The digital patronage model provides content creators the opportunity to receive sustained financial support directly from their fans. Patreon is a popular digital patronage platform that represents a prime site for the study of creators’ relational labor with their fans. Through in-depth interviews with 21 Patreon creators, this study investigated different types of creator–patron relationships and the perceived benefits and challenges of carrying out relational labor. We found that creators construct a variety of relationships with patrons, ranging from purely transactional to intimately familial. Creators benefit from relational labor in that it encourages patrons to treat the creator as a person rather than a product, resulting in both financial and emotional support. However, creators face difficulties in maintaining appropriate relational boundaries with patrons, some of whom control a substantial part of a creator’s income.
AbrilPSPlantR (2016) The patent holder’s dilemma: buy, sell, or troll?Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies6(3): 43–58.
2.
AlacovskaA (2019) Informal creative labour practices: a relational work perspective. Human Relations71: 1563–1589.
3.
ArvidssonACaliandroAAiroldiM, et al. (2015) Crowds and value. Italian directioners on twitter. Information, Communication & Society19(7): 921–939.
4.
BaymNK (2018) Playing to the Crowd: Musicians, Audiences, and the Intimate Work of Connection (Volume 14 of Postmillennial Pop). New York: NYU Press.
5.
BelleflammePLambertTSchwienbacherA (2014) Crowdfunding: tapping the right crowd. Journal of Business Venturing29(5): 585–609.
6.
BerrymanRKavkaM (2018) Crying on YouTube: vlogs, self-exposure and the productivity of negative affect. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies24(1): 85–98.
7.
BonifacioRWohnDY (2020) Digital patronage platforms. In: Conference Companion Publication of the 2020 on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (eds BietzMWigginsA), CSCW’20, pp. 221–226. New York: Association for Computing Machinery.
CraigDCunninghamS (2019) Social Media Entertainment: The New Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. New York: NYU Press.
10.
DavidsonRPoorN (2015) The barriers facing artists’ use of crowdfunding platforms: personality, emotional labor, and going to the well one too many times. New Media & Society17(2): 289–307.
11.
DekavallaM (2020) Gaining trust: the articulation of transparency by you tube fashion and beauty content creators. Media, Culture & Society42(1): 75–92.
12.
DuffyBE (2017) (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media, and Aspirational Work. London: Yale University Press.
13.
DuguayS (2019) “Running the numbers”: modes of microcelebrity labor in queer women’s self representation on Instagram and vine. Social Media + Society50(4): 1–11.
14.
FrenchMBazarovaNN (2017) Is anybody out there?: understanding masspersonal communication through expectations for response across social media platforms. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication22(6): 303–319.
15.
GaluszkaPBrzozowskaB (2016) Early career artists and the exchange of gifts on a crowdfunding platform. Continuum30(6): 744–753.
16.
GilbreathB (2017) Rise of subscriptions and the fall of advertising.
GuarrielloN-B (2019) Never give up, never surrender: game live streaming, neoliberal work, and personalized media economies. New Media & Society21(8): 1750–1769.
19.
HairL (2021) Friends, not ATMs: parasocial relational work and the construction of intimacy by artists on patreon. Sociological Spectrum41: 196–212.
20.
HuiJSGreenbergMDGerberEM (2014) Understanding the role of community in crowdfunding work. In: Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work & social computing, CSCW ’14, Baltimore, MD, 15–19 February, pp. 62–74. New York: Association for Computing Machinery.
21.
HunterA (2016) “It’s like having a second full-time job” crowdfunding, journalism and labour. Journalism Practice10(2): 217–232.
22.
JerslevA (2016) Media times —in the time of the microcelebrity: celebrification and the YouTuber Zoella. International Journal of Communication10: 5233–5251.
23.
Karr-WisniewskiPWilsonDRichter-LipfordH (2011) A new social order: mechanisms for social network site boundary regulation. In: Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS).
24.
KhamisSAngLWellingR (2016) Self-branding, “micro-celebrity” and the rise of social media influencers. Celebrity Studies8(2): 191–208.
LeeSLeeKKimH-C (2018) Content-based success prediction of crowdfunding campaigns: a deep learning approach. In: Companion of the 2018 ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work and social computing, CSCW ’18, Jersey City, NJ, 3–7 November, pp. 193–196. New York: Association for Computing Machinery.
27.
LittEHargittaiE (2016) “Just cast the net, and hopefully the right fish swim into it”: audience management on social network sites. In: Proceedings of the 19th ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work & social computing, CSCW ’16, San Francisco, CA, 27 February–2 March, pp. 1488–1500. New York: Association for Computing Machinery.
28.
McLeanPD (2007) The Art of the Network: Strategic Interaction and Patronage in Renaissance Florence. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
MarwickA (2015) You mayknow me from YouTube: (Micro-)celebrity in social media. In: David MarshallPRedmondS (eds) A Companion to Celebrity. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 333–346.
31.
MarwickAboydd (2010) I tweet honestly, i tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society13(1): 114–133.
32.
MarwickAboydd (2011) To see and be seen: celebrity practice on twitter. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies17(2): 139–158.
33.
NameyEGuestGThairuL, et al. (2008) Data reduction techniques for large qualitative data sets. In: GuestGMacQueenKM (eds) Handbook for Team-Based Qualitative Research. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, pp. 137–161.
RaunT (2018) Capitalizing intimacy: new subcultural forms of micro-celebrity strategies and affective labour on YouTube. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies24(1): 99–113.
39.
RegnerT (2020) Crowdfunding a monthly income: an analysis of the membership platform patreon. Journal of Cultural Economics45: 133–142.
40.
ScolereL (2019) Brand yourself, design your future: portfolio-building in the social media age. New Media & Society21(9): 1891–1909.
41.
ScottS (2015) The moral economy of crowdfunding and the transformative capacity of fan-ancing. New Media & Society17(2): 167–182.
42.
SenftTM (2008) Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in the Age of Social Networks (Volume 4 of Digital Formations). New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
43.
SjoblomMHamariJ (2016) Why do people watch others play video games? an empirical study on the motivations of twitch users. Computers in Human Behavior75(3): 985–996.
44.
SmithAN (2015) The backer–developer connection: exploring crowdfunding’s influence on video game production. New Media & Society17(2): 198–214.
45.
StutzmanFHartzogW (2012) Boundary regulation in social media. In: Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on computer supported cooperative work, Seattle, 11–15 February, pp. 769–778. New York: Association for Computing Machinery.
WaltherJB (2017) The merger of mass and interpersonal communication via new media: integrating metaconstructs. Human Communication Research43(4): 559–572.
48.
WohnDYFreemanG (2020) Audience management practices of live streamers on twitch. In: ACM international conference on interactive media experiences, IMX ’20, Barcelona, 17–19 June, pp. 106–116. New York: Association for Computing Machinery.
49.
WohnDYFreemanGMcLaughlinC (2018) Explaining viewers’ emotional, instrumental, and financial support provision for live streamers. In: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems, CHI ’18, Montreal, QC, Canada, 21–26 April, pp. 1–13. New York: Association for Computing Machinery.
50.
WohnDYJoughPEskanderP, et al. (2019) Understanding digital patronage: why do people subscribe to streamers on twitch? In: CHI PLAY ’19: proceedings of the annual symposium on computer-human interaction in play, CHI PLAY’19, Barcelona, 22–25 October, pp. 99–110. New York: Association for Computing Machinery.
51.
WulfTSchneiderFMBeckertS (2018) Watching players: an exploration of media enjoyment on twitch. Games and Culture15(3): 328–346.
52.
XuAYangXRaoH, et al. (2014) Show me the money! an analysis of project updates during crowdfunding campaigns. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, CHI ’14, Toronto, ON, Canada, 26 April–1 May, pp. 591–600. New York: Association for Computing Machinery.
53.
ZelizerV (2005) The Purchase of Intimacy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
54.
ZelizerV (2011) Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
