Roei Davidson

The barriers facing artists’ use of crowdfunding platforms: Personality, emotional labor, and going to the well one too many times

Popular discourse frames crowdfunding as a way for those traditionally locked out of financing opportunities to leverage the connectivity of the Internet to widen their reach beyond their immediately accessible networks and secure funds for a wide variety of projects. Using a survey of crowdfunding project founders in the culture industries, we explored the relationship between certain social and psychological characteristics and attitudes toward crowdfunding. We examined how extraversion, surface acting, emotional labor, the social composition of project backers, and project success all relate to enjoyment and future intentions of using crowdfunding in the culture industries. Crowdfunding appears to advantage culture producers with particular personality structures while disadvantaging others. In sum, crowdfunding seems beneficial but might be useful only for particular types of artists and therefore should not supplant other traditional financing modes.

Factors for success in repeat crowdfunding: why sugar daddies are only good for Bar-Mitzvahs

ABSTRACT Some see crowdfunding as a potential replacement for existing long-term funding mechanisms, especially in cultural production. We look at the factors that correlate with repeated crowdfunding usage, analyzing data from the popular crowdfunding site Kickstarter. We analyzed data on projects from four of Kickstarters categories. We found that, generally across the four categories, a higher pledged-to-backers ratio diminished the odds of a second project, a higher number of backers increased the odds of a second project, and funds raised above a projects goal also increased the odds of a second project. A greater number of smaller backers, as opposed to one large backer (thus ‘sugar daddy’), are beneficial. Increasing ones network beyond immediate friends and family is vital to continued crowdfunding efforts, as there are social strings attached to financial support from friends and family. Lastly, raising funds above and beyond the set goal may signal to the project creator the presence of a fan community and convince the creator to use crowdfunding again.

Staying Above the Fray: Framing and Conflict in the Coverage of Education Policy Debates

This article examines the mass media’s role in shaping education policy debates in light of pluralist theory and Bourdieu’s social fields theory. We content analyzed the coverage of New Jersey education policy debates during 1985, when the governor moved to consolidate his power in the education field. We used quantitative framing and conflict analysis and found that the media presented educational policy debates in ways that advantaged political and economic elites and portrayed the governor as being above the political fray. On the whole, our findings conform more to Bourdieu’s social fields theory than to pluralist theory.

The emergence of popular personal finance magazines and the risk shift in American society

This study considers the emergence of personal finance magazines in the US after the Second World War. It examines an instance when a possible relationship existed between a media genre’s emergence and shifts in the general political economy. It suggests that the appearance of the personal finance genre was related to the shift in the American political economy from corporate liberalism to neoliberalism. Specifically, it focuses on the hailing patterns evident in personal finance magazines’ editorial statements, and finds that these patterns attempt to constitute a popular and heterogeneous investing public of independent individuals in which magazines supplant other agents as sources of advice.

The journalistic structure of feeling: An exploration of career life histories of Israeli journalists:

The study explores 33 occupational life histories of current and former Israeli journalists. By doing so, it enables us to better understand how the fundamental changes that the journalistic profession underwent during recent decades shaped and influenced the occupational progression of Israeli journalists. Our interviews validate previous work on the partial professional standing of journalism showing that individuals enter journalism in a protracted and uneven manner. In addition, the analysis of modes of reasoning for entering journalism charts the informal boundaries of overt journalistic political identification. Finally, an exploration of self-narrated occupational highs and lows shows that career highs are always identified as personal achievements while career lows are mostly narrated as outcomes of larger organizational or institutional constraints. The current chaotic nature of journalism organizations, as reflected in our life history corpus, illustrates an environment in which there is a clear disconnect between actions and rewards.

‘An Insider’s Game’ Framing Media Mergers in France and the United States

The article examines the way in which media mergers in France and the US are framed. This is done in order to ascertain whether media mergers, which are symptomatic of the growing concentration in the global media industries, are presented as purely commercial events or as events with sociopolitical repercussions. Content analysis of articles in the French press covering the Vivendi Universal merger in France and in the American press covering the AOL Time Warner merger in the US was conducted. Results suggest that in both countries the respective mergers are mostly framed as economic events, thereby removing the event from the realm of political contention.

Financial markets and authoritative proximity in personal finance magazines

This study investigates how mediated discourse about finance developed in the USA in parallel to the shift from a corporate liberal political economic order to a neoliberal one. This is done by analyzing two personal finance magazines, Money and Kiplinger’s, utilizing both critical discourse analysis and longitudinal quantitative content analysis (1947–2008). I find that at the core of this discursive environment lies the phenomenon of authoritative proximity, which positions the magazines as trusted advisors guiding the audience, a collection of individuals, towards financial autonomy through immersion in financial markets. Authoritative proximity is constituted by second person address forms, imperative mood and paratactic syntax – all elements whose salience rises over time. This discourse, which makes the abstract financial system increasingly more concrete and focused on the individual, is compatible with the emergence of a neoliberal political economy.

Mobile social media as platforms in workers’ unionization

ABSTRACT This study explores the use of mobile social media in three successive campaigns to unionize workers (2012–2014) in Israel. We examine the workers’ efforts to initiate a union in their workplace as a sociomaterial process of organizing. An analysis of unionization-related Facebook pages and interviews with union activists reveals how the activists leveraged the portable-visibility afforded by social media networks (Facebook and WhatsApp) and mobile devices (Smartphones) to create and express their collective voice, achieving both mobilization of workers and recognition by management. The analysis traces how the activists tactically leveraged the portable-visibility of the media they used, fine-tuning visibility and manipulating portability during the covert and overt phases of their campaign. In the conclusion, we unpack the challenges involved in utilizing these neoliberal platforms in workers unionization efforts within the organizational setting and discuss the implications of these tensions for the study of both organizational resistance and mass protest.

Location, location, location: how digital platforms reinforce the importance of spatial proximity

ABSTRACT Crowdfunding and other digital mechanisms have the potential to open up cultural production to a broader population. Adopting a spatial approach, we investigate the intermediating role platforms play as a means of considering the debate regarding the egalitarian potential of digital communication. We consider the extent to which platforms relax the tendencies towards the spatial clustering evident in the culture industries through an analysis of two practices: Kickstarters ‘curated projects’ and ‘badged projects’, which provide some projects with additional promotion. We find that both types of recommended projects tend to cluster in cultural hubs and that they enjoy higher levels of funding than successful projects in general. Rather than relaxing physical constraints on cultural production, Internet platforms reinforce them. We suggest practical steps platforms can take to enhance the egalitarian potential of the markets they set up.

Interviewing interviewers: Collecting, analyzing and generalizing from occupational life histories of journalists

ABSTRACT This article considers the implementation of the life history approach in the study of media professionals, based on an analysis of the occupational life histories of 77 active and former Israeli journalists. The article first discusses the decisions made throughout execution of the project. Next, it explores three key features of the dynamics of life history interviewing. Finally, the article examines the ways in which data gathered through life history interviews can be generalized.