“Kind of Mine, Kind of Not”: Digital Possessions and Affordance Misalignment

Abstract

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 paper, 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 (pragmatic mediation) and, consequently, consumers’ experiences of, and beliefs surrounding, digital objects as possessions (hermeneutic mediation). We demonstrate that these affordance misalignments can create obstacles to consumers’ desired experiences of possession and document consumers’ attempts to overcome these obstacles by employing alignment strategies, with varied behavioural outcomes. This paper advances debates surrounding digital possessions and presents an enriched affordance theory lens that provides new insights into possession.

How consumer-initiated platforms shape family and consumption

“…Contemporary platforms are now equipped with a plethora of technical features (e.g., visual stories, live-streaming, and digital objects) that expand people's socialization and expressive opportunities. Mardon et al (2022) build on Davis (2020) to show that objects' affordance mechanisms variously request, demand, encourage, discourage, refuse, or allow certain behaviors. The affordances of a single digital object (e.g., an app) may be perceived, made sense of, and imagined differently by different kinds of users (Mardon et al, 2022).…”

“…Mardon et al (2022) build on Davis (2020) to show that objects' affordance mechanisms variously request, demand, encourage, discourage, refuse, or allow certain behaviors. The affordances of a single digital object (e.g., an app) may be perceived, made sense of, and imagined differently by different kinds of users (Mardon et al, 2022). Kozinets et al (2021) identify discovery, narration, contact, meta-voice, outreach, and organizing affordances which enable specific ways of consumer empowerment.…”

“…Prior research has identified platform affordances of corporate-initiated platforms, such as discovery, narration, contact, meta-voice, outreach, organizing (Kozinets et al, 2021), recursivity (Airoldi and Rokka, 2022), and memetic tendencies (Caliandro and Anselmi, 2021). These action possibilities (Gibson, 1979;Kozinets et al, 2021;Mardon et al, 2022) enhance our understanding of how platforms relationally afford ways of interacting and engaging with the platforms, encouraging or limiting distinct consumption behaviors, expressions, or ways of feeling. We started the exploration of Familyship by asking the following research question: how do platform affordances manifest in consumer-initiated platforms and reshape family and consumption?…”

“…In particular, the notion of “platformization of culture” (Duffy et al, 2019), has close relevance for CCT scholarship in that it enhances our understanding of how cultural intermediaries, producers, and various kinds of cultural influencers are fundamentally affected by platformization. Platforms contribute to the blurring of conventional consumer and producer roles (Cova et al, 2011) and private and public spheres of life, including the negotiation and expression of identity (Belk, 2013), various self-branding practices (Marwick, 2015), or possessions (Mardon et al, 2022).…”

Platformised possessions and relational labour

“…Here, digital platforms can be understood as socio-technical structures (Caliandro and Gandini, 2017), that in a Latour (2005) sense distribute agency in possession processes by allowing, encouraging, suggesting, permitting, or rendering impossible certain actions. Related affordances do not merely invite possession processes, like customisation or display, but enable or constrain processes in a more literal sense (Mardon et al, 2022). A recent illustration is provided by a study of a Spotify software update in June 2019, which showed how platform affordances increased Spotify agency in music choice selection and curation, while limiting users’ capability to create, organise, navigate, and maintain their music libraries (Morreale and Eriksson, 2020).…”