Digital Patronage Platforms

Bonifacio, Ross; Wohn, Donghee Yvette

doi:10.1145/3406865.3418332

Cited by 13 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…OnlyFans is billed as a "peer-to-peer subscription app," and became more widely used during the pandemic as many creators joined to supplement or replace lost income-the site reported a "75% uptick in model sign-ups in early April" (López, 2020). The platform benefits substantially from the rise in interest: OnlyFans is classed as a "digital patronage" platform, which provides for financial exchange for creative expression, with the platform taking a percentage (Bonifacio & Wohn, 2020). In the case of OnlyFans, the percentage is 20%, while other digital patronage platforms-Twitch.tv, YouTube, Patreon, and so forth-offer different terms.…”

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confidence: 99%

Cosplay on Demand? Instagram, OnlyFans, and the Gendered Fantrepreneur

Rouse

Salter

2021

Social Media + Society

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Fan producers engaged in monetization, or what Suzanne Scott has termed “fantrepreneurs,” struggle with legal mechanisms for brand-building given the limitations of both copyright and platform moderation. These challenges have been amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has fundamentally changed the way that cosplayers, or fans who dress up as characters from their favorite television shows or movies, market themselves in an increasingly online space, as opposed to their initial public platforms of conventions. Restricted by digital platforms and their various moderation and monetization methods, cosplayer fantrepreneurs have developed new, multi-platform methods for sustaining their content and community connection. One prominent platform significant to this turn is OnlyFans, which is billed as a “peer-to-peer subscription app,” and allows users to “Sign up and interact with your fans!” Through a sample analysis of 50 cosplayers, this case study considers the approaches of cosplayers on integrating OnlyFans as part of a multiplatform struggle for economic viability. When we contextualize this platform labor in the history of cosplay, we note the hypersexualized labor that has always been central to monetization in this space, and the media franchise exploitation that profits from that labor at the expense of the fan producer, demonstrating the fundamental, gendered exploitation of the trend toward a patronage economy.

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confidence: 99%

Cosplay on Demand? Instagram, OnlyFans, and the Gendered Fantrepreneur

Rouse

Salter

2021

Social Media + Society

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“…Users, also known as "fans," subscribe to the content of these creators. OnlyFans creators can receive funds from their fans via monthly subscription fees, tips, paid private messages, and the pay-per-view feature [13,7,32].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…OnlyFans is unique from its predecessors in that while the platform advertises that it hosts a wide variety of content, it is primarily associated with adult content (i.e., sexual photos and videos that are protected by a paywall), rather than game streaming or artistic creation [78]. Comparative to other social media platforms (e.g., Twitch, YouTube, Patreon, Facebook), OnlyFans' terms of service are relaxed for adult content creation [13,32]. Thus, OnlyFans is uniquely positioned between the spaces of digital sex work and subscription-based social media.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

"Nudes? Shouldn't I charge for these?" : Exploring What Motivates Content Creation on OnlyFans

Hamilton¹,

Soneji²,

McDonald³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Social media platforms are increasingly considering models to incentivize creators to publish high quality content on their platforms. As a result, social media content creation has transformed into a form of gig work for some creators. In order to better design social media platforms to support this labor, we need to understand professional creators' motivations. In this work, we present a qualitative interview study of the motivations of 22 U.S. OnlyFans creators. OnlyFans is a subscription-based social media platform that is unique in that it is primarily associated with sexual content (although it is not marketed as such) and thus creators are positioned at the intersection of professional content creation and sex work, exposing them to a unique set of potential challenges. Beyond the typical motivations for pursuing other forms of gig work (e.g., flexibility, autonomy) our findings highlight three key factors explaining the rapid growth of OnlyFans despite the potential stigma of sexual content creation: (1) societal visibility and mainstream acceptance of OnlyFans, created through a combination of celebrity hype and the design of the platform itself; (2) platform design: affordances for boundary setting with clients, privacy from the public, and content archives, which together create a labor environment participants viewed as better than other forms of gig work, a natural avenue for sexual expression, and enabling monetization of existing content, audiences, and skills; and (3) the pandemic, which led to both high demand for immediate income while waiting for-or after running out of-unemployment benefits, and increased free time, which increased general demand for pornographic content.

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“…Digital patronage refers to a revenue model in which fans provide recurring financial support to content creators through social systems that facilitate financial transactions (Wohn et al, 2019). Major digital patronage platforms include Patreon, Twitch and OnlyFans (Bonifacio and Wohn, 2020), and aspects of digital patronage – especially tipping and subscriptions – have been adopted by the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Clubhouse (Fischer and King, 2021; Yurieff, 2021). Digital patronage platforms allow supporters to ‘subscribe’ to an individual creator, sometimes in exchange for perks like behind-the-scenes content, subscriber-only badges or access to private forums.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Digital patronage is a subtype of crowdfunding in which the creator themselves is the target of ongoing financial support (Bonifacio and Wohn, 2020; Netherton, 2021; Regner, 2021; Wohn et al, 2019). Rather than a one-time payment, fans purchase recurring subscriptions that act as a stipend to support whatever a creator chooses to work on.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-platform practices among digital patronage creators

Hair

Bonifacio

Wohn

2022

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Med

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Digital patronage is an emergent revenue model in which fans provide recurring financial support to a content creator, as exemplified through platforms like Twitch and Patreon. Whereas previous research has investigated creator-supporter relationships, the current study investigates creators’ multi-platform practices through in-depth interviews. We build on trends in creative labor studies and communication to examine how creators perceive Patreon and integrate it into their existing workflow. This study’s findings contribute to a better understanding of the role of digital patronage within the broader ecosystem of creative labor platforms.

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Digital Patronage Platforms

Cited by 13 publications

References 2 publications

Cosplay on Demand? Instagram, OnlyFans, and the Gendered Fantrepreneur

Cosplay on Demand? Instagram, OnlyFans, and the Gendered Fantrepreneur

"Nudes? Shouldn't I charge for these?" : Exploring What Motivates Content Creation on OnlyFans

Multi-platform practices among digital patronage creators

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