Creating opportunities for temporary disconnection: How tourism professionals provide alternatives to being permanently online

Abstract

The ongoing normalization of digital connection has also increased the interest in digital disconnection research. The desire to disconnect is typically considered a critical reaction to the peculiar affordances and prerequisites of fully participating in digital society. While social and political potentials of disconnections as well as reasons to turn away from media are explored in various trajectories, we still know relatively little about the “what then” and “what else” of digital disconnection. In this article, we address this gap and investigate what stories are told and which imaginaries are invoked in order to commodify disconnection in an exemplary field of the growing disconnection industry, namely tourism. Drawing from interviews and analysis of online representations, we analyze how tourist marketers and accommodation providers in the Austrian province of Salzburg are communicating why people should use their vacation to disconnect and what they can expect to find once they are disconnected. Following our analysis, we identify three general themes of how disconnection is countered to living in deeply mediatized and highly connective times: (1) nature and authenticity, (2) (re-)connecting with the self, finding balance, and (3) connection to family/friends/local people. We conclude by discussing the broader implications of our analysis and what the identified ambivalences of disconnection suggest for further advancing disconnection research in the future.