Spreadable Media. Henry Jenkins
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all take the recommendations of trusted sources over strangers, experts over neophytes. However, that influence typically is contextual and temporal, depending on the subject, the speaker’s credibility, and a variety of other factors. Sure, there are influencers, but who those influencers are may shift substantially from one situation to another.
It’s easy to see how this concept of the “influencer” became popular alongside notions of viral marketing: both assume there is some shortcut to building interest around one’s message. In the case of viral marketing, the myth is that something inserted into the content’s “DNA” will infect people and give them no choice but to spread its messages. In the case of “influencers,” the myth is that, if a marketer reaches a very small set of taste makers, those few will bring “the sheep” along. In short, brand developers and media producers are still trying to figure out any angle of “public relations” that doesn’t require much in the way of relating to the public.
In marketer Scott Gould’s (2010) writing on spreadability, he examines the tension between “scattering” and “gathering.” Using a farming metaphor, he argues that marketers have to scatter seeds through many potential relationships and then identify which relationships develop and are worth deepening:
We don’t know which relationships will end up returning the greatest to us, which tweets return the deals, which bits of marketing make the biggest difference—and trying to carefully plant our seeds rather than scatter them neglects all the potential relationships that we could have, that we’d never normally pick. […] The conundrum is this: how do we go from a volume approach to a value approach? How do we filter all that we scatter, and know what relationships or opportunities to begin investing in with greater value?
Here, Gould rejects the influencer theory; a marketer doesn’t know at the outset which audience members might embrace a brand. Gould insists that the marketer build relationships through listening and interacting, deepening relationships with audience members when it’s contextually relevant and when both parties have common ground.
If the search for “influencers” is a vestige of a distribution mindset in an environment built on circulation, Gould’s suggestion of “scattering” content broadly and then “gathering” potential supporters follows the logic of online social connectivity: open communication that often leads to temporary and contextualized connections, a few of which might become long-term relationships. The media industries and marketing professionals must abandon the illusion that “targeting” the same nine “mommy bloggers” or a handful of celebrities on Twitter is all it takes to get one’s message circulated broadly. Such a model limits the meaningful relationships a producer or brand might build, devalues people not initially considered “influencers,” and ultimately reinforces a “one-to-many” mindset, seeking out a handful of affiliates to share a message rather than seeing it develop and build through many everyday interactions.
Moving Beyond Web 2.0 (But Not Just to “Web 3.0”)
For the media industries, for marketers, and for audiences, then, where has Web 2.0 ultimately gone wrong? Much as “viral media” pushed us toward embracing a false model of audience behavior, one which simplifies the motives and processes through which grassroots circulation of media content occurs, the language of Web 2.0 oversimplifies the “moral economy” shaping commercial and noncommercial exchanges. In the process, these terms mask some fundamental differences in how producers and audiences value what gets generated through their interactions with each other.
Web 2.0 discourse assumes that fan participation is highly generative—yielding new insights, creating new value, reaching new audiences—but the business model often isolates the resulting texts from the social contexts within which they were produced and circulated, thus devaluing notions of reciprocity. Many Web 2.0 companies have sought to assert total ownership over content generated by their fans, even after having sought to strengthen participants’ sense of personal stakes in the space. In other cases, platforms too quickly sell out user interests in order to placate the contested assertion of intellectual property claims posed by other commercial interests. All of this has contributed to a sense of instability and insecurity about the promises of Web 2.0.
Further, as companies embrace and desire to harness the credibility of customer testimonials and the recommendations of grassroots intermediaries, marketers and audiences alike must take a new set of ethical considerations into account. Brands must strike the balance—appropriately valuing and collaborating with enthusiasts while respecting both the autonomy and voice of its audiences. They must avoid crossing the nuanced ethical boundaries of “authenticity” and “transparency,” lest shortsighted marketing tactics put a company’s reputation in crisis. And they must abandon the illusion that they can effectively relate to a whole community or audience through reaching a few key “influencers” who everyone else mindlessly follows. Instead, corporate communicators must accept the complications and nuance necessary to truly engage with the public.
The flaws in Web 2.0, at their core, can be reduced to a simple formulation: the concept transforms the social “goods” generated through interpersonal exchanges into “user-generated content” which can be monetized and commodified. In actuality, though, audiences often use the commodified and monetized content of commercial producers as raw material for their social interactions with each other. This misrecognition is perhaps most profoundly expressed when companies seek not simply to “capture,” to “capitalize on,” or to “harvest” the creative contributions of their audiences but also to lock down media texts so they can no longer spread beyond their walled boundaries. In chapter 2, we will further explore the sometimes parallel, sometimes conflicting, and sometimes unrelated motives that drive the production, circulation, and appraisal of media content at the juncture between commodity culture and the gift economy.
2
REAPPRAISING THE RESIDUAL
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