Conflict Markets: An investigation of the market's role in a violent consumer culture

In light of daily reports on anti-democratic actions and violent organized crime in different countries, marketing scholars have called for more research to add marketing voices to the conversation about radicalization and democracy issues.

Since these important issues have just recently been addressed from a marketing perspective, the research at hand aims to develop this burgeoning research area guided by the following broad purpose-driven questions: what can marketing do to address radicalization, and how can marketing knowledge help society, policymakers, consumers and companies to prevent radicalization?

Through digital methods in social media, in combination with ethnographic fieldwork, this study will empirically investigate a so called “conflict market” (Ulver 2022) – namely the consumer culture of Swedish gangster rap – and explore the linkages between its “echo chambers” and “brand publics” (Arvidsson & Caliandro 2016) where radicalization and prevention against radicalization can take place.

Such linkages will on the one hand be approached by looking at consumer rituals, culture, imaginaries, norms and language – through fieldwork as well as digitally– and on the other hand by looking at the role marketing and branding play, both in terms of how marketing notions, logics and techniques are used by radicalizing groups, and how mainstream market actors (un)willingly may contribute to polarization and radicalization through the tempting monetization of conflict