The Micro-Privatization of Social Problems: An Organizational Narrative Analysis of GoFundMe

• In Event: 50462 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 7: Organizations

Abstract

Online crowdfunding platforms, such as GoFundMe, have become an increasingly common way for individuals to raise money for a diverse range of individual and collective needs. The platforms on which crowdfunding occurs are not neutral actors; rather, how crowdfunding sites are designed and the types of stories they support impact who receives funding. While some of this work is implicit in the site design and maintenance, other aspects are more explicit, including materials created by platforms to coach users into telling the “right” story to create a successful campaign. To better understand these dynamics, I conducted a narrative analysis of organizational documents published by the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe. Written as informative and instructional pieces to encourage crowdfunding in a wide variety of situations, these blogs create an organizational narrative describing who GoFundMe is and who benefits from their work. This organizational narrative at once expands what can be considered personal troubles worthy of collective assistance and positions crowdfunding as the appropriate venue to address these problems. In this way, GoFundMe can be seen as a vehicle in which social problems are privatized, not by explicit government action but rather by framing social problems as individual failures that are the responsibility of individual donors to address.

Author

• Hayden James Fulton, University of South Florida