Crafting a Market: How Independent Artists Participate in the Peer Economy for Handmade Goods

Erin Flynn Klawitter

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/N2ZQ3K

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Crafting a Market: How Independent Artists Participate in the Peer Economy for Handmade Goods

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How do independent artists use social media and e-commerce websites to support their creative businesses? This dissertation examines independent artists’ participation in the peer economy for selling handmade goods, a hybrid economy that combines sharing content on social media and selling goods on e-commerce platforms. While a multidisciplinary array of literature suggests that participating online can have real economic consequences, this three-phase study provides triangulated empirical evidence to show that differences in social media participation and digital literacy do indeed have tangible results. Through analysis of surveys, content of 16,442 social media posts and 20 weeks worth of observed e-commerce sales data, and interviews, the project shows that the online market for handmade goods favors those who execute a promotional social media strategy and display high levels of algorithmic literacy. In doing so, it grounds ideas of aspirational labor (Duffy, 2015b) in economic data, showing that the time and effort creative entrepreneurs expend to develop their businesses often result in meager and unsatisfying income. It contests the assertion e-commerce platforms, such as Etsy, make: that an effective social media strategy consists of connecting with constituents rather than promoting goods. Finally, it argues that the development of algorithmic literacy—a specialized set of Internet skills that help participants render their goods visible in search engine results and social media feeds—is crucial to success in the marketplace. Despite the relatively high educational attainment of participants in the study, the presence of decent wages, effective social media strategy, and algorithmic literacy was rare, showing that the economic opportunities presented by selling handmade goods online may elude those who otherwise would most benefit from participation. Such findings dispute initially optimistic predictions regarding participation in peer “sharing” economies.

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