International Journal of Cultural Studies, Volume 27, Issue 2, Page 268-287, March 2024.
This article considers how house-sharing – sharing a home with other, usually unrelated people – is mediated by digital technologies. Drawing on academic literature on house-sharing and self-(re)presentation in digital cultures, interviews with share-house residents in Melbourne, Australia, and user posts in house-sharing groups on Facebook, we identify a sequence of steps and stages integral to the process of (re)forming a share-house in the competitive private rental market. These include advertising, screening, vetting, digital interactions, interviews and house tours. Considering this multi-stage process from the dual perspective of ‘home-seekers’ (applicants) and ‘housemate-seekers’ (existing household), we analyse how both parties deploy representational and communicative strategies, explore the conventions and complexities underpinning these interactions, and present a conceptual framework that explicates the process. The article contributes to scholarly debates about mediated practices of self-(re)presentations, and about house-sharing as a significant practice in a housing market that renders home ownership increasingly unaffordable.
Author Archives: Aneta Podkalicka
Mediatised marketplaces: Platforms, places, and strategies for trading material goods in digital economies
Convergence, Volume 29, Issue 5, Page 1352-1368, October 2023.
Digital marketplaces are standard and pervasive sites to trade and exchange material consumer goods worldwide. Yet the media characteristics of different, situated marketplaces have received relatively sporadic attention from the field of media and communication studies, despite the otherwise prominent disciplinary interest in digital technologies, platforms and processes of mediatisation. This paper coalesces perspectives from social, geography and retail studies with mediatisation approaches to extend a theorisation of digital marketplaces as ‘mediatised marketplaces’, focusing on the discussion of interactions between digital media and place involved in the distribution of material goods. We use illustrative examples of two different local marketplaces – the Swedish Tradera and Facebook Marketplace – to demonstrate how mediatised marketplaces challenge a range of distinctions, including between offline and online, material and immaterial, local and global. Mediatised marketplaces such as Tradera and Facebook Marketplace are grounded in place and local market identities, even as they operate on or are owned by global platforms; they rely on communicative as much as logistical functionalities of media; and are transformative of media and consumption practices. The paper contributes to studies of mediatisation and its impacts.
Digital marketplaces are standard and pervasive sites to trade and exchange material consumer goods worldwide. Yet the media characteristics of different, situated marketplaces have received relatively sporadic attention from the field of media and communication studies, despite the otherwise prominent disciplinary interest in digital technologies, platforms and processes of mediatisation. This paper coalesces perspectives from social, geography and retail studies with mediatisation approaches to extend a theorisation of digital marketplaces as ‘mediatised marketplaces’, focusing on the discussion of interactions between digital media and place involved in the distribution of material goods. We use illustrative examples of two different local marketplaces – the Swedish Tradera and Facebook Marketplace – to demonstrate how mediatised marketplaces challenge a range of distinctions, including between offline and online, material and immaterial, local and global. Mediatised marketplaces such as Tradera and Facebook Marketplace are grounded in place and local market identities, even as they operate on or are owned by global platforms; they rely on communicative as much as logistical functionalities of media; and are transformative of media and consumption practices. The paper contributes to studies of mediatisation and its impacts.