Abstract
Crowdfunding involves raising small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet and social networks, to fund a project. Crowdfunding projects are mainly funded by the project creator’s relatively small network of family and friends. We argue that mobilizing funders outside this close network positively contributes to the success of a crowdfunding success. To study how project creators seek to attract funding from more distant/potential resources (latent ties) in addition to existing networks (strong and weak ties), we examined usage of social media (Facebook and Twitter) and the crowdfunding platform (website). We analyzed 10 cultural projects hosted on the Dutch crowdfunding platform “Voordekunst.” Our results contribute to theorizing on latent tie activation by demonstrating that social media messages and platform updates add economic value to the crowdfunding effort. Our study also explains the moderating effect of these messages on funders of various tie strengths.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1396-1414 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | New Media and Society |
Volume | 20 |
Issue number | 4 |
Early online date | 1 Feb 2017 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Apr 2018 |
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/ or publication of this article: This study was part of a project funded by the Dutch National Science fund (NWO), under research grant (grant number 314-99-105).
Funders | Funder number |
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Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | 314-99-105 |