Cohort: SOMET 37° 

Topic of the thesis: Making sustainability count: Exploring the socio-technical construction of marketing insights

Abstract: As noted by Arividsson in 2004, market research plays a fundamental role in shaping consumption and yet, while it aims at capturing "the real", it actually produces and constructs reality itself – an argument that also resonates with early writings of Baudrillard (2010). With contemporary marketing practices still remaining "a mystery" (Rokka, 2021) and the growing use of big data and machine learning algorithms in this field (Campbell et al., 2020), there is a need for a critical sociological analysis of marketing practices. To do so, this project will focus on a theme which has been acquiring a central role in consumption practices and discourses: sustainability.
Following Latour and Woolgar's (1986) footsteps, the research aims to open the digital marketing "laboratory" to understand the day-to-day functioning of a data marketing agency where data taken from different social media platforms and machine learning algorithms are fundamental components. Hence, the research combines qualitative and digital methods: firstly, the research will use an ethnographic approach to understand the role of digital data in marketing practices and explore the socio-technical processes through which sustainability "insights" are created; secondly, it will employ digital methods to analyse textual and visual data containing the keyword "sustainability", to investigate its narrative and imaginary.

Research interests: Digital Sociology; Digital Methods; Social Media; Digital Culture; Gender Studies; Environmental Issues

Graduated from: Università degli Studi di Milano (BA and MA)

Degrees obtained: BA in Communication and Society; MA in Public and Corporate Communication

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