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Consuming Digital Technologies To Enact Identities: An Exploratory Study Among Mothers, Meera Venkatraman

Journal of Applied Marketing Theory

This manuscript explores mothers’ consumption of digital technologies to enact their individual, relational, and familial identities. Using multi-method qualitative research techniques including phenomenological interviewing, image- based auto-elicitation, and home visits, it finds mothers purposefully consume digital technologies to negotiate, construct, and enact identities. Specifically, mothers use a repertoire of four appropriation strategies: mastering, partnering, domesticating, and avoiding. Mastery is a multi- year project in which mothers enroll in digital educational programs, qualify, and create new professional identities. In domestication, mothers assert themselves on technology managing their inclusion/exclusion in the time and spaces of family life, thereby enacting parental identities. In …