Mutual Connections and Disconnections: Exploring the digital wellness practices of activists

• In Event: Digital (Un)wellness: Power, Health, and Screen Time - IV

Abstract

This paper explores the digital wellbeing concerns and practices of political activists through interviews in the United States and New Zealand. In contrast to digital wellbeing approaches that individualize or pathologize technology use (i.e., Derks et al., 2021; Duke & Montag 2017), we posit a social model of digital wellbeing that focuses on the relations and activities between users and foregrounds the experiences of an underrepresented group in digital wellbeing studies. We explore how political activists practice on-screen/off-screen balance and investigate how the structure and culture of online organizing enables (or constrains) the integration of community care and self-care practices in organizer spaces.

While digital wellbeing studies has become a resource for technology industries and wellness industries, less attention has been paid to how political activists conceive of digital wellbeing and what mutual care practices they might implement to support one another in instances of burnout or “screen fatigue.” Activists have a history of using communication devices to organize their political work, and the COVID-19 pandemic and consequent lockdowns have pushed more activists to use their digital devices as the main medium for coordination and political action. Moreover, with concerns over physical and mental “burnout,” we believe that activists are turning toward the support of their fellow organizers. Ultimately, we are interested if, and how activists’ digital wellness practices contrast to “therapeutic” institutional modes of digital wellbeing, such as corporate focused wellness or via digital wellness apps.

Authors

• Alex Beattie, Victoria University Wellington

• Chad Valasek, University of California at San Diego