Crowds and value. Italian Directioners on Twitter

Abstract

This paper addresses crowd-based dynamics of value creation in participatory culture. Based on a corpus of 114,931 tweets associated with One Direction and similar boy bands, we draw on recent theories of crowd-based organization in digital media as well as classical crowd theory to build a theoretical model of collective value creation. In our model, the achievement of value in the form of trending and individual microcelebrity is based on affectively driven processes of imitation, rather than on rational evaluation and deliberation. We contrast this model with established accounts of microcelebrity and draw out implications for theories of crowd-based organization in digital media and for theories of participatory culture and collaborative value creation in general.

Keywords:

• communication studies
• media studies
• political economy
• social media
• Social Theory
• Sociology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Adam Arvidsson is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Milano and co-director of the Centre for Digital Methods. [email: [email protected]]

Alessandro Caliandro is post-Doctoral researcher at the University of Milano and Research Director at the Centre of Digital Methods. [email: [email protected]]

Massimo Airoldi is PhD Candidate at the University of Milano and Researcher at the Centre for Digital Methods. [email: [email protected]]

Stefania Barina is Researcher at the Centre for Digital Methods. [email: [email protected]]

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the research project P2PValue-Technosocial platform for sustainable models and value generation in commons based peer production in the future internet’, financed by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Program [Grant Agreement: 610961]