A Cultural Science of Social Network Markets: Agent-Based Computational
Modeling of Online Co-Creative Networks
This is an extended abstract as requested in the call for papers – it is not the full paper.
Web Science recognises that rigorously interdisciplinary approaches are needed
to grapple with the transformational dynamism associated with online digital
media. In this paper we combine the in-close detailed analysis of ethnographic
participatory observation research with agent-based computational modeling to
explore and model emergent online co-creative relations as social-network
markets.
Media consumers increasingly participate in the process of designing, producing
and marketing media content and experiences. Over the past few years we have
seen the rise of user-generated content and user-led innovation as significant
cultural and economic phenomenon (Jenkins 2006; Von Hippel 2006; Bruns
2008; Shirky 2008). We propose that co-creative media culture occurs when a
non-trivial component of the design, development, production, marketing and
distribution of media product proceeds through the direct involvement of
consumers or users. In the past decade these consumer-producer interactions
have evolved to such scale and depth that they are now an increasingly
significant source of both cultural and economic value creation. But we now need
to move beyond a celebratory marvelling at the phenomenon of consumer cocreativity. How can we think systematically about this phenomenon? How should
we understand and model these emerging behaviours and practices that are
increasingly organised and coordinated through online social networks?
This phenomenon of consumer co-creation is often framed in terms of whether
either economic market forces or socio-cultural non-market forces ultimately
dominate (Benkler 2006; Bruns 2008; Shirky 2008). We propose an alternate
model of consumer co-creation in terms of co-evolution between markets and
non-markets. Drawing on consultancy ethnographic research undertaken
throughout 2007 with Auran games, an Australian based games developer, we
explore the front-line micro practices and motivations involved in online games
development. This research followed and informed Auran’s online community
management and social networking strategies for Fury, a competitive player
versus player (PvP), massively multiplayer online game released in October
2007. Undertaking this research involved working closely for extended periods
throughout 2007 with members of Auran’s online community relations team,
Fury’s developers, and Auran senior management. The researcher also
participated in pre-release play testing of Fury, joining in extensive play and
feedback sessions with the Fury gamers, as well as interviewing gamers
participating in this co-creative relationship with Auran. This research explored
the relationships between Auran’s professional developers and a network of
game players and testers who provided extensive feedback and design input.
We work from this ethnographic material to derive two theoretical explanations
for consumer co-creation that avoid the either/or distinctions of market/non-
market and intrinsic/extrinsic motivations that have seemingly taken root about
this issue. Our explanation is in terms of co-evolving market and non-market
contexts that draws in complex interrelationships between multiple contexts,
incentives and motivations, and the emergence of markets. This fundamentally
involves a co-evolutionary dynamic of both economic and cultural change. We
frame this in terms of the theory of multiple games (Page and Bednar 2007) and
the theory of social network markets (Potts et al 2008; Banks and Humphreys
2008; Banks and Potts). We conclude that consumer co-creation is indeed
complex, but in ways that relate to both emergent market expectations and the
evolution of markets, not to the transcendence of markets.
We then consider the potential to further refine and elaborate this social network
markets model by combining complexity science, evolutionary theory and
ethnographic research practice in the context of exploring co-creativity through
agent-based computational modeling (Axelrod 1997; Epstein 2006; Miller and
Page 2007; Sawyer 2005). We propose that macro socio-economic patterns
such as social network market behaviours are emergent phenomenon in which
the characteristics of the system as a whole arise endogenously out of the microlevel interactions of agents and their environments. Agent-based computational
modeling provides a tool for exploring and analysing the emergence of cocreative relations as an online social-network market phenomenon. As Joshua
Epstein (2006: xii) proposes, this generative approach to social and cultural
phenomenon may provide scientific explanations by facilitating the process of
constructing and refining scientific models.
This paper also contributes to debates about what counts as an accepted
standard of explanation and research in the humanities and social sciences.
Following John Hartley’s (2008) provocation that disciplines such as Cultural
Studies need to transform into a Cultural Science, we argue that ethnographic
case studies, while excelling at in-close micro analysis of local specificities, often
fail to reach for adequate macro level conceptualisations of the phenomenon
under investigation. Hartley argues for a more rigorous and systematic response
to the generativity of popular culture that we see playing out in the phenomenon
of online co-creativity. Our paper contributes to this Cultural Science approach by
combining the in-close detail of ethnographic research practice with the model
building potential of agent based computational simulation. The ethnographic
description assists us to identify the “micro-specifications – ethnographically
plausible rules of agent behaviour” (Epstein 2006:13) that will then provide the
foundation for the computational model from which the emergent social-network
market patterns are generated.
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