Political Consumption

High meat consumption appears strongly in sustainability discourses, but finding practical tools for reduction has proven to be challenging. The rise of social media has opened up new pathways to structure political spaces where grassroots initiatives for experiments can take place. Our paper examines how consumers-citizens have started experimenting vegetarian foods in the context of an innovative Finnish meat reduction social media campaign called Meatless October during its kick-off year 2013. The focus is on participants’ perceptions of the campaign and reflections of the experiment process. We analyzed participants’ blog posts by using a qualitative content analysis. Our results show that the participants were often strongly motivated by the campaign’s sustainability frame. They also saw the campaign both as a communal challenge and an opportunity for political action, sharing know-how and experiences with the other participants. In everyday life, participants’ main focus and worry was in being able to prepare tasty and healthy vegetarian foods, and they were positively surprised by their ability to learn these skills. They typically attributed both success and failure in experimenting to their individual capabilities. Overall, our study suggests that the campaign’s public context pushed private practices towards change by facilitating the experimenting process.

Günümüzde küreselleşme ve bireyselleşmenin ortaya çıkardığı değişimlerle pazar, geleneksel işlevlerinin ötesine geçerek bireylerin ve tüketici gruplarının yaptıkları tüketimler aracılığıyla kendilerini ifade ettikleri bir yer haline gelmiştir. Böylece tüketiciler etik kaygılarla yalnızca kendileri için değil tüm dünyada kendi dışlarında da var olan her şey için doğru bulmadıkları uygulamalara, sahip oldukları seçim gücüyle müdahale edebilmektedir. Hızla gelişen teknolojinin sunduğu olanakların da katkısıyla daha önce mümkün olmayan düzeyde pazarı etkileyebilme kabiliyetine sahip olan tüketiciler, üretimde artan oranda söz sahibi olmaktadır. Tüm bu gelişmelerin etkisiyle ortaya çıkan siyasal tüketicilik kavramı son yıllarda özellikle gelişmiş Kuzey Avrupa ülkelerinde oldukça ilgi gören bir konu olmuştur. 

Anahtar Kelimeler: Siyasal Tüketicilik, Siyasal Tüketim, Siyasal Tüketici, Boykot, Seçici Alışveriş.

THE GROWING POWER OF CONSUMERISM: POLITICAL CONSUMERISM

Abstract
Nowadays through the effects of globalization and individualization, market has become an arena where individuals and consumer groups express themselves via their consumptions by going beyond the traditional functions. Thus consumers with ethical concerns may interfere in the practices that they disapprove not only for themselves but also for anything apart from themselves in the whole world by their purchasing power. Thanks to the opportunities of the rapidly advancing technology, consumers who have the ability to influence the market in a level which couldn’t be possible before have a corner on production increasingly. Political consumerism concept emerged by the effects of all these evolution recently has been a quite attractive topic particularly in Nordic countries. 

Keywords: Political Consumerism, Political Consumption, Political Consumer, Boycott, Buycott.

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This study explores whether negative political advertising has any impact on adolescents. Two data sets are merged for this inquiry: (a) content-coded ad-buy data on the placement of campaign messages on a market-by-market and program-by-program basis and (b) national survey data of parents-child dyads collected immediately after the 2008 presidential election. Our analysis finds that the negativity of political advertising to which adolescents were exposed predicted human-interest candidate knowledge, but not policy-relevant candidate knowledge. In addition, the negativity of political advertising exposure suppressed political consumerism among adolescents, but had no effect on their levels of political participation. This study shows that political campaigns can affect adolescents’ knowledge and participation in unconventional and potentially deleterious ways.

High meat consumption appears regularly in sustainability discourses but finding practical tools for reduction has proven to be challenging. The rise of social media has opened up new pathways to structure political spaces where grassroots initiatives for experiments can take place. Our paper examines how consumer-citizens started experimenting with vegetarian foods in the context of an innovative Finnish meat reduction social media campaign called Meatless October during its kick-off year in 2013. The focus is on participants’ perceptions of the campaign and reflections of the experiment process. We analyzed participants’ blog posts by using a qualitative content analysis. Our results show that the participants were often strongly motivated by the campaign’s sustainability frame. They also saw the campaign both as a communal challenge and an opportunity for political action, sharing know-how and experiences with the other participants. In everyday life, participants’ main focus and...

El presente artículo plantea un análisis y una reflexión sobre diversos planteamientos en torno a la ética del consumo y su posible consideración como una nueva forma de participación ciudadana. La dimensión ética y política del consumo constituye una preocupación creciente para capas de la población que empiezan a considerar su responsabilidad, y su poder, como consumidores. Un proceso asociado con la emergencia de lo que se conoce como consumidores políticos, y que es hoy en día un fructífero campo de análisis teórico de disciplinas como la ética, la teoría política y la sociología.