It is therefore easy to understand the eforts made by these platforms and a number of private and/or public initiatives to inform legislators and the public, and so create national and international synergies in order to internationalize and globalize the ‘ecosystem’. This is the case, for example, with the research carried out in the framework of the European Union funded CrowdFunding4Culture (http://www.crowdfunding4culture.eu), piloted by the private consultancy Idea Consult. The aim of this was to propose the development and, above all, the harmonization of these platforms at a European level. Similar initiatives have also been set up in the countries of the ‘South’. In Africa, for example, the South African based ACfA (African Crowdfunding Association), created in 2015, aims to unify the activities of the continent’s platforms and to remove the legislative barriers preventing monetary exchanges in or among other African countries.
The relationship between crowdfunding and politics depends on the use made of it by parties, unions and certain politicians. Use of these platforms or apparatuses typically brings up debates around their place in the participative democracy movement. We will discuss two distinct examples. The first—often cited by the high priests of cyberspace and other apologists for digital progress as a reference case for the ‘revolutions’ made possible by digital technologies—is the use of such funding in Obama’s first presidential campaign. In 2008, Obama appealed to the generosity of his supporters to partly fund his campaign, raising \$150 million. But this was only a tiny part of the total, and exponential, cost of the campaign. In this first case, crowdfunding served more as a showcase and a communications operation, rather than having any significant impact on the ‘democratic experience’. A second example, closer to home, took place in March 2018. On the initiative of the sociologist Jean-Marc Salmon, supported by twenty or so artists and intellectuals, an appeal for donations was launched on the ‘money pot’ site Leetchi to set up a strike fund to support the continuation of the movement against SNCF reforms. By 18 May 2018, 28,907 donors had given €1,132,001. This second example highlights all the ambiguities of the apparatus. Although it enabled financial support for political opposition, it also contributed indirectly to the development of the very same liberal economic logics that workers were fighting against.
Platforms as Technical Apparatuses
As we have stated above, the element that characterizes this type of platform is the establishment of a technical apparatus, in the sense defined by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben (2009). Crowdfunding platforms are above all a matter of coding. They are carefully planned out before going live, giving users access to services and to a particular organization of information. Without revisiting the large quantity of debate and research on the relations between techniques and uses, one should recall that coding intervenes upstream of content and the participation of project creators and backers. Platforms for cultural finance determine the framework for their automated services, from registering on the site to participating as a project creator, a contributor of ideas and knowledge or a backer. In doing so, the platforms establish how they will function (Flichy 2008): they must be ergonomic, intuitive and easy to use. It can be very damaging, for instance, if it takes too many clicks to reach the required information or to make a payment, as this discourages backers from finalizing their donation. The platforms also aggregate and exploit user data (partly visible on the statistics pages the platforms provide) and develop dedicated APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) which allow the platform, for example, to run as white label products on other businesses’ sites.
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Cultural Crowdfunding: Platform Capitalism, Labour and Globalization