Possession Rituals of the Digital Consumer: a Study of Pinterest (original) (raw)
Related papers
2013
As we can interact with other people through various social applications, we have acquired increasing amounts of virtual possessions that have both personal and social meanings. Unlike material possessions that usually have a clear ownership to a person, the emerging virtual possessions are often created by and shared with multiple people. Thus, the values of such virtual possessions are not only personally, but also socially constructed and cherished. As it becomes important to understand and support the interpersonal contexts where people encounter and acquire various virtual possessions, the present study investigated how people attach personal and social meanings to their virtual possessions. In this paper, we introduce such meaning-making activities with two foci: i) curation activities of creating social meanings of personal virtual possessions, ii) curation activities of creating personal meanings of social virtual possessions. The results of this study will be helpful to con...
“Kind of Mine, Kind of Not”: Digital Possessions and Affordance Misalignment
Journal of Consumer Research
The objects we consume increasingly exist in digital form, from audiobooks and digital photographs to social media profiles and avatars. Digital objects are often argued to be less valued, personally meaningful, and self-relevant than their physical counterparts and are consequently dismissed as poor candidates for possession. Yet, studies have identified highly meaningful, even irreplaceable, digital possessions. In this article, we account for these contradictory narratives surrounding digital possessions, arguing that digital objects are not inherently unsuited to possession, but rather their affordances may not align with consumers’ imagined affordances (i.e., the object affordances that consumers anticipate). Drawing from a qualitative study of 25 consumers and their digital possessions, we identify three recurring types of affordance misalignment—missing affordances, covert affordances, and deficient affordances—that mediate how consumers and digital objects interact (pragmati...
This research explores individuals' relationships with their personal digital information through the concepts of digital possessions and self extension. Two studies were conducted. In the first study, twenty-three participants were interviewed about their definitions of digital possessions and digital legacies, and about their connections to their personal digital information. In the second study, forty-eight participants were asked to conduct three Q sorting tasks in order to gain a better understanding of their thoughts and opinions regarding self extension to digital possessions and maintaining digital possessions for a digital legacy. Findings revealed that digital possessions: 1) provide evidence about the individual, 2) represent the individual's identity, 3) are recognized by the individual as having value and, 4) provide a sense of bounded control. Self extension to digital possessions exists on a multilayered spectrum consisting of the characteristics of self exten...
Exploring a human-centred design of possessions
Understanding the idea of possession is essential for creating successful products and services, particularly in digital and access contexts. This paper examines current shortcomings in conceptualising ownership and possessions before presenting a framework for the process of developing user possession. The framework is grounded in psychological ownership theory and informed by interviews with thirteen participants. The theory considers ownership as a mental state in which users feel the object is theirs. The interviews explored this mental state under three contexts: traditional material possession, digital possession, and access-based possession. This work helps inform the meaning of possessions, and can aid designers and policy makers in how to approach the notion of designing possessions from a human-centered viewpoint.
Valuing digital possessions: the role of affordances
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
In this article, we introduce an affordance-orientated approach for the study of digital possessions. We identify affordances as a source of value for digital possessions and argue that dominant meaning-orientated approaches do not enable us to fully appreciate these sources of value. Our work recognizes that value is released and experienced in “the doing”—people must do things with digital objects to locate and obtain value in and from them. We distinguish three levels of affordance for digital possessions—low, mid, and high—and introduce the concept of digital incorporation to explain how the three levels of affordances come together, with the individual’s own intentionality to enable the achievement of goals. We draw from postphenomenological interviews with 47 individuals in the UK to provide a possession-based and lived experience approach to affordances that sheds new light on their vital role in everyday life and goals.
I'm Proud of It: Consumer Technology Appropriation and Psychological Ownership
In this conceptual paper, using the lens of self-design we examine the relationship between consumer technology appropriation and psychological ownership, suggesting that pride plays a key and multi-faceted role. Resolving discrepancies in the literature, we propose that authentic pride operates as an antecedent of psychological ownership, while hubristic pride strengthens the effect of psychological ownership on outcomes such as economic valuation and word-of-mouth. We further enrich the conceptualization by considering the moderating effects of the technology consumption context (public versus private) as well as consumers’ perceptions of situation strength (strong versus weak behavioral constraints).