Fight for Respect! Exploring Digital Activism among Cosplayers through Consumer Resistance Based on Foucauldian Theory

Objective: drawing from digital consumer activism and the Foucauldian concept of resistance, the aim of this research is to analyze how cosplayers’ digital activism governs their online interactions. Method: the ethnographic Foucauldian genealogy was carried out over a four-and-a-half-year data collection period. Results: our analysis revealed the Fight for Respect dispositif, when cosplayers’ digital activism represents the exercise of multiple resistances assembled to organize themselves through digital activism to establish care of the self and others. It is described by how consumers encompass several levels when dealing with attacks against themselves or their peers: from a proposal for coexistence — Agenda; to a desire for change — Protests; and reaching a position of rupture — Riot. Conclusion: the study highlights how consumer activism carried out virtually by a specific and engaged audience is capable of continually re-elaborating digital marketing relationships. Such activism opposes a dark-side activism, reiterating the importance of researchers and marketing managers paying attention to the curtailment or manifestation of pride in ontological conditions that are typically attacked in the digital environment.