What is digital possession and how to study it: a conversation with Russell Belk, Rebecca Mardon, Giana M. Eckhardt, Varala Maraj, Will Odom, Massimo Airoldi, Alessandro Caliandro, Mike Molesworth and Alessandro Gandini

Abstract

The platformisation of digital consumption, means that increasingly many of the things that we call ours – our messages, photos, music, achievements – are entangled in complex socio-technical arrangements which require ongoing market mediation. In this context, refining our understanding of what digital possessions are and how to study them is vital. This requires refocusing research away from existing comparative analyses between digital and material possessions. To do so, we organised an interdisciplinary roundtable discussion with critical marketers and digital media scholars, consumer researchers, digital sociologists and researchers in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) at the 11th Interpretive Consumer Research Conference held in Lyon in May 2019. The result of that discussion is this curation of comments which deal with theoretical, methodological and critical issues and a bold agenda for future research.