 The data economy: How technological change has altered the role of the citizen-consumerMinna Lammi and Mika Pantzar Technology in Society, 2019, vol. 59, issue C Abstract: Citizenship and consumption have been linked for over a century, emphasizing the pivotal role played by the citizen-consumer in society as a whole, and the voting power of the consumer's money. In the modern, digitalized world of the data economy, citizen-consumers are being assigned new roles: active market party, content producer, distributor, and an important source of economic value formation. This article examines how the role of the citizen-consumer is transforming in the data economy, giving a simplified account of historical continuities and discontinuities. We concentrate on the commercial side of consumer citizenship, scrutinizing two periods in the history of technology: first, the 1930s–40s when the mobile citizen-consumer was invented, designed, and promoted by the US car industry; and second, the post-1990s when an even greater sense of mobility was introduced by cell phones and the Internet, drawing examples from outlying yet technologically advanced Finland. We close with a discussion of how the digital turn has given citizen-consumers new channels of operations, querying how technological change has influenced their everyday lives. Date: 2019 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:teinso:v:59:y:2019:i:c:s0160791x19300569 DOI: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2019.101157 Access Statistics for this article Technology in Society is currently edited by Charla Griffy-Brown More articles in Technology in Society from Elsevier |
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