Digcon: Digitalizing consumer culture

Digcon: Digitalizing consumer culture

Digcon is an international interdisciplinary project that aims to study digital market devices through the lens of the shaping of product markets and consumption practices. Mobile smartphones, laptops and tablets are omnipresent gateways to cyber activity, at work and at home, in education and consumption. Among these fields, the latter deserves particular attention: digital devices are not only consumed, they are also used increasingly by consumers along their consumption practices (as payment tools, information providers and virtual shops). In so doing, these devices contribute to the shaping of new consumer identities, and address issues in terms of for example gender, ethics and sustainability.

The project aims to contribute to the emerging tradition of practice-based approaches to consumption and particularly the study of market devices and their use in everyday markets. Questions regarding sustainable- and ethical consumption are especially addressed in terms of how digital devices enable and shape ethical and sustainable consumption in different empirical settings.