The Evolution of Crowdfunding: From Personal Narratives to Online Platforms

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This chapter explores the transition from traditional to digital crowdfunding, focusing on how online platforms like GoFundMe impact personal storytelling and engagement strategies. It delves into the moral economy shaped by large-scale crowdfunding and the implications of platform algorithms on campaign outcomes. Additionally, the chapter discusses the racial dynamics, financial aspects, and the shift towards individualized responses to social issues facilitated by platforms like GoFundMe.

Paris Marx is joined by Nora Kenworthy to discuss how people rely on GoFundMe to access healthcare and the further inequities that adds to an already deeply unequal healthcare system.

Nora Kenworthy is the author of Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare and an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing and Health Studies at the University of Washington Bothell.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Nora is doing an online event with the Debt Collective on June 13.
GoFundMe bought many of its competitors through the 2010s.
In 2020, GoFundMe posted in a campaign it set up in response to Covid: “We’re in a growth industry: pain.”

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