Still here,online: Platformed temporalities of abandonment in northwest Bulgarian villages

Abstract

Rural settlements in northwest Bulgaria are often portrayed as emptying spaces marked by ageing populations, derelict infrastructures and policy neglect. Yet many of these villages sustain lively digital afterlives. The article examines how residents, seasonal returnees and emigrants use social media to narrate, contest and endure the abandonment of two small villages. A qualitative digital ethnography of Facebook groups, messaging exchanges and visual material, combined with on site visits and interviews, shows how specific visual grammars, practices of memory and mourning, and patterned rhythms of posting organise a shared sense of time in place. The article argues that platformed practices extend the social life of depopulating rural places by making abandonment visually repeatable, affectively archived and rhythmically reactivated through moments of attention and silence.