation that encourage us to “rediscover” people as a methodological starting point by moving our focus from object (media) to process (mediation), it explores how residents experience, enjoy, resist, and negotiate the impact of digital and social media on the community’s culture, identity, and social organization.https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241311962
spellingShingle Fabienne Darling-Wolf
Digital (Dis)connection, Agency, and Imagination in a French Rural Community
Social Media + Society
title Digital (Dis)connection, Agency, and Imagination in a French Rural Community
title_full Digital (Dis)connection, Agency, and Imagination in a French Rural Community
title_fullStr Digital (Dis)connection, Agency, and Imagination in a French Rural Community
title_full_unstemmed Digital (Dis)connection, Agency, and Imagination in a French Rural Community
title_short Digital (Dis)connection, Agency, and Imagination in a French Rural Community
title_sort digital dis connection agency and imagination in a french rural community
url https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241311962
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