Forskarseminarium för medierad kultur och information: Sara Mörtsell – Digital Fragilities and Google locked mode for education

Sara Mörtsell, Lunds universitet

Digital Fragilities and Google locked mode for education

Based on recently concluded field work within the “Google for education” infrastructures of one Swedish municipality, this study explores everyday experiences with digital vulnerability in lower secondary schools. This involves tracing the educational implications of the paradox that digital infrastructures solve vulnerability and also make people vulnerable (Kaun et al., 2026). Conceptually the study builds on the emerging interdisciplinary field of fragility studies (Domínguez Rubio et al., 2025) and proposes a thinking-with fragility for critical education and technology scholarship. 

The empirical focus is on normalised and naturalised fragilities around (mis)use of student devices, (dis)traction of student attention and frictions to do with lock-in effects. Special attention is given to Google’s 2025 launch of a locked mode feature and how it is made convenient and objectively good within the everyday of schooling. Reading these fragilities together shows the details of educational hopes for less entanglement with digital infrastructures but that the measures that can be taken mean more digital entanglement.