Scholarship: “Shutting down the Crossfire: lessons on digitality from the short history of Apple AirDrop”

Thrilled to announce the publication of a new article: “Shutting down the Crossfire: lessons on digitality from the short history of Apple AirDrop,” co-authored with Damien Pfister, now available in Critical Studies in Media Communication.

We explore the fascinating practice that was “AirDrop Crossfire.” People used Apple AirDrop’s local wireless connection to send diverse files, from friendly memes to protest messages, to unsuspecting users in public spaces. Damien and I first learned about it when, in my second semester teaching at the University of Maryland Department of Communication, students told me they were caught in the crossfire in one of the dining halls. Six or so years later and we have finally figured out what we had to say about the phenomenon!

We argue that AirDrop Crossfire is a proto-deliberative practice of refracted publics. Unlike hypersurveilled networked publics, refracted publics are transient, deeply contextual, and intensely communal, allowing users to circulate messages while largely avoiding detection. Across eight scenes that we “drop” into the paper, we examine how users of AirDrop Crossfire navigated three tensions of refracted publics: infrastructure and expressive agency, weaponization and care, and flow and interruption.

This is a cautionary tale: AirDrop was shut down in a global feature change by Apple in December 2022, conveniently timed after protestors used AirDrop Crossfire to evade Chinese censorship—to the dismay of China. We argue that the democratic promise of refracted publics is tempered by the confluence of state and corporate power: practices like AirDrop Crossfire are vulnerable to being “shut down by unethical corporations that choose the bottom line.”

We’d be thrilled if you read and shared with anyone who is interested! I’m always happy to email a PDF if you don’t have access. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15295036.2025.2523061

Abstract:

In 2011, Apple introduced AirDrop, enabling users to share files using a local wireless connection. Users eventually developed messaging strategies, dubbed AirDrop Crossfire, sending friendly memes or harassing images to unsuspecting users in public spaces. Ultimately, Apple faced political pressure from China and ended AirDrop Crossfire with an international feature change in December 2022. This essay situates AirDrop Crossfire as a proto-deliberative practice of refracted publics, navigating tensions between infrastructure and agency, interruption and flow, and weaponization and care. The democratic promise of refracted publics is tempered by these tensions and the confluence of state and corporate power.