The title of the thesis is ”Understanding Social Media Shopping – Instagram and the reconfiguration of the practice of shopping”. With Annas own words:
"Instagram, in particular, is one of the platforms that has made specific design decisions to combine the social and entertaining aspects of the native, virtual social media experience with shopping and consumption.
Based on these developments, and by using a sociomaterial practice approach, my dissertation examines how social media – as a sociomaterial assemblage – reconfigures shopping. Drawing on a digital ethnography centering on Instagram as the research field for collecting empirical material, it conceptualizes and vividly illustrates how social media shopping is emerging as a new form of shopping, what defines, enables, and constrains it. Moreover, my work conceptualizes the shopping practitioner – referred to as the “social media shopper” – as a hybrid actor that is shaped and constituted by both virtual and analog, both human and non-human entities, while also pointing to the consequences that this form of shopping has for its practitioners’ everyday lives.
By showing how social media contributes to the blurring of previously established boundaries and roles, it demonstrates that social media is decisively contributing to shopping becoming an integral part of the mundane and ordinary life of a mostly young, very social media-savvy consumer group. My dissertation therefore offers new insights into the understanding of novel, technology-driven consumption habits, and sheds light on a special group of consumers who have firmly integrated social media into their everyday lives."
Faculty opponent att the dissertation is assistant professor Mart Ots, Jönköping University.
