🔍Research Documentation
Summary
This research critically and empirically examines the evolution of control, discipline, and governance within society, our relationship with technology, the ways we influence our desires and are influenced by them, our tendency to customise experiences for ourselves, and the proliferation of algorithms in everyday life. It combines realist and critical theoretical inquiry with realist experimental study of consumer behaviour, focusing on the simulation, prediction, influence, and manipulation of volition and desire, to understand how various marketing strategies work, why they work, and under what circumstances.
Central to this work is the concept of hypervolition: the inability of consciousness to distinguish our true desires and choices, from our algorithmically deduced and imposed desires and choices. The Orders of Desires and Phases of the Choice Environment are developed around this term as part of this research, extending Foucault’s account of disciplinary power and Han’s ideas on the neuronal within the framework of Jean Baudrillard’s hyperreal. The research also defines a classification framework for marketing strategies, together with boundary conditions that specify the mechanisms and contexts in which each class succeeds, fails, or produces unintended effects.
Designed to be novel, creative, transferable and reproducible, this systematic investigation adds to the stock of knowledge on society, culture, and consumer behaviour and its concepts are creatively expressed through artworks.
Metadata
Title (Doctoral)
Abstract (Masters)
It defines the Orders of Desires and Phases of the Choice Environment related to the term, which extends Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power, and Han’s ideas on the neuronal within the framework of Jean Baudrillard’s hyperreal, and creatively express the concepts through the art works "My.o.T," "Inter Alia," "In Plain Sight," and "The Resistance".
Abstract (Doctoral)
There were three key stages of this research:
1. Classification Framework Development;
2. Study;
3. Results Synthesis.
There are two research methods employed in the study: Rapid Realist Reviews (five); and Experiments (two). Protocols and preregistration forms provided an a priori documentation of the reviews and experiment.
The conduct and reporting of the methods, findings, and synthesis were guided by compliance with RAMESES I and II conduct and publication standards. It defines a marketing strategy classification framework, and a clarification of boundary conditions: mechanisms and contexts of what succeeds, fails, or produces unintended effects for each class.
Objectives (Masters)
- Coined the term hypervolition and the Jevinan Orders and Phases.
- Conducted an art-based critical study of the relationship between algorithms, autonomy, and how it affects our choices and desires.Â
- Used art to communicate the findings into creative forms.
Objectives (Doctoral)
- A theoretically grounded classification framework that groups marketing strategies by their effect on consumer choice and desire.
- A clarification of the underlying boundary conditions: contexts where predictive models and influence strategies succeed, fail, or produce unintended effects.
- Empirical and conceptual tools to bridge disciplinary silos (marketing, behavioural economics, data science, ethics) by focusing on mechanisms and context, rather than on the isolated strategies.
Keywords (Masters)
