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EXTENDED ABSTRACT
This article details a creative gift system, investigating the relationships between a single giver and its recipients. Using an autonetnographic approach, it explores the author's experience on the social media of Wattpad, unpacking how different types of relationships affect the creative process of writing an original novel online.
INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, consumers share content on platforms like SoundCloud and WebToon (focusing on music and comic book production, respectively), creating alongside other creators and followers. This article explores a similar setting: I discuss the case of Wattpad, an online book community where writers share original creations, entrusting their creative development (e.g., books) to anonymous users. I focus on my own experience as a writer, using three years of autonetnography where I concurrently wrote and published a Fantasy novel on Wattpad. In those three years, I developed a relationship with my readers, which impacted the object of my giving - the novel being written. The article unpacks said relationships, that shaped the creative gift system in which I was embedded and that impacted the object of the giving. Furthermore, it explores the development of the creator's experience of a creative gift system through a specific social media platform.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Gift giving is a fundamental representation of social behavior (Mauss 1925), which encapsulates key cultural dimensions (LeviStrauss 1949; McCracken 1986). Gift giving grasps the complexity of human behavior by showing a variety of non-utilitarian but paradoxical characteristics - generosity and reciprocity, as well as the attempt to impose oneself in a quest for power (the "dark side" of the gift, Sherry et al. 1993). Caillé (2000) summarizes Mauss' gift constructs in four main concepts: 1) gift giving as being about alliance, in particular about forming relationships with other individuals, 2) gift giving as ritual obligation, which implies reciprocity on the recipient's part, 3) gift giving as generativity, where it represents the giver's need for acknowledgment, and 4) the gift as a quest for glory, in which the parties involved in the exchange establish a particular hierarchy by imposing themselves.
Contemporary marketing research ties gift giving to...