from the an-academic-look dept
Earlier this year, at the Mesh Conference in Toronto, I had the pleasure of meeting Nancy
Baym, a professor of communications at the University of Kansas. She's been doing
tremendous research into questions concerning online "fan" communities around musicians.
She's just posted her latest paper, with Robert Burnett from Karlstad University in
Sweden, examining the question of whether or not Web 2.0 "fan communities" are really
about exploitation or empowerment. This is a question we've addressed before, given that web
2.0 critics, such as Nicholas Carr, like to ignore that there are non-monetary benefits in
the economy, and thus assume that any activity done for reasons other than money are
exploitation.
The paper takes a balanced look at the Swedish independent music scene, which relies
heavily on fan communities to act as filters and promoters of the music. The record
labels don't focus so much on "selling music" so much as building up attention that can
then be monetized in many different ways. Thus, they encourage fans to share and promote
their music for them. So, is this use of fans exploitation?
The paper shows that, contrary to the "exploitation" view, the fans often get plenty of
value out of the whole process, if not directly in monetary terms. As the paper notes,
the concept of "exploitation" suggests a cost to the participant, but if they get more out
of participating than they give up, then it hardly seems like exploitation. Instead, it's
a reasonable choice in a non-monetary market, where they get more value than they put in.
Plus, the paper notes that some of the fan participants eventually do make some money out
of their efforts as well. That shouldn't come as much of a surprise. There are plenty of
folks who became highly involved in a hobby and are eventually able to turn that into a
business.
But the bigger issue for many fans, is simply being able to build relationships with the
musicians they love -- and with other fans. To them, that's worth a lot more than money,
and it's hard to see how building strong relationships and friendships can be seen as
exploitation.
On top of that, the paper notes that the fans also make use of certain strategies to make
sure -- implicitly or explicitly -- that they're not being exploited. In other
words, whether they realize it or not, they're aware at some level of the
possibility of being exploited by the situation, and they make certain choices to protect
against that possibility. Overall, a very interesting paper that's worth reading, and I
look forward to more research on this topic.
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