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Is the web changing the way we give?
Patrick DanielsIntroduction
The rise of social media
and digital networks is contributing to the return to prominence of the gifteconomy
.As the web has enabled social networks and online communities to grow, so values suchas sharing, openness and collaboration associated with the gift economy, are increasinglyinfluencing the relationships and connections between us. From business strategies through to public policy, giving relationships are seen as offering credible and valuable contributions.This revolution in values offers volunteerism
, an opportunity to play an even greater role in a ever more networked Britain
.This article attempts to unpick the increasing number of connections between these different modesof giving
, rendered both possible and visible
by a more networked Britain and world beyond. Thisarticle concludes that there's the basis for a new framework to begin to understand how the web ischanging the way we give.
Networks of giving
This article is concerned with giving activities: participation, professional-amateurism, civicengagement and volunteering
.The common thread running through these activities is that are allconsistent with the concept of the gift economy
. According to Wikipedia (itself a gift economy),the concept of the gift economy
is:
"a society where valuable goods and services are regularly given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards (i.e. no formal quid pro quo exists). Ideally, simultaneous or recurring giving serves to circulate and redistribute valuables within thecommunity"
Giving is not dependent on a legally binding exchange or even an explicit agreement for immediateor future rewards to the giver. However, giving involves the concept of reciprocity and drawing theline between explicit and implicit reciprocity
is problematic. Much of these questions areconsidered in the extensive literature on social capital
.For the purposes of this short article, thisthought experiment to understand the connections between giving activities is based on the intendedimpact of those giving, rather than on their actual impact
The basis of a giving relationship
Gift relationships are built on the twin ingredients of freedom and impact: positive personalfreedom and beneficial social impact. Think about the qualities of a great gift:
It's freely given, i.e. uncoerced [personal positive freedom
]
It's focused on the needs of the recipient (emotional, practical, etc.) [beneficial socialimpact
]Let's look more closely at activities where the individual's intention is a balance of positivelyexpressing their personal freedom and creating beneficial social impact. It's clear that the givingactivities of participation, civic engagement, professional-amateur and volunteering are closelyrelated if placed on a scale according to two variables: positive personal freedom and beneficialsocial impact. Activities can be plotted on the x axis according to the extent to which positive personal freedom is the intention of the activity, and on the y axis according to the extent to which beneficial social impact is the intention of the activity.Social media is disrupting the clear boundaries between these four modes of giving. Chris Andersonin his recent book 'Free - The Future of a Radical Price
'explores the new business model of giving products away for free. In this book, Anderson touches on two critical points that can help usunderstand what is happening with giving activities as social media grows.
"[Lewis] Hyde (author of The Gift
) focused mostly on gift economies of things—actual objects exchanged... But there has always been a much larger gift economy of deeds, thethings we do for each other without charge. As with the attention and reputation economies,this ephemeral gift economy has suddenly become explicit and measureable as it movesonline." (p.137)
Suddenly all this activity that previously happened below the radar, is increasingly visible andmeasurable as these giving activities transfer to the web. Giving relationships work better whentransparency and openness
The other point is the new scale at which giving via social media can operate:
"If only 1 percent of the hundred people in some school‘s sixth-grade class volunteer to helpmake the yearbook, it doesn‘t get done. But if just 1 percent of the visitors to Wikipediadecide to create an entry, you get the greatest trove of information the world has ever seen.(In fact, it‘s closer to one in ten thousand Wikipedia visitors who are active contributors.)"
Participation rates that previously would have been a disaster on a smaller scale, are suddenly viablenow as they take place on much bigger scales. Unprecedented access to the social web meansgiving goes further than before and the 'long tail' distribution
of giving can be more successfullyleveraged. Each mode of giving can increasing reach out beyond where it could previously.
Giving activity #1: Participation
Participation is referred to incessantly across the sectors, but it's one of the least defined types of activity in the gift economy. The pitfall with participation as a concept is its lack of precision
. It'sused to cover all manner of activities, typically ad hoc and of short duration.Giving scales. So often the greater the giving taking place, the greater the potential sum value of allthe gifts given. And so here's the thing about participation. It's almost a law of participative production. The more specific the goal of the crowd's production, the greater the pressure tosimplify the task at the heart of the call to action. While if you're willing to be more fuzzy aboutwhat you want to collectively produce, the greater the range of tasks available to participantswanting to give to the project. The Extraordinaries' Haiti Earthquake Support Centre
is an exampleof the former, while Wikipedia
is an example of the latter approach.
Connections between participation and volunteering
Where participation
becomes volunteering is a particular area of controversy in the gift economy.There's a noticeable trend to merge or at least close the gap between participation and volunteering.Websites like Acts of Kindness, We Are What We Do, Pledgebank and Leap Anywhere use thenetwork potential available now from social media to raise the visibility of the social impact of simple calls to action and opportunities to participate. Websites like Help From Home
andMicrovoluntarios approach participation from the opposite direction, breaking volunteering intosmaller tasks.A bigger trend though, is how social media is generally increasing access opportunities to participation. Twestival is a really interesting case study of how social media has generated a morespontaneous kind of giving
. But a site like JustGiving
,that offers individuals a way to fundraisefor specific charities, offers thousands of examples of this kind of giving. It's ad hoc nature makes participation lightweight enough to adapt to the web, in a way more structured volunteeringopportunities are struggling to keep up with.There are many examples of websites exploring the hinterland between participation andvolunteering opening up through crowdsourcing
(distributed problem-solving or production). Hereare some gathered by Scott Stadum on Idealist.org: The Point, Groundcrew, The Extraordinaries andAmazon Mechanical Turk via Idealist.org
.In the UK in 2008, government-funded youth volunteering charity v launched a campaign torebrand volunteering as 'favours', volunteering with a strong flavour of participation. Through the
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