Study title

The data collection includes 78 media publications discussing the recent ‘disconnect to reconnect’ trend in the hospitality industry and a list of 57 European, North American and Australian third place businesses (cafes, restaurants, pubs, bars and bookshops) restricting the use of digital technology on their premises. The research was guided by the following questions: (1) Why do third place owners choose the policy of digital disconnection? (2) How and with what effects is this policy implemented in different venues? (3) How does the discourse on ‘unwired third places’ frame the dialectic between the physical/offline and the digital/online? The deposited data are organised into two files. ‘Publications_metadata.docx’ contains the list of analysed media publications; ‘Venues_metadata.xlsx’ categorises and briefly describes third place businesses by type, location, and policy. The data were produced as part of a one-year ESRC funded postdoctoral project aimed to supplement and contextualise the PI’s doctoral work on the post-digital city.Public places have always been known as centres of urban social and cultural life. And yet in contemporary cafes, libraries and coworking spaces, this promise of sociability often fails to match reality. How can we better connect with each other in our cities, permeated with digital technologies but providing little space for unmediated, face-to-face encounter? While some placemakers enforce a strict no-wifi policy and ban the use of gadgets, other initiatives, for instance, board game cafes, promote nostalgic, pre-digital forms of interaction. Russian blogger and social activist Ivan Mitin went even further and introduced a new form of public place -multifunctional venues, charging customers by the minute and providing them with free wifi, refreshments, and access to kitchen facilities. The first establishment of this kind, Ziferblat, founded in 2011 in Moscow, quickly developed into a global franchise with 18 branches, five of...