Spreadable Media. Henry Jenkins
support and purchases—with an unspoken request that they continue to support him. What at first glance seemed to be “free” was actually a reciprocal exchange of social worth within an ongoing relationship between producer and fans.
Reznor’s efforts may be somewhat unconventional, yet the notion that no-cost exchanges aren’t truly free can be seen in types of “giveaways” with which we’ve been familiar for generations. Prior to the widespread introduction of air-conditioning, churchgoers in the U.S. once cooled themselves on hot summer days with paper fans branded by local funeral homes. Jewelry stores in shopping malls often offer services as marketing: providing “free” ring cleaning to passersby with the unspoken hope of gaining the loyalty of potential future customers. And brands—from local banks to presidential candidates—put their logos on pens, stationery, and T-shirts for “giveaways.” Those giving such gifts hope the receiver will incorporate the objects into their everyday lives, the brand regularly reminding them of the company, while the utility of the gift generates some sense of goodwill. Such branded goods also often turn users into brand promoters. In that sense, these branded goods are not “free”—there is some labor performed in exchange for these gifts. And, as people share their pens or other swag, these items become “spreadable media” themselves.
The exchange of “gifts” brings social expectations, as both Hyde (1983) and the writers of The Big Bang Theory note; as a result, not all gifts can be accepted. In that sense, there are goods and services which literally cannot be given away because we are all wary of hidden obligations, unstated motives, or covert interests smuggled inside the gift. This focus on the expectations which shape the exchange of gifts is especially important if we hope to explore how media spreads online, because many systems of peer-to-peer sharing, cooperation, and collaboration generate value through creating mutual ties, reciprocal expectations, and social “payments.”
Indeed, when we describe such goods and services as “free,” we mean that people have not purchased them with money, not that they have not paid for them via some other means. In each case, the producers and laborers working for “free” expect some form of (social) payment, and each person provides his or her time and labor under an expectation that others will contribute similarly, to the benefit of all. Understanding the popularity of many Web 2.0 platforms, then, means considering what motivates people to contribute their time and energy without expectation of immediate financial compensation—whether these motives are attention, recognition, and identity building; the development of community and social ties; the creation of a useful tool; or myriad other considerations.
Technology has made the flow of content across systems of exchange easy, allowing people to take media texts from one context and transplant them into the other without much difficulty. But, as we have already discussed with regard to disputes over terms of service or control over intellectual property rights, these transitions aren’t always smooth. This is why the clarification regarding “free” is so crucial. The use of “free” attempts to describe transactions based in reciprocity while clinging to the language of the market, obscuring the underlying social mechanisms in a way that invites conflicts and violations on both sides.
Often, commercial motives for offering a platform or text for “free” include commodifying audience labor, creating opportunities for gathering data, adding people to a contact list to be sold to marketers, or bringing together an audience to sell to advertisers (concepts we explore throughout the rest of this book). In other cases, these “free” offers generate benefits by attempting to enlist those who accept them as grassroots intermediaries or else encouraging those users to create content themselves and thus to attract greater audiences to expand the reach of a platform or brand. YouTube might offer its web platform to users at no cost, but the efforts of users to create social value through the site generates page views and data which are the basis for YouTube’s advertising and licensing relationships. As a result, these exchanges create implicit social contracts not just within the user community but between the community and the platform—contracts that, when violated, can generate a sense of being cheated, much as workers would object to having their wages changed on payday.
Toward Transparent Marketing
As companies come to terms with an online environment that records, amplifies, and proliferates the audience’s collective interpretation and appropriation of their marketing materials, and as companies try to make sense of how their material spreads in environments governed by peer-to-peer logics, those companies are spending more energy trying to engage their audiences directly. Consider, for instance, the public relations field. As noted in the introduction, “public relations” was once a term used for customer service; however, for most of the twentieth century, PR primarily stood for “press relations,” as companies sought to influence “the masses” through the intermediaries of professional journalists. Today, however, people tasked with promoting a brand are increasingly trying to bring the “public” back to public relations.
This doesn’t mean that traditional media is no longer a significant focus, since they remain a crucial and prominent amplifier in a spreadable media environment. However, suddenly, the importance of recommendations from “the average person” have become a renewed priority, and word of mouth, the original form of marketing, is treated as a new phenomenon due to one major distinction: online communication creates a textual trail of the conversations audiences have about a brand or media property which may be archived indefinitely for all to see.
If brands and media properties admit that the word-of-mouth recommendations of fellow audience members hold the greatest opportunity for influencing others, many questions remain. What implicit contracts exist between brands and those recommenders? What moral codes and guidelines should brands respect when encouraging, soliciting, or reacting to comments from those audiences they wish to reach? What types of compensation, if any, do audience members deserve for their promotional labor when they provide a testimonial for their favorite television show or company? Do some forms of compensation compromise the integrity of all involved? After all, as Hyde notes, a thin line separates gifts from bribes, but the distinction carries enormous moral implications (1983, 237).
North Carolina State University marketing professor Stacy Wood has conducted extensive research on the value people place on recommendations from everyday people and their potential impact on brands. In a world where audiences are bombarded by thousands of messages daily and where they have become incredibly suspicious of the authenticity and credibility of marketing messages in response, word-of-mouth recommendations are an incredibly important source of credible information. Brand managers and marketers have begun to capitalize on this, encouraging customers to write testimonials or to produce content recommending products. This encouragement needs to be carefully applied, however: Wood’s research suggests that, when customers are provided rewards for writing about their experiences, they often exaggerate, resulting in less genuine testimonials that no one (even the recommenders themselves) trusts. As Wood elaborates further in our enhanced book,
Firms must be careful to create a testimonial-giving space that is clearly not linked to prizes or other financial benefits, a space that highlights the voluntary nature of testimonial contributions. In this way, the facilitation of consumer engagement and testimonials must occur in the social economy (moral/gift) rather than in a traditional commodity-based economy. This acts as a signal of credibility, not only to the testimonial writer but also to other consumers who read the resulting testimonies.
As marketing disciplines tackle how best to encourage participation while still sounding bona fide, two buzzwords have consistently appeared in popular literature surrounding Web 2.0: “transparency” and “authenticity.” Both of these words have deep histories in various disciplines. In current Web 2.0 business rhetoric, “transparency” refers to the degree to which brands and audience members alike are forthcoming about their ties to one another, ensuring that potential customers have access to all the information needed to assess the credibility of a recommendation. Meanwhile, in the recent parlance of marketing, “authenticity” represents the overall assessment of the credibility of a brand or audience member. Here, the test of authenticity asks, Is the messenger being fully transparent? Is this piece of content or recommendation consistent with what is known about and expected from the messenger? And does the messenger genuinely have