The Rise of Disconnective Power: How Digitalisation Supports Global Fragmentation

Although often seen as a threat, digital connectivity is increasingly exploited by autocratic regimes to achieve their aims. This essay advances the concept of disconnective power by examining how states use digital tools to foster disintegration at the domestic and global levels. It argues that Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine functioned as a state of exception that accelerated multilayer fragmentation. Drawing on research on socio-technical imaginaries, infrastructure studies and digital interaction, the essay proposes a three-domain framework—discursive, infrastructural and interpersonal—to trace how disconnective power operates and to show how autocracies convert connectivity into a resource for fragmentation.