In the public debate, problems due to excessive use of digital media are often explained with reference to neurological functions and addressed through calls for self-regulation. This digital backlash and the desire to disconnect from the digital environment can be understood as the latest expression of the perennial concern with adverse media effects. For decades, media and communication research has dealt with the question of what the media do to us, pointing out the complex entanglement of social, psychological, technological, political, cultural, and economic aspects that are part of the question. The difficulties involved in reaching any absolute conclusions have motivated critical media studies to formulate different research problems and thus risking missing the opportunity to make an important contribution in one of the more pressing public debates of our time. Drawing on Latour’s distinctions between “matters of facts” and “matters of concern”, in this chapter, we suggest that critical media and communication scholars ought to treat media effects as a matter of concern to remain a relevant actor in the public debate about problematic media use. 

This chapter introduces rurality-TV as a genre, and we discuss how public service media, through this genre, contributes to symbolically resolving tensions between the rural and the urban, and we address processes of mobility and urbanisation in the Nordics. Three popular reality-TV programmes depicting rural life are analysed: Bonderøven [loosely translated as The Hillbilly], later known as Frank & Kastaniegaarden (DR), Hjälp vi har köpt en bondgård! [Help we have bought a farm!] (SVT), and Oppfinneren [The Inventor] (NRK). These are approached through three questions: What constitutes public service rurality-TV as a genre in terms of form and content? What values are negotiated in the programmes? How can we understand rurality-TV in the context of public service broadcasting in the media welfare state?

This chapter delves into a pivotal question of media studies: “How do media impact us?" It examines how media technology moulds perception, experience, and cultural consumption. At the core of this exploration lies Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Written in the early 20th century, the essay primarily addresses archaic media technologies like silent film and photography. Yet, it offers an analysis that probes the dynamics between original and copy, the essence of perceiving an object as art, and the intersections of technology, culture, and politics - themes that endure and resurface with every introduction of new media. © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Stina Bengtsson, Staffan Ericson and Fredrik Stiernstedt; individual chapters, the contributors.

This paper presents findings from an online questionnaire that collected experiences from the Facebook outage on October 4th, 2021, an event that affected approximately three billion users around the globe. The purpose of the study is to contribute to recent discussions digital disconnection and digital wellbeing by using an extraordinary event of involuntary disconnection as point of departure. Our research questions were: Where were people when the services shut down, what did they think and what did they do? What correlations can be found between usage/attitudes to social media and the experiences of the outage? How can the outage of October 4th be understood as a snapshot of our cultural condition? The questionnaire was distributed to 463 Swedish university students and 191 responses were received. Our analysis shows how the involuntary disconnection caused by the outage was an event that highlights the ambivalence of digital life. It also points to some correlations between general social media use and attitudes, and the experiences and activities during the outage. The paper ends with a discussion on the implications that these findings may have for further research into digital disconnection. © The Author(s) 2023

This paper draws on findings from an ongoing research project called ”Effects of a multi-module intervention designed to increase critical thinking and the ability to identify misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories in high school students”. The aim of this project is to empirically evaluate an educational intervention consisting of six one-hour sessions. The sessions include traditional lectures regarding critical thinking, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories but also includes a game (Bad news), and group discussions, all designed to train high school students in critical thinking as well as the capacity to identify disinformation and conspiracy theories. The project combines competences from media and communication studies, psychology, political science, and data communication, and the intervention has so far been implemented in  three Swedish high schools. In the paper we discuss preliminary findings and experiences drawn from the first phase of the project. We will also discuss the applicability of the intervention, and challenges that we have identified. © Author/s

This paper explores how a social media breakdown is experienced in a highly wired context where social media practice has become mundane to the point of invisibility (Chun, 2016; Deuze, 2012). More specifically, it examines how a group of Swedish university students (n=191) responded to the major Facebook outage on the evening of October 4th 2021, when popular services such as Facebook, Instagram and Messenger stopped working for about six hours. Drawing on empirical data from an online survey conducted in the immediate aftermath of this unusual global event of involuntary disconnection, as well as on theory and research on historical blackouts, digital disconnection and digital wellbeing, the paper brings to light and discusses the affective ambiguities of contemporary digital life. For example, the most frequently used words for describing the experience of the outage were “nice” and “relaxing” but also “stressful” and “boring”. By exploring the emotions involved in the experience of being suddenly and collectively disconnected for hours, this paper makes a valuable contribution not only to previous studies on affect and technological failure where the focus is rather on individual responses to more temporary malfunctions (Paasonen, 2015). It also contributes to the growing field of digital disconnection studies by examining experiences of involuntary disconnection instead of practices of voluntary disconnection and abstention from digital media (Syvertsen, 2020; Syvertsen & Enli, 2020).