Authors: Konstantinos Theodoridis

Title: Consumer culture in times of austerity: Young people’s consumption of social media during the Greek crisis

Abstract

The paper deals with the rise of digitalisation of consumer culture within the context of the Greek socio-economic crisis. This article puts the emphasis on young consumers who engage in social media consumption in an era of uncertainty. Drawing upon a qualitative study (focus groups and semi-structured interviews), the paper argues that new digital media affect the nature of consumption in an age of ‘precarity’. It is demonstrated that issues regarding young people’s social media usage are vital to understanding not only youth identities, but also in making connections between shopping and digitalisation of the consuming experience (Lehdonvirta, 2013). The research builds upon qualitative data derived from an ongoing project involving young people in Athens in which we examine the relationship between consumption and representations on social media. What is important here is to understand how young adults move towards a different paradigm of shopping experience, namely prosumption (Ritzer and Jurgenson, 2010). Specifically, we are interested in young people’s concern with representations and lifestyle. The young consumer is still interested in the consumerist logic of our contemporary society and finding ways to engage in the sphere of consumption even when access to traditional activities of consumption has been limited.

word count: 199