Technologies of communication and use receive much scholarly attention while technologies of avoidance and non-use receive comparatively little. A framework for rethinking limitations we place on our own uses of digital media is developed through a case study of one apparently simple pre-digital tool of avoidance, the swear jar, paying special attention to the physical environments and social contexts that determine its power. Those insights are then applied to numerous digital examples, especially mobile technologies. Among other conclusions, we must expand the ideas of “communication technologies” and even “communication” itself to accommodate tools and practices both old and new for carving out quiet.

There is strong evidence linking skin complexion to negative stereotypes and adverse real-world outcomes. We extend these findings to political ad campaigns, in which skin complexion can be easily manipulated in ways that are difficult to detect. Devising a method to measure how dark a candidate appears in an image, this paper examines how complexion varied with ad content during the 2008 presidential election campaign (study 1). Findings show that darker images were more frequent in negative ads-especially those linking Obama to crime-which aired more frequently as Election Day approached. We then conduct an experiment to document how these darker images can activate stereotypes, and show that a subtle darkness manipulation is sufficient to activate the most negative stereotypes about Blacks-even when the candidate is a famous counter-stereotypical exemplar-Barack Obama (study 2). Further evidence of an evaluative penalty for darker skin comes from an observational study measuring affective responses to depictions of Obama with varying skin complexion, presented via the Affect Misattribution Procedure in the 2008 American National Election Study (study 3). This study demonstrates that darker images are used in a way that complements ad content, and shows that doing so can negatively affect how individuals evaluate candidates and think about politics.

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Disconnection and avoidance have been theorized various ways, e.g., by analyzing communicative and non-communicative affordances of devices and platforms; categorizing tactics and patterns of non-use; and through analogy with historical ways of seeking solitude and resisting technologies. This article, however, treats history not only as a source of analogies for momentary disconnections, but also as a timescale on which to understand slower undercurrents of resistance. I define “strategic illiteracies” as: purposeful, committed refusals to learn expected communication and technology skills, not only as individual people in specific moments, but also in communities over time. This concept connects technology refusal to historical lineages of resistance to linguistic and orthographic imperialism, analyzing examples including the Greek alphabet in antiquity, Chinese characters in Asia, and the Latin alphabet through European colonization. This new framework and genealogy of avoidance and technology refusal elucidates ways forward, slowly, for successive generations to reclaim their communicative futures.

In 2009, scholars and journalists hailed YouTube remix artist Kutiman's 8‐video musical opus Thru‐YOU as an icon of democratic cultural production. This article builds from a close reading of those videos—and survey of press coverage and relevant scholarly literature—to ask why people attributed agency to the remixed rather than the remixer when fragments were appropriated from essentially private citizens rather than celebrities. Those fragments are analyzed through a new tripartite framework for understanding the commons as a “goldmine,” “pot of dirt,” and “cutting room floor.” The concept of “transparency” allows reconception of remix neither as “bottom–up” cultural force nor as embodying the postmodern quality of being multiperspectival, but rather as subjugating individuals within the singular nonperspective of scientism.