Overview
I am a PhD student at Cardiff University, School of Journalism, Media and Culture. My research focuses on disconnectivity in leisure and in labour in terms of political-economy, surveillance capitalism and the right to disconnect.
Research
Research interests
- Disconnectivity (right to disconnect)
- Digital divide
- Digital surveillance and datafication in workplace
Thesis
Digital Disconnection: From Digital Resistance in Labour to Commodification of Digital Detox in Leisure
The first part of the research focuses on the domination of logic of neoliberalism in digital detox as a leisure activity, by which I mean individualised discourses and gestures of disconnectivity that are assumed to be in harmony with the politics of neoliberalism by not bringing any threat to the culture of connectivity and becoming rather commodified as a leisure activity. In that regard, I analyse the discourses and frames of disconnectivity in the context of neoliberalism and leisure consumption. As previous research indicates that such discourses can reduce digitality to media consumption within the frame of time, place, device or motivation. So, in the first part of the research study, the questions in how these frames are dominating in emerging universalist discourse. To critically analyse such discourses, the discussion engages with the critical literature that has been criticising neoliberal discourse of leisure and concerning labour
in the second part, taking the labour movement’s and trade unions’ historical struggle into account, the study discusses technology resistance in labour to explore an alternative approach. Firstly, it examines how the labour resists continuous working conditions and new work management techniques which exploit workers by datafication and surveillance practices in the workplace. Secondly, it investigates widely embraced suggestions and solutions for technology resistance in labour, and their differences from popular discourses
