Digital detox tourism: Practices of analogization

Abstract

Technological disconnectivity has turned into a tourist attraction in its own right: digital detox tourism celebrates temporary disconnection as a means for experiencing an “authentic” world. With pervasive digital media and a strong impetus to being available 24/7, this tourism has to answer not only the question of what has to be done to become disconnected, but also it has to highlight the pleasures disconnection may afford. Drawing on two case studies—a discourse analysis of self-organized unplugged travel writing and an ethnography of the detox event Camp Grounded—we argue that digital detox tourism relies heavily on staging and performing a distinction between the analog and the digital. The article introduces the notion “analogization” to capture practices, media, and infrastructure which support the creation and the blurring of this distinction. Thus, we argue that analogization, in contrast to digitalization, emphasizes that there is no “analog” per se.