1. Introduction

Digitalization has become a fundamental force reshaping knowledge acquisition, knowledge production, and information sharing within educational experiences and educational organizations. Digital technologies are often presented as tools that expand opportunities for expression, participation, access, and visibility. However, it has become increasingly evident that these opportunities are not distributed equally among educational actors. Instead, digitalization tends to generate new forms of constraints and exclusion for certain groups. Pre-service teachers, teachers, and academics are positioned in digital environments not only as individuals, but also through their professional identities, academic titles, and institutional roles. As a result, practices of expression and participation in digital spaces are shaped less by individual choice and more by organizational norms and power relations. Visibility, voice, and participation in digital environments are therefore not evenly distributed, but are structured through the intersection of identities, statuses, and institutional positions.

In this study, digital silence is conceptualized as a multi-layered phenomenon in which individuals refrain from expressing themselves in digital platforms despite having technical access, due to organizational culture, structural pressures, perceptions of digital surveillance, and symbolic power relations. While the concept of organizational silence has been widely examined in the field of educational administration as the deliberate withholding of ideas and opinions from organizational processes, digitalization has reconfigured and reproduced these silence practices in new contexts. From a critical social theory perspective, digital spaces are not merely technical communication environments but social arenas in which power relations, norms, and regimes of invisibility are continuously reproduced (Foucault, 2000; Castells, 2010; Zuboff, 2019). Within this framework, digital silence is understood not as an individual attitude but as a structural phenomenon shaped by digital capitalism, surveillance practices, and institutional control mechanisms (Zuboff, 2019; Couldry & Mejias, 2019). Drawing on Bourdieu’s (1991) concepts of symbolic violence and habitus, digital silence can also be interpreted as a form of compliance and consent produced through the internalization of domination. Digital space thus emerges not simply as a facilitator of communication, but as a field in which norms, values, and power relations are reproduced.

The theoretical axis of this study is grounded in intersectionality, which emphasizes that individuals’ experiences are shaped not by single identity categories, but by the intersections of multiple social positions (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991).. This approach highlights how inequalities are produced through the simultaneous operation of multiple axes, such as gender, status, and professional position. In the context of educational organizations, intersectionality provides a powerful analytical lens for understanding the digital experiences of pre-service teachers, teachers, and academics. 

This study aims to explore how digital silence is understood and experienced by pre-service teachers, teachers, and academics within educational organizations. 

In line with this overarching focus, the study is guided by the following research objectives, which structure the empirical inquiry from participants’ understandings and experiences to organizational dynamics and intersectional differentiations:

1. To explore how digital silence is defined by pre-service teachers, teachers, and academics, and to identify the contexts and conditions under which it becomes salient in educational settings.
2. Building on these definitions, to examine the lived experiences of digital silence among pre-service teachers, teachers, and academics across different digital platforms;
3. Drawing from participants’ narratives, to analyze the processes through which digital silence is constructed, sustained, or negotiated within educational contexts;
4. Moving from processes to consequences, to identify the perceived outcomes and impacts of digital silence on professional practice and participation in educational environments;
5. Finally, from an intersectional perspective, to analyze how intersecting social and professional positions—such as gender, academic rank, and professional experience—differentiate digital silence behaviors and experiences in digital platforms.

4. Method This study is designed within the framework of qualitative research methodology. Given its focus on understanding how pre-service teachers, teachers, and academics experience and interpret digital silence, the study is conducted using a phenomenological design. Phenomenology is particularly suitable for examining subjective, contextual, and multi-layered phenomena by focusing on how individuals experience and make sense of a given phenomenon (Creswell, 2013; Patton, 2015). The study group will be formed through purposeful sampling and will include pre-service teachers, teachers, and academics who actively use digital platforms within educational organizations. This approach enables a comparative examination of how digital silence is experienced across different professional roles and institutional positions. Intersectionality serves as a guiding principle in the formation of the study group, with attention to diversity across gender, academic rank, professional seniority, and institutional roles (Crenshaw, 1991; Collins & Bilge, 2016). Data will be collected through semi-structured interviews, which allow participants to articulate their experiences of expression, participation, and visibility in digital platforms in their own words (Patton, 2015). Interview questions will focus on the conditions under which digital silence emerges, the organizational, cultural, and structural dynamics shaping these experiences, and the implications of silence for educators’ professional identities. Data analysis will be conducted using qualitative content analysis (Creswell, 2013). Intersectionality will function not merely as a theoretical background, but as an analytical lens guiding the development and interpretation of categories. In this process, how intersectional characteristics—such as gender, academic rank, professional experience, and institutional position—differentiate digital silence experiences will be examined comparatively (Cho, Crenshaw, & McCall, 2013).

Expected Contribution This study is expected to contribute to the literature by conceptualizing digital silence as a relational and intersectionally differentiated phenomenon within educational organizations. By foregrounding the experiences of pre-service teachers, teachers, and academics, the study aims to offer empirically grounded insights into how digital platforms simultaneously enable participation and reproduce silence through organizational and cultural mechanisms. The findings are expected to inform critical discussions on digitalization, professional voice, and pedagogical identity, while also providing a reflective basis for institutional practices aimed at promoting more inclusive and equitable digital environments in education. Network Relevance This paper is closely aligned with the aims of the ECER network, concerned with power relations, inequality, participation, and professional voice in education. By conceptualizing digital silence as an organizational and intersectional phenomenon, the study directly contributes to ongoing discussions on how digitalization reshapes participation, visibility, and agency within educational organizations. The study speaks to the network’s interest in critical and reflexive perspectives by examining digital platforms not only as pedagogical tools, but also as spaces in which organizational norms, hierarchies, and control mechanisms are reproduced. Through its intersectional analytical lens, the paper offers a nuanced understanding of how digital silence is differently experienced by pre-service teachers, teachers, and academics positioned across intersecting axes of gender, academic rank, and professional experience.

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