Introduction

Summary

In 2020, the world experienced an unprecedented global crisis that destabilized existing social, cultural, legal, economic, ethical, medical and digital structures in various contexts across different countries. The COVID-19 pandemic impacted lives in every society around the world. We now collectively face the task of critically assessing how these disruptions, destabilizations and decentralizations of power, justice and equality have created new opportunities, while also cementing and exacerbating existing inequalities. One of the key ways in which these opportunities and/or further oppressions were mechanized and operationalized was through the rapidly increased use of digital technologies across various spheres in science, technology and society: from public health, to education, politics, work and everyday life. In many instances, the newly introduced technologies were compulsory, or seen as necessary and unavoidable. Introduced as temporary measures, they often remained even after the initial ‘need’ had gone away. The rise in digitization was sudden and rushed, often justified by the crisis nature of the pandemic, leaving little room for critical interventions, reflection or resistance.

Within the context of these recent monumental and global changes brought by the pandemic, how then can we understand – and be critical of – new forms and practices of digital technologies and networked communications? How might they challenge, reinforce and/or maintain existing, normative inequalities, injustices and infringements to human and data rights around the world? What new dilemmas were created by shifting much of work, education and everyday interactions into online environments? What new data grabs have emerged or become normalized? And finally, what spaces and possibilities are there to resist encroaching digitality? What is the place of digital refusal in the fabric of pandemic and post-pandemic life?

Exploring these questions is what motivated us to put this book together, to begin making sense of the rapid and extensive increase, reliance and shifts in meaning of digital technologies after the pandemic. In order to critique some of the inequalities and consider the potential opportunities for digital justice, we situate our discussion within a larger theoretical framework of ‘digital disengagement’ (Kuntsman and Miyake, 2015; 2019; 2022). Developed as a paradigmatic shift that challenges the normalization of digital technologies in everyday life and social research, this framework begins at the point of disconnection, refusal and opting out.