Digital gifts: Participation and gift exchange in Livejournal communities

Abstract

This paper explores notions and rationales of gift exchange among participants of the social networking site ‘LiveJournal.’ While gift exchanges can be framed as a form of power relations, this paper argues that they also have the potential to function as a way of forming and maintaining social bonds, and of maintaining individual and collective identity within the virtual social space.

Gift-Giving as a Conceptual Framework: Framing Social Behavior in Online Networks

“…Further, the coining of the term gifting technologies does not single out specific services as being gifting technologies or not, but rather emphasizing the elements, functionality and benefits that comes from looking at the world from a gifter's point of view. Thus, gifting technologies can be incorporated in larger technical services, as is, for example, the case with BitTorrent (Ripeanu et al, 2006), LiveJournal (Pearson, 2006) or mobile music sharing (Håkansson et al, 2007).…”

Data mining emotion in social network communication: Gender differences in MySpace

“…While emotion is not the only important factor in friendly communication, with gift-giving online (Pearson, 2007), reinforcement (Cairns, 2006), and self-disclosure (Tardy & Dindia, 2006) being other factors, its frequency makes it an important facet of communication. MySpace users should not be afraid of emotional statements: These are the norm.…”

Exploring Qualitative Sharing Practices of Social Metadata: Expanding the Attention Economy

“…Empowering end users with a variety of ways to communicate regard can, quite literally, add value to online gifting. Consequently, we are seeing more studies of online sharing utilizing gifting as an analytical framework (Giesler & Pohlmann, 2002;Levine, 2001;Pearson, 2006;Mowbray, 2007).…”

“…Further, much of the use of social metadata is fueled by reciprocity, e.g., the loop of returning gifts. In the study we did come across social but what are arguably more selfcentered motivations, such as needing to reflect an abundance of friends, join a massive amount of groups, or use particularly flattering photos, and like Pearson (2006) and Dwyer (2007) we believe that the more self-centered motivations are tightly connected to impression management in Facebook. Similarly, we also see status seeking (Lampel & Bhalla, 2007) as a form of social giving for selfish reasons.…”