Consumers behaving badly: deviation or innovation? Power struggles on the web

Abstract This paper sets out to conceptually explore emerging communication patterns online and apparently deviant behaviours they can sustain within the scope of consumer‐producer relationships as power struggles. In addition it seeks to advance a conceptualisation of the balancing of power between consumers and producers on the web through contesting discourses labelling deviance. Theories in computer‐mediated‐communications (CMC) and cyber‐cultural studies are first covered to describe why consumers might engage in apparently deviant behaviour. Following this, definitions of power are provided and the work of Foucault is borrowed in order to evaluate how strategies of power can be based on deviant behaviour online. This paper concludes that given the yet to be normalised nature of the Internet, the current balance of power between producers and consumers could be determined by the establishment of a discourse outlining what is the norm and what is deviant. Implications for producers and consumers are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.