Surveillance and Consumer Culture Practice Flashcards

These flashcards cover key vocabulary and concepts from the lecture on surveillance and consumer culture, including the shift from consumer to brand culture and social theories of consumption.

Coded Bias (2020)

A documentary that explores how algorithms and surveillance in the age of AI relate to modernity, spectatorship, and the gaze.

Consumer culture

A system that evolved from local networks of barter to complex systems of mass production and distribution where technology shapes shopping.

Brand culture

A term coined by Banet-Weiser to describe a culture in which identity, belief, and authenticity are experienced through brands that acquire value through experience.

Consumer citizenship

A sense of national belonging constructed through participation in brand culture.

The shift in retail production

A transition where consumer culture emphasizes the production of commodities, while brand culture emphasizes the design of brand culture, service, and experience.

Henry Ford

A key figure in industrial capitalism who was as interested in producing consumers as he was in producing products to solve the problem of overproduction.

Consumerism

Both a practice (something people do) and a value system that suggests buying is good for the economic well-being of society.

Flâneur

A nineteenth-century figure who strolled city streets, observing the urban landscape while moving through it.

Flâneuse

The female window shopper associated with the rise of the department store, linking gender to mobility and the right to appear safely in public.

Automobile visuality

The twentieth-century shift of the mobile gaze where billboards used modern art styles and abstract forms to catch the attention of moving viewers.

Therapeutic ethos

A concept described by historian T. J. Jackson Lears where commoditized objects serve as a substitute for emotional connection in late modernity.

Conspicuous consumption

A concept by Veblen describing the purchase of excessive or wasted consumer goods as a means of establishing social distinction and position.

Pseudoindividuality

The way cultural forms interpellate viewer-consumer-users as individuals when they are actually selling homogeneous experiences.

Culture jamming

A practice where artists and activists post parodies of mainstream ads to invite viewers to think critically about advertising strategies and product claims.

Greenwashing

Advertisements that equate a company with environmental activism to hide the truth about the company's negative environmental impact.

Commodity fetishism

The process by which mass-produced goods are emptied of the meanings of their production and filled with new ones that mystify and fetishize the objects.

Communicative capitalism

A system fueled by social media's spirit of access and interactivity, harnessed by corporations to engage consumers in the ad-making process.