‘You are just dealing with machines’: Negotiating the spread of digital media from a small Japanese town

Abstract

This project ethnographically explores how individuals in a small Japanese town negotiate the changes brought about by the increased omnipresence of digital technologies in their everyday lives. It delves into the affective dimensions of individuals’ imagination of a global digital order, of the impact of digital media on social organization, and of their own sense of place in a globalized world. It demonstrates that while digital media’s connective affordances help reduce the sense of isolation stemming from the community’s geographic position, conflicting feelings of disconnection, alienation and loss simultaneously arise in its members’ broader relationship to the digital world.