The Mediatization of Gambling III: The Example of Individual Investors

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Modern financial markets are characterized by the pervasive use of information and communication technologies. The diffusion of media-technology has not only led to a worldwide stage for financial speculation but also to an increase of vulnerability of the financial markets for crisis. It has also widened the window of opportunity for the small investor. The research project aims at reconstructing ethnographically recent knowledge bases and strategies of individual investors which have developed parallel to the mediatization of the financial markets. The central question will be how the small investors will try to overcome their structural uncertainty and by which strategies of mediatized investment and through which forms of meaning they will find the sufficient reassurance to act on the financial market. Of special interest will be the role of new online communities that want to empower the individual investors for trading such as trading schools or social trading platforms. In continuation and as a widening of our research during the first two phases of the Priority Program on mediatized worlds the social world of small investors shall be compared to those of sports gamblers and poker players. This comparison promises insights into common traits and disparities of these widely different worlds of mediatized gambling but also serves the purpose to expand and refine the concept of reflexive mediatization we have put forward in the past. Within the Priority Program Mediatized Worlds the project is located in research area A (action and interaction forms). Nevertheless, research results might also be significant for the two remaining research areas of the Priority Program.