Slantwise disengagement: Explaining Facebook users’ acts beyond resistance/internalization of domination binary

Abstract

This theoretical and empirical investigation builds upon the concept of ‘slantwise behavior’ to further complicate notions of the ‘digital disengagement’ of subjects within technological infrastructures such as Facebook. It has been previously suggested that the ubiquity of the data privacy paradox is the most common reason for disengagement practices. Our study contributes to this discussion by examining subjects’ disengagement on Social Network Sites (SNS). While numerous concepts concerning disconnection and disengagement from SNS have been conceptualized by media theorists, largely based on a binary construct of resistance or domination, our work proposes an alternative conceptualization of subjects’ disengagement. By employing a qualitative methodological approach and using 30 semi-structured interviews to capture subjects’ discursive patterns, we illustrate that disengagement on Facebook can be seen as a hybrid reaction and a complex phenomenon in which certain disconnection practices cannot be easily classified as resistance practices or as indications of the internalization of domination but rather are best understood as slantwise behaviors, that is, actions that may unintentionally lead to obfuscation.