The next speaker in this final session at the IAMCR 2025 conference in Singapore is Marco Dohle; his interest is in everyday political consumerism. This is generally defined as consumers use of the market as an arena for politics, in order to change market practices that are found to be ethically, ecologically, or politically questionable. This is a widely used form of political participation, and is often expressed through boycotts or ‘buycotts’.
Such activity has increased on recent decades, driven by one or more of four megatrends: globalisation, individualisation, value change, or digitalisation. Digital media use is often associated with political consumption activities, and this is especially pronounced for social media use. This makes sense since such media provide more information about consumer and political choices, and broader consumerism options.
But studies of such processes are often very general, through broad surveys and rather general measurements of political media use; there is a need to explore these phenomena in more detail and to retrace information flows across digital and other media as well as interpersonal channels.
The present study therefore explored these processes through a media diary study; it worked with some 130 participants who were invited to submit a standardised media diary every day for 21 days. Participants were asked about their consumption choices, media choices, and discussion processes each day, and this was also framed by initial and concluding surveys.
On average, people bought something on 11 of the 21 days, and consumed political content on 5 days; traditional media and passive social media use correlated negatively with political consumerism, while active social media use was related to more frequent boycott/buycott behaviour. More frequent communication with others also correlated positively (I think).
This does not exactly replicate the findings from broad-brush studies, probably as a result of the media diary approach. There is a positive correlation between exposure to and discussions about political consumption information and the frequency of political consumerism; the question that arises from this then is exactly what political content is consumed, communicated, and shared.
