Data-driven market power in the production of addiction

The DATA-ADDICT project studies data-driven market power in the production of addiction. It focuses on online gambling as a key empirical example of a highly addictive, digital, and data-driven industry. Commercial operation in online environments produces unprecedented amounts of data.

Data are circulated within networks and used to increase profit via extractive commercial practices and political influence.

Data-driven practices can be particularly harmful when employed by industries that produce and sell addictive commodities, such as gambling.

Yet, and largely due to existing asymmetries in accessing data generated and held by industry actors, there has been a notable gap in our understanding of how data translate to power for addictive industries in online environments. What kind of data do addictive industries collect and circulate within their networks?

How do these industries mobilise data to influence consumers and regulation?The project builds a theoretical understanding of data-driven market power in the production of addiction via four interrelated research streams.

First, it charts how data are collected, used, and circulated by the online gambling industry and related actors; Second, it looks at how data are mobilised by these industries to leverage power over consumers; Third, it analyses how these industries mobilise data to influence regulation; Fourth, running alongside the three empirical streams, it forms a theoretical conceptualisation of data-driven market power by using empirically informed middle range theory building and by drawing on social theories of digital capitalism and power.The project produces a novel theoretical understanding of power in digital addictive commodity industries and beyond.

The project also formulates and systemises new empirical methods to access and analyse industry data.

At a societal level, the project generates crucial information on how to prevent harmful practices employed by addictive commodity industries