FOE2 – Fan Labour

Fan Labor

Panelists: Mark Deuze, Indiana University; Catherine Tosenberger, University of Florida; Jordan Greenhall, DivX; Elizabeth Osder, Buzznet; Raph Koster, Areae

There is growing anxiety about the way labor is compensated in Web 2.0. The accepted model — trading content in exchange for connectivity or experience — is starting to strain, particularly as the commodity culture of user-generated content confronts the gift economy which has long characterized the participatory fan cultures of the web. The incentives which work to encourage participation in some spaces are alienating other groups and many are wondering what kinds of revenue sharing should or could exist when companies turn a profit based on the unpaid labor of their consumers. What do we know now about the "architecture of participation" (to borrow Tim O’Reilly’s formulation) that we didn’t know a year ago? What have been the classic mistakes which Web 2.0 companies have made in their interactions with their customers? What do we gain by applying a theory of labor to think about the invisible work performed by fans and other consumers within the new media economy?

• Raph Koster, Areae: doing end user virtual worlds,.  This last year has been interesting to watch, livejournals, takeup or nontake up of fandom, music industry, co-option of user creation.  people realising that web2.0, or  a lot of it, built on getting stuff out of people.  there is a really complicated social content.  the line between fan and professional is a lot about luck, who is where when.  the money bit often causes the problem  Until about 1890 artists were really paid, the idea that creative content earned money for amateurs and professionals was bizarre until recently.  A lot of the issues are from looking at cultural products through a 20th century lens.
• Elizabeth Osder, Buzznet; – has communities in music and culture.  over last.  Ran communities on Yahoo etc.  I’m trying to learn about users; I want a close relationship with users to understand them, about how I can give them things they want.  I’m a product developer.  I’m not naive to the fact that these people are creating value and I want to find ways to incent I want to award people for consumption as well. I think about all the different states of users, the different points of passion, the intersect of passion and time.   We want lots of people participating at all levels.
•  Mark Deuze, Indiana University;  I started out as a journalist – I was a fan of heavy metal and I wanted to meet the bands.  I asked to get involved..I got sent to interview Black Sabbeth guitarist!  Loved it..my professional identity.  Now I interview people in the media and ask them what they do.   Many people work in the media because they are fans – the motivation not just benefits and compensation.  it is about freedom to do what they want to do.  One thing I have seen happening, the media professionals don’t really like the idea of collaborating audiences as it is seen as an impingement on their creative freedom; it is low on the professional hierarchy.   Some types work, give you better assets.   In some orgs, where they have adopted it, there are orgs that are co-opting labour.  Letting journalists go and doing citizen journalists.   Awesome but….. That validates some of the scepticism towards convergence culture in some professional orgs.  Now working with companies to innovate the process of working with fans.
• Catherine Tosenberger, University of Florida;  I wrote my dissertation on HP fandom. We are in 3rd generation of fandom scholars..when the first studies were done they were writing a lot about adult women.  There’s a lot of stereotypes about fans, the teenage fan, the virgin 40yo in his mothers basis.  The web and HP fandom grew together, you got scholorship about adult fans, and then HP came along and bought a lot of teenagers there.  Before it was restricted a lot to adults cos you had to know people, events etc and the wb allows it to be visible more so so teenagers getting involved.   it can’t be the weird hidden community anymore, it is open to all.  The culture of fandom is changing all the time. looking at the writers strike and the relationship with fans.  Fanlib wanted to capitalise on labour and not pay for it.  Also interested in fanfiction as it relates to larger artistic issues – using characters is an old thing of artists.  Fandom offers a lot of freedom that professionalism does not
• Jordan Greenhall,DivX :I’m a fan.   I’m passionate about music, helped start mps.com, DivX, now starting stage6.  focused on media experiences.   Things that are interesting is the movement in the mindset on the ways things are going in the media industry. 10 years ago I was telling them that artists would release direct they thought I was stupid, and now it has happened.  they are changing the nature of the rhetoric that is used.  Economic substructures are moving..Radiohead was significant.   Remix culture, especially multimedia.  An entirely new medium, a lot of creative energy around expression.  where are we going? how do we steer it?  The conversations are getting more practical and that is what is exciting
• Henry Jekins moderated
• HJ: so what are some of the expectations?  Social contract?
• JG: the term brand, audience and community can mean the same thing.  When you feel that someone is putting content into the community and it is artificial, then that is a breaking of the social contract.  There is also the expectation that the audience can participate.
• CT: the social contract between producers and the audience, the audience is not some monolithic mass.  Even among the participatory fans, the ones we can focus on as they are producing material, there are still a lot of groups.   They want different things; not everyone wants to give feedback  Some want to just carry on doing what they are doing and keeping the producers out.  eg slash fans, who are used to producers not catering to what they want, used to just getting done on their own.  Who are you talking about, you have to keep this in mind.  Who do you want?
• EO: when i think about this I try to break it down to what the old producer had that the fan does not.  it’s access – stars, fans, information.  The access to information has changed.  Being credible has changed – news used to be the voice of the audience, answered questions they thought the audience wanted.  Now they have access to the questions as well.  Now, when I go and interview, I ask my audiences what questions they want answering.  My obligation is to get it right, get the bands and fans close together,  create the bond and the conversation.  There’s a tremendous obligation and far more transparency about if you are doing a good job.
• RK: A key thing about how web20 functions, with UGC whatever, one of the bullet items is metadata.  Web20 does not care what you are creating but care about what you are doing and tracking it so they can sell it.  The companies invite the participation so they can measure it.  and sell it.  Understanding that the business models are premised on that is important to understanding how the platform interact with the customers.  Many do not have investment in the content.  livejournal happy to host all the slash in the world until it impacts the business model and what they can sell.   The basic premise of a facebook app is to steal the fb database, the premise of Dopplr is to steal Sabre database.  We are asking the wrong question – it should be who owns the user profile of the person who wrote the fiction.  that’s why things like Fanlib goes south and why LJ can handle it.   It boils down to whether or not they are smart about managing the clueless creators who play in their pens.
• EO: I think a lot about that.  metadata and the data is the ultimate answer to the business model is going.  but today, there’s a lot of people who wished they had that ability.  That’s the fast track.  But in the middle of it, lets talk about the vertical social networks…different things on different networks.  There is something in creating good places for people who want to share..anyone can do it.  rollout the wallpaper and decorate it to a clubhouse for things people are interested in.and you can make a buck.
• RK: many of these spaces are created by superfans, created out of love, then it hits scale and the business needs drive the agenda – an enormous bandwidth bill! 
• EO: maybe that is where authenticity lies, micromedia.  When something scales it may not be authentic.
• RK: look at Club Penguin.  dedicated to making clean entertainment to kids.  they did not think Disney was clean enough!  They donate 10% to charities.  they sold to Disney and retained their culture.
• MD: I think it is important when thinking about fan labour, the contract.  It does not really have anything to do with the net.   People have always done it.    Newspapers often say they wanted to hear more about their fans…I wrote an article that got a lot of letters to the paper, but they never followed up.  The two elements that I see are ‘leave me alone to do what I want’ but ‘acknowledge what I do’.   Professional creators want professional autonomy….do not want to work for special interests. 
• HJ: What are the expectations about renumeration?  Many fans do not want money, do not want work commodified.  What incentives are being offered?
• CT: in a lot of cases, the idea of companies providing an incentive is not the reason that fans do it.  Leave me alone but acknowledge me is common..the second you bring money in it becomes commercial.  It brings in the idea of control.  If you get paid then you are in a commercial transaction.  If you are doing it just for enjoyment and then you get paid, what are expected to get in return.  You do not have to write to a template, to what a company thinks can sell.  You can write what you want.  Control from an outside source is the perception when you bring money into it.    Fans are setting up spaces, giving each other the renumeration – attention, feedback, support, a space to play.  Always the feeling that if commercial companies join in, it tips the balance.
• EO: there’s a lot of stuff out there.  the beauty is that anyone and everyone is out there.  You have a choice where you want to be.  Ad sense is the economic engine for many.  I want to see study on what happens when fans put adsense on their sites and they try to optimise it.
• CT: it’s a long tradition to sell support, sell zines to recoup costs.  Beyond that, one of the really big rules is do not make money..it’s considered wanky. 
• EO: Revver is one idea about being able to pay creators, but not really taken off.   It was something that people were talking about.  tv.com, a bulletin board, was gobbled up but lives on.  There’s a game culture there, they get badges for doing things.  Fantasy sports is a good place to watch – they are picking teams, they get a rewards for picking the teams that work.
• CT: a lot of communities do not have winners and losers as in fantasy sports.  If media companies get involved, it can produce winners and losers as well.  there is a sense that they start to pick prom queens.
• EO :then the community should pick then
• CT: it’s difficult to gauge if that works unless you are embedded in there.  You get lots of subgroups.
• EO: how much reputations scoring is there?   In my world, we constantly count and measured.
• CT: in fandom, it is very difficult.  you can measure comments.
• RK: you can parse comments to find out what are significant.  Where we landed at is ‘don’t pay the fans’.  the currency is reputation in the community.  those running communities are not often seen as being in the comm as they are in control.  Look at earlier fandom, the gaps that existed between writers for zines, editors etc  Look at the terms of social contract, look at Dragonriders of Pern fandon -  mccaffrey gave them permission to write as long as they did not make money.  they were far more anal in enforcing the rules to keep this, as the author had given permission.  Can’t remember anything that did not go wrong when money was involved.  Look at Second Life, people go in and try to make money there and then.
• JG: you have this spectrum btw professionals and amateurs.  And another spectrum between those who are just trying to maximise economic return.  There’s some thinking that can be done about how different structures impact effectiveness.  In the music world, it was about quality,.  If you invest dollars than that will be better and therefore important..investment and quality of output was seen to be true.  If we find that adding economic value to fiction increases quality than that would be good..or ot could go the other way.  no one know s the answer.  But I agree that adding money means it will go bad.
• EO: there are other motivations
• MD: look at how companies can reward fans.  In the UK there is Scooped.  Gives money to photographers if their image is used.   Endomol recently started a new project, giving video cameras to people, which goes onto TV.  Amazon.com has reviews, my students contacted the top 20 reviewers.  8 of them said Ok – they get a lot of free stuff from publishers, they use the reviews to get an in with publishers as they are budding writers.  To get into gaming industry. the best way is to mod the games.
• RK: those aren’t the company providing the award in the latter – it is the larger ecology.  There is not the formal framework there.
• MD: I’m throwing out notions to deconstruct the idea that fans are just happy-go-lucky.  Reality tv as a genre is based on the reward syste,
• EO: we all think about it in terms of NDAs and maximises profit.  I want to think about it like a Craft Guild – you spent time and became skilled by working with others which can then become a profession.
• CT: this can still put being paid at the top of the ladder.  You can do things as a fan fiction you cannot do as a professional, many do not want to stop that.
• EO: people often do things for the love of doing it,  that’s more what I meant from a Craft guild.
• JG: there needs to be balance between economic production and cultural production.  If we do not prioritise cultural production then we have  a life of no meaning.  There is little discussion about maintaining cultural economics.
• RK: not in the copyfight communities.  It is not completely buried, but it is an artifact of last 120 years.  Most of cultural creation has not been about the economic value…
• JG: I’ll throw in religion there – the money moved to the top!
• RK: you get lots of people without money and in orgs with money it often moves to the top.  There’s always a curve and much of it is below profit line – people do production for the love of doing.
• HJ: will the creative work of fans be more important than mass media.  Will we have fandom without mass media? will fans ever buyout a creative property? (in relationship to fans buying a football club in UK)
• CT: what do you mean by mass influence?  you can do things in ff you cannot do to a mass audience.  You have to be embedded to know what is going on.  some of the great joys is that it is unpublishable.  it only makes sense in a small groups and can be very influential in that group.  There are really creative and talented people out there that could have a wider audience, and others who just produce for the small group.  Mass influence can ruin the fun
• MD:  fans are insanely powerful….(with reference to any UGC etc).  There’s few if any companies in media, news, games, that are not talking about co-creation, working with fans.  With brands they often insist…in the news industry citizen journalism is being dealt with.   In that sense fans are powerful as they are changing the way people are operating.   Fans buying own football club, then if media workers are fans, then public companies are going private again, eg Bungie.   A similar extension.  Ad industry, these huge holding firms, you get smaller firms emerging that are run by creatives in frustration at the move in power to account management. 
• RK: all of hiphop is fan movement.  that is how it started.  take it further back, see artists to create Atlantic records, examples pop up everywhere.  The new stuff, the cool new shit, does not come from the big companies as they optimise the revenue.  it comes from the fans, the small places.
• EO: the greatest thing about social media is it is the greatest A&R.  the dynamic has always been finding talents, they create something new, source content, scales it, gets mass appeal and then gets commented. There’s so much commentary now and is that going to create enough economic value?
• JG: you have to recognise that culture is the medium.  Fans only works when you are in a culture where being a fan has meaning.  Mass media enables a particular subset to be propogated very quickly.  You can have meaningful fans without mass media.
• AudQ: for much of history story telling was oral, and there were few mechanisms to pay them?  now we have micropayments, why can’t audience members who are creating great source get income?
• RK: there are 2 pieces to answer this.  The classic pattern, was about a creator who had a personal relationship with their audience.   Maybe they found a patron, but most had a far more personal relationship. The internet is giving a return to that, that is what radiohead can exploit that.   It;s not the scale it’s the connection. Mass is good at monetising scale, individual are better at monetising passion.  Bands are making more money on the swag – the passion.  If a media company is paying a blogger -the term is sockpuppet.    In games, fans start running fan sites and hit scale and then they take ads…then they start a brand and branch out.  many of the big names started out as small fan sites.
• AudQ: I want to build gender and class in the discussion.  I agree with CT that if there are going to be monetisation it needs to be from bottom up.  Hiphop was from bottom up.  Fan fiction is just as large an industry as sampling, it is developing and deepening the universes.  I want to take issue that the women do not want to monetise.  It is an stance that women have done for a long time, something counter to masculine commerce.  it is a safe space.  so what is the cost to women not being paid for their work.   women stop writing because of the economic realities.   There is a gendered aspect to this – who gets paid to remix hiphop and who does not get paid to remix fiction.  The fanlib of the world will start to monetise unless they mobilise. 
• CT: there’s along history of of this.  fanfiction is in a strange position. It is a safe space, there is freedom to write the material and I think it is most valuable.  I do not know if it can be reconciled at the moment.  I like to take it as it is,
• EO: we have this conversation in a space and a country where we have great freedoms
• RK: regency romance is one place which is a mashup, it is extremely commercial. it is not completely bleak there are spaces.
• CT: children’s publishing used to be the same.  
• [long discussion about women, gender roles, earning money]
• AudQ: there a lot of apps online that allow people to create content on sites, MTV, YT with remixer.  how does that change the creation if a user creates on a corporate site and the site owns the site and resells it.
• EO: it is the power of distribution that the corporates have.  without that, there is little value.  so stuff will not be heard of if no corporates
• RK: a lot of the sites do not do this.   the media companies are not stupid, they find other ways to monetise it.  Accommodation start being found.  some do not care, other creators will sign away different rights. 
• AudQ: in the panels this morning there was a focus on understanding who the audience is.  can you do that here? (for advertisers)
• JG: interesting in audience but only in a permissive way.
• EO: it is content – it’s part of reality
• JG: you should only be advertising things to people who want and need it.
• Eo: media companies want to inform and entertain, surprise and delight – and ads can do that
• RK: hire a fan a the ad agency!

Tags: FOE2, UGC, fan labour, fansumers