Unplugging practices and experiences in a world of media (PDF)

Master's Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Communications - Multimedia, Internet, New Technologies, grade: 1,3, University of Augsburg (Institut für Medien, Wissen und Kommunikation), language: English, abstract: The thesis is about the forms of unplugging and deals with the question how they are related to the reasons and processes of meaning-making surrounding the action of unplugging. It regards the unplugging practices and how people cope with abstaining from media. In order to see how unplugging affects people's everyday lives, this study also looks at how people change their media use afterwards and how they generally manage availability after returning back into their mediatized surroundings.

Starting with discussing literature about mediatization, the thesis takes a look at our society from a perspective without offline-modus. Beyond that, the thesis discusses how perceived acceleration enforces the development of oases of deceleration and their impact on the movement of unplugging. The concept of slowness and thus, the commodification of slowness give insight how narratives of slower media consumption have gained relevance. These individual perceptions are collected and analyzed throughout interviews with participants who have unplugged in the past. Adding to their individual perceptions the empirical work is enriched with a content analysis of selected unplugging Apps and Websites and a methodological approach is described.