Contemporary ways of seeing and being seen: on consumers’ interactions with sharing and tracking technologies

• Ano de defesa: 2023
• Autor(a) principal: Viotto, Marina Henriques
• Orientador(a): Brito, Eliane Pereira Zamith
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Palavras-chave em Português: Tecnologias de compartilhamento; Tecnologias de monitoramento; Vigilância do consumidor; Culturas de mídias sociais visuais; Automonitoramento; Sociomaterialidade
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: Sharing technologies; Tracking technologies; Consumer surveillance; Visual Social Media Cultures; Self-tracking; Sociomateriality
• Link de acesso: https://hdl.handle.net/10438/33423

This dissertation discusses contemporary ways of seeing and being seen by investigating different ways consumers interact with sharing and tracking technologies. More specifically, it asks: how do consumers interactions with sharing and tracking technologies impact consumption-related phenomena? And what are the consequences of such interactions for consumers? To answer these questions, three papers were developed. The first consists in an empirical investigation of consumers and influencers within Visual Social Media Cultures, focusing on sharing technologies. The second consists in a systematic literature review of works that intersect self-tracking, consumption, and markets, focusing on tracking technologies. The third consists in a theoretical discussion of sociomateriality and how it can be used as a lens to study consumption given its focus on interactions. Through these three papers, this dissertation shows that consumers interactions with sharing and tracking technologies impact consumption-related phenomena mainly by transforming the current understanding on topics such as consumer surveillance, markets, consumer responsibilization, and the constitution of consumers’ subjectivities. It also shows that such interactions impact consumers as they build a sense of need for control to the point where it becomes fetishized and as they push consumers into inadvertently taking part in their own surveillance, providing data for companies and governments to use. Based on these findings, it contributes to the study of consumers’ interactions with sharing and tracking technologies by evidencing the issues that arise from these interactions—such as new manifestations of consumer surveillance, the fetishization of control, the constitution of surveillant market infrastructures, consumers’ post-human subjectivities, and the reinforcement of responsibilization within consumers’ daily lives—and providing an alternative way to address such issues through sociomateriality. The dissertation also discusses the importance of being attentive to arising contemporary manifestations of surveillance as consumers continuously and increasingly interact with these constantly evolving technologies. Finally, it provides paths for future research suggesting that more critical investigations on the topic are needed and that the use of sociomateriality as a lens for developing such research would be beneficial for a better understanding of the networks that comprise these interactions.