The politics of disconnection on social media: A systematic review of politically motivated unfriending

Abstract

Disconnectivity is essential to our understanding of social media including its political implications and democratic potentials. In recent years, there has been a surging interest in the politics of disconnection on social media, commonly terms “politically motivated unfriending”. In this study, we conduct a systematic review of 28 articles (34 studies) on this topic. Combining content analysis with inductive thematic coding, we provide a robust synthesis of its contexts, trend, scale, and tendencies. We also identified three recurring themes with regard to the associated meanings; politically motivated unfriending is understood as selective avoidance under the normative framework of public sphere, self-care following the norm of personal spaces, and a means to safe spaces within the social structure of unequal power differentials. We discuss the democratic paradox of social media through the lens of disconnectivity and offer recommendations for future research.