by a purely commercial transaction. It was not enough to produce commodities to be exchanged for money; these were also artifacts that displayed professional accomplishments. Craftsmen performed labor that benefited others yet also created structures of self-governance on the level of the guild that helped shape the conditions of their production. (Of course, historically, guilds also sought to construct monopolies, making it harder for newcomers to enter trades, thus protecting the economic interests of their members. Though tempting, we must not overly romanticize such arrangements.) It is precisely the shift from this system in which individual craftsmen felt pride in their own labor to one in which they became anonymous and interchangeable contributors to an assembly line that resulted in the concept of “alienated labor.”
Sennett’s work is crucial to think through as we examine why participants engage in activities which may not yield them immediate financial returns or which may even cost money to sustain but which get appraised through alternative systems of value. Sennett himself cites the open software movement as an example of a modern social structure which in many ways replicates the self-motivation and shared governance of craftsman guilds (2008, 24), contrasting this system of voluntary labor with the kinds of compensating-yet-regulated performance associated with work in industrial or bureaucratic systems.
Like Sennett’s craftsmen, the millions of individuals producing videos for YouTube take pride in their accomplishments, quite apart from their production of value for a company. They create media texts because they have something they want to share with a larger audience. Certainly, as writers such as Sarah Banet-Weiser (2012) suggest, this process—whether the work of celebrities such as Tila Tequila or of an average teen posting videos of herself dancing with her friends—always involves some degree of “self-branding,” which can make the participants complicit in the systems of values through which commercial companies appraise their material. Users generating online content are often interested in expanding their own audience and reputation. They may measure their success by how many followers they attract on Twitter, just as television executives value the number of eyeballs their programs attract.
Yet, even if we agree that some degree of self-promotion plays a role in all communication, we must likewise recognize a desire for dialogue and discourse, for solidifying social connections, and for building larger communities through the circulation of media messages. The material emerging from DIY or fan communities provides a vehicle through which people share their particular perspectives with the world, perspectives often not represented in mass media. When audience members spread this content from one community to another, they do so because they have a stake in the circulation of these messages. They are embracing material meaningful to them because it has currency within their social networks and because it facilitates conversations they want to have with their friends and families.
We should thus describe such audience labor as “engaged” rather than “exploited.” Talk of “engagement” fits within industry discourse which has sought new ways to model, measure, and monetize what audiences do with content within networked culture (as we will examine in chapter 3). However, “engaged” also recognizes that these communities are pursuing their own interests, connected to and informed by those decisions made by others within their social networks. Perhaps this is what Terranova means when she describes the activities associated with “free labor” as “pleasurably embraced” by participants, even as they are also being commodified and “exploited” by corporate interests.
If Sennett offers us a way to frame labor that does not rest exclusively on economic relations, others have suggested ways of thinking about notions of ownership which respect the emotional and moral investments fans make in media properties and not simply the economic stakes of media corporations. Flourish Klink, Chief Participation Officer at transmedia branding and entertainment company The Alchemists, developed a statement of best practices to govern corporate relationships with a fan base. Reflecting her own involvement as a fan in debates around “free labor,” Klink contends in this “fan manifesto,”
A person who works in an office probably doesn’t own their own desk—it probably belongs to their company. But they feel like they own the desk; it’s their desk. In the same way, when you love a story, you feel like it’s your story. That’s a good thing. If you didn’t feel that way, you obviously wouldn’t care very much about the story. As storytellers, we want to encourage people to own their favorite stories. We want them to incorporate their favorite stories into their lives, to think about them deeply, to discuss them passionately, to feel like they know the characters and they’ve really been to the locations. (2011)
Klink goes on to argue that storytellers can increase their audience’s emotional investment in properties through respecting and recognizing the contributions fans make to the value of stories, thus strengthening the moral economy surrounding a brand or text. As she stresses, fans may be motivated to make creative contributions to content for many reasons—only some of which involve financial motives. Companies, she argues, are obligated to learn from and respond to fan expectations, not the other way around, since fans do not owe companies anything but rather freely give their labors of love.
The motives shaping cultural production within a commercial economy are multiple and varied; they cannot be reduced to purely economic rewards, as Richard Sennett shows us. In addition to remuneration, artists (both professional and amateur) seek to gain recognition, to influence culture, and to express personal meanings. Only a complex set of negotiations within the creative industries allow artists to serve all these various goals. The social motives for sharing media are also varied and cannot be reduced to the idea of “stealing content,” a phrase which still values the transaction almost entirely in economic terms. Within many peer-to-peer exchanges, “status,” “prestige,” “esteem,” and “relationship building” take the place of cash remuneration as the primary drivers of cultural production and social transaction. Across this book, we will explore a range of informal relationships which generate meaning through the exchange of media: economies based on reputation or status, competition and “bragging rights,” mentorship and learning, and the exchange of curatorial expertise and fan mastery. All these practices and motives are examples of an informal economy which coexists and complexly interacts with the commercial economy.
Giving Gifts, Creating Obligations
The social obligations audience members feel toward each other within audience groups may be as important for understanding how and why media spread as the economic relations between producers and audiences are (thus our emphasis later in this chapter on the concept of a gift economy). Indeed, many behaviors that have primarily been discussed through the lens of producer-audience relations look quite different when examined in terms of the relations among audience members. As Ian Condry explains, “Unlike underwear or swim suits, music falls into the category of things you are normally obligated to share with your dorm mates, family, and friends. Yet to date, people who share music files are primarily represented in media and business settings as selfish, improperly socialized people who simply want to get something—the fruits of other people’s labor—for free” (2004, 348). Industry discourse depicting file sharers as “selfish” ignores the investment of time and money people make toward facilitating the sharing of valued content, whether individually among friends or collectively with any and all who want to download. Enthusiasts bear these costs because they feel an obligation to “give back” to their “community” and/or in the hope that their actions will direct greater attention and interest to the media they love.
When a firm moral economy exists, audiences will often police their own actions, calling out those who they feel damage the integrity of a platform or who undercut informal agreements with commercial producers and distributors. Consider, as another example, anime fans actively circulating underground copies of their favorite series with fan-translated subtitles, an activity called “fansubbing.” While their videos often attract takedown notices, fans (and some producers) view fansubbed material as mutually beneficial, demonstrating demand for properties
