What are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on a book-length manuscript that examines digital disconnection as a process and practice enabled, as well as constrained, by social and cultural dimensions. This emerges from the fieldwork that I conducted in Argentina for my doctoral dissertation, based on interview data and on national surveys. Apart from my scholarship, since May of 2025, I have also been serving as program director for the B.A. in Communication at my place of work and alma mater, Universidad de San Andrés.

 

Can you share a project that changed the way you think or work? 

Designing a national survey on digital disconnection to trace how, when, and why different sociodemographic groups in Argentina maintain (or not) sustained presence across six social media platforms was an especially challenging task. It reshaped how I conceptualize “media non-use,” “digital disconnection,” and “media abandonment,” as well as how I think about their boundaries, which are often fuzzier than researchers would ideally want them to be.

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Which piece of work feels closest to your heart, and why?

I would say a paper I co-authored with Pablo Boczkowski and Eugenia Mitchelstein in 2019, titled Domesticating WhatsApp. That project helped me crystallize how everyday practices, tacit norms, and relational negotiations around mobile communication can have broader implications for the management of everyday life. It was also the piece where I began trying to articulate micro-level, culturally specific sensibilities in dialogue with meso- and macro-level processes. This is a line of inquiry that serves as a guide in my research.

 

What's a question you keep returning to?

How do people these days navigate the tension between wanting to be constantly reachable (and wanting others to be available at all times) and desiring to reclaim their time and freedom? More recently, I’ve been asking myself: how do people navigate their own and others’ absences in social spheres and digital environments?

 

If you had a tagline or motto, what would it be? 

"Pay attention to the mundane." I believe that by examining the small, everyday practices, and the disagreements that often emerge from them, we can move beyond self-evident conclusions about our digital lives. This requires a research process that is enacted as a living conversation, where pausing and rethinking help capture the specific details necessary for a more nuanced and accurate interpretation of our social world.

 

If time, money, and logistics weren't a concern, what dream project would you dive into?

A multi-country, cross-platform, longitudinal study of digital disconnection that integrates ethnography, media diaries, and national surveys to map the infrastructures, processes, implications, and explain cultural variations of stepping back from digital media.

 

What's one thing you wish someone had told you when you were starting out as a scholar? 

That thinking is writing. I’ve come to understand that ideas often emerge through the act of writing itself. Also, that inspiration works hand in hand with intuition. Both are essential for selecting research questions, engaging with others’ work, and building intellectual communities.

 

What is a book or paper that shaped the way you think about the world?

Rachel Plotnick’s book Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing (MIT Press, 2018), because it shows how seemingly mundane gestures and technological devices open onto questions of agency, power, and social norms, with lingering implications. It helped me see how fascinating it is to consider contemporary media in light of often left aside historical continuities and discontinuities.

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Who's someone whose work deserves more attention - and who you want to nominate as the next featured scholar? 

Alicia Gilbert (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz). Her innovative work on digital disconnection carefully considers a range of digital media, moving beyond the most frequently studied devices, and sheds light on media disengagement from streaming services of music and films.