presentacion workshop ecrea 2011
TRANSCRIPT
A movie by ‘you’ and ‘us’. Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding in audiovisual content production
Digital Culture: Innovative Practices and Critical TheoriesECREA Digital Culture and Communication 3rd Workshop (24-25th November, 2011)
Antoni RoigJordi Sánchez NavarroTalia Leibovitz
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)/ Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3)
• Starting point: research on emerging creative practices and discourses related to the engagement of individuals and collectives in processes of audiovisual production.
• Participatory forms of media production• Affective engagement in complex narrative worlds, media
objects and production processes• Community-based filmmaking• Co-creation practices• Collaborative discourses on media production• Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing platforms
• Specific focus of this presentation: participatory culture and the notion of the ‘crowd'
2 Introduction: framework of research
Crowdsourcing: the ‘orthodox’ definition
• The act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.
Jeff Howe (2008)
Crowdsourcing: an ‘orthodox’ application to the creative industries
• Crowdsourcing implies an evolution of outsourcing towards society and creative economy. It operates this way: companies propose a topic or problem to be solved and reward anonymous people as ‘garage scientists’, students, freelance workers or curious people, who give answer to such problem.
(From Wecoop, a Spanish brand-new creative crowdsourcing platform, 2011)
3 Crowdsourcing: general approach
• Task-oriented: ‘problem solving’ in specific processes (things could be done the usual way)• Discourses oriented to efficiency, cost, global appeal, cosmopolitanism, freshness,
‘crossumer’, the creative amateur…• Contribution through open calls/ ‘contests’• Clear cut division between ‘creative core’ and users vertical leadership (when, what, how)• Members of the crowd not supposed to be aware or connected to each other (anonymous)
4 Crowdsourcing: general approach
OPEN CALLS
FINAL PRODUCTS PROMOTION
CREATIVE CORE
EXPERTS
TARGET
AUDIENCEENGAGED USERS
PROCESSES/ PRODUCTS AGENTS
5 Crouwdsourcing: general approach
OPEN CALLS
FINAL PRODUCTS PROMOTION
CREATIVE CORE
EXPERTS
TARGET
AUDIENCEENGAGED USERS
PROCESSES/ PRODUCTS AGENTS
• Closer to a ‘customer/ supplier’ relationship (‘suppliers’ as part of the audience target)
• Experience oriented to promotional purposes (users as ‘advocates’)• Not participatory (no explicit recognition, no decision-making processes)• Motivations? Appeal to be a part of a cultural endeavour, immersion in media
production, enrolment…
6 Crowdsourcing in media production
• There are multiple creative practices loosely connected to the notion and discourses of crowdsourcing
• Playful experiences• Motivations and rewards are equally diverse• Crowd experience embedded to the outcomes (things might not
make sense if done the usual way)• Discourses on empowerment and democratisation• More complex organisational practices: tendency towards a (not
so clear cut) division between ‘creative core’ and ‘users’• Participation through recognition, meritocracy and decision-
making processes are possible• Contributions don’t necessarily shape final product• Rarely community-based
7 Crowdsourcing in media production
Crowdfunding: the ‘orthodox’ definition
• Crowdfunding refers to the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money and other resources together, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. (Kappel, 2009)
8 Crowdfunding: general approach
• Clear distinction between creative core and users• Fund related, but not profit related (discourse on patronage)• Not everything is only about the money• Broadly delimited to specific milestones
9 Crowdfunding: general approach
OPEN CALLS
TRADITIONAL SOURCES (loans,
public funds, private investment, pre-sells,
etc.)
MICROFINANCING
EXPERTS
TARGET
AUDIENCE
ENGAGED USERS
PROCESSES/ PRODUCTS AGENTS
CREATIVE CORE
INVESTORS
10 Crowdfunding: general approach
OPEN CALLS
TRADITIONAL SOURCES (loans, public funds, private
investment, pre-sells, etc.)
MICROFINANCING
EXPERTS
TARGET
AUDIENCE
ENGAGED USERS
PROCESSES/ PRODUCTS AGENTS
CREATIVE CORE
INVESTORS
• Rewards proportional to engagement• Members of the crowd are slightly aware of each other• Relationship with audiences must be cultivated.• Two main ways to crowdfund a project:
Direct (through the project website)Mediated (through specialized platforms, like Kickstarter, Lanzanos, Verkami…)
11 Crowdfunding in media production
• Multiple motivations for participants• Playful experiences• New roles: creative core as ‘microfinancial managers’, users
as a collective of patrons• Creative core and users tied through a sense of reciprocity
(and contractual obligations)• Impulse of non-mainstream projects oriented to social
causes• Experience not embedded to the outcomes (could things
have been done ‘the usual way’?)• Highly mediated processes through platforms (technological,
legal, economic and social interaction implications)
12 Crowdfunding in media production
• Despite its wide use in collective media creation discourses, canonical approaches to ‘crowdsourcing’ and ‘crowdfunding’ fail to grasp the diversity of creative practices involved.
• Research focus on:• motivations• participation strategies and organisational practices• new mediators• communities• alternative models of production and distribution?• new aesthetics?
13 Concluding remarks
