Ksenia Silchenko's FIR research grant
Institute of Marketing and Communication Management
As consumers get deeper and deeper immersed into the hyperdigital markets characterized by ubiquitous behavioural tracking and manipulation of their attention, the concerns about health- and wellbeing-related consequences of digital technology become more and more pressing. To help consumers take control over their digital consumption and develop ‘healthy technology habits’, a new digital wellbeingmarket (i.e., digital tools and info-products aimed at monitoring, understanding and limiting technology use) started emerging. Whether effective in its original purpose or not, digital wellbeing is a fascinating (if not paradoxical) phenomenon, where digital technology itself acts as both a threat to health and wellbeing and as a responsible and consumer-empowering solution to the negative effects of digital technology (ab)use.
Over the course of the next two years, Ksenia Silchenko, Post-Doc and Lecturer at IMCA, is going to look into internal contradictions of consumer responsibilisation in the context of digital wellbeing, thanks to the funding provided by Fondo Istituzionale per la Ricerca (FIR). Her project entitled “Pathological Responsibility for Digital Wellbeing: Consumer Responsibilisation in Health(ism)-Driven Hyperdigital Marketplace” will critically look into the emerging phenomenon of digital wellbeing market in order to uncover what exactly is understood as consumer responsibility and empowerment in the current health(ism)-driven hyperdigital marketplace. It will first question how digital wellbeing product discourses imagine and present their responsibilised consumers and will next move into questioning how consumers actually (re)define their digital health-related consumption in their everyday lives. The project is driven by the ambition to gain deeper understanding of responsibility as a market-based consumption system, as well as a driving force behind marketing and public policy decisions.
