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: Kickstarter's ‘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.

KEYWORDS:

• Crowdfunding
• platforms
• intermediaries
• inequality
• culture industries
• geography

Acknowledgement

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2017 meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics in Lyon, France. We wish to thank Dana Markowitz Elfassi for her advice. The authors are responsible for all remaining errors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Roei Davidson is a senior lecturer (with tenure) at the University of Haifa's Department of Communication. He studies the intersection of economics and media from both institutional and textual perspectives. He examines the experience of working within the culture industries as well as the representation of economic life in journalism and other arenas[email: [email protected]].

Nathaniel Poor is an independent researcher in Cambridge, MA. He studies online communities and online interaction with a range of methods and approaches, such as participant observer, computational social science, and others. Some of his focus includes game communities, legal and technological issues, and historical factors[email: [email protected]].

Notes

1. In the few dozen cases where a location encompassed multiple counties, we consulted the Wikipedia entry for said location which typically indicated the dominant county for that location. Google Maps was also consulted if needed.