Everyday activism: an AI-assisted netnography of a digital consumer movement

ABSTRACT

Prior studies have tended to focus on the figure of consumer movements rather than the ground from which they arise. This AI-assisted netnography interprets data from the WallStreetBets (WSB) subreddit during the GameStop short squeeze and for a period of 2.5 years afterwards. Analysis reveals an intimate relationship between the subreddit and portrayals of participants’ everyday lives, connecting financial strategies to jokes, memes, banter, and personal anecdotes. Collective identities are forged through discussions of life situations, populist counternarratives, shared cultural referents, and self-deprecation. Findings reveal digital activism ranging from the everyday and transitional to the extraordinary, bridging literatures on fluid consumer movements with everyday politics. Results affirm the value of collective identification to digital activism and suggest conceptual linkages to participatory culture and infinite gameplay.

KEYWORDS:

• Consumer activism
• consumer movements
• digital activism
• netnography
• social media activism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert V. Kozinets

Robert V. Kozinets is a multiple award-winning professional researcher and teacher. He invented and developed the multidisciplinary qualitative digital research method of netnography and has authored, co-authored, and edited 8 books as well as over 150 articles and chapters. His company, Netnografica, has consulted for leading organizations such as Ford, L’Oréal, Coca-Cola, Heinz, and American Express. He works at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California, is Area Editor of the Journal of Marketing, an Academic Fellow of the Marketing Science Institute, and is President of the Association for Netnographic Research and of Netnocon.

Mina Seraj-Aksit

Mina Seraj Aksit is a part-time faculty member at Vrije University Amsterdam. She holds a BA degree in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania (2001), an MBA degree from Bogazici University (2005), and she completed her PhD in Marketing at Bogazici University in 2014. Dr. Seraj’s research interests include brand management, consumer culture, online communities, digital marketing, and social media. Her research has been published in the Journal of Interactive Marketing, the Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, and in other outlets