Title:
Exploring experience communication in consumer culture

Abstract:
Based at the Centre for Corporate Communication at Aarhus Business School/ Aarhus University, Erik Sloth is a PhD student and researcher with the Digital Urban Living project.
His specific research field is experience communication. With regard to the formulation of the objectives and research questions of this part of the DUL project, he will address the following two questions:

1) What characterizes the hypermodern citizen, and how is it possible to interact with him/her, taking into consideration his/her digital urban living?
2) How is the hyper-modern citizen constituted within digital urban living across civic communication, hyper-local news, digital art, branding, learning, and community building?

His specific contribution in this context will be a study of social mobility in a consumer culture perspective. In particular, he will examine to what extent one can talk about the market being a lever or a barrier for social mobility. The research will be conducted as an ethnographic study of young students in the Technical School with particular focus on their life-world, interaction and creation of identity. In this context, he will explore the interpretation and negotiation of mass-mediated marketplace consumption ideologies and the shaping of consumer identity projects. This will involve examining how experience communication takes place and is received in the urban setting where the students live.