A Case of Discursive Political Consumerism : The Nike Email Exchange

Abstract

Discursive political consumerism, the newest and most understudied form of political consumerism, is the focus of this paper. It investigates how the anti-sweatshop movement engaged in discursive political consumerism by using the Nike Email Exchange (NEE), which is estimated to have reached 11.4 people globally shortly after it was released electronically, as its case study. The paper uses the 3,655 emails received by the NEE originator as its main empirical material. This material is examined with a triangulation of methods: quantitative content analysis, qualitative textual (discourse) analysis as well as by situating the NEE in the history of the anti-sweatshop movement and in the literature on social movements and Internet activism. The study shows that scholarship on social movements is not able to explain newer forms of activism taking place in the virtual public sphere because it understands movement activism mostly as targeted at the nation-state or governmental institutions. Discursive political consumerism, however, uses the market as a political arena, targets corporations and challenges life styles and values of fellow citizens. Moreover, the case study also demonstrates that several of the fears about Internet activism expressed by social scientists need to be modified.

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