CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Sahiner, Poyzan Nur |
|---|---|
| Title | Dear Santa, My Wish List Is In Your Inbox: Re-Defining The Gift In Online Communities, The Case of Reddit's Online Secret Santa Exchange |
| Summary | ABSTRACT What does it mean “to gift” in online spaces? Why do people mobilize material resources for strangers on Internet? This ethnographic study aims to understand the meaning and the motivations of gift giving in reddit.com’s Secret Santa Online Gift Exchanges. The case offers a puzzling challenge to the gift exchange literature, which assumes mutual reciprocity, established relations of intimacy between the parties of the gift exchange. Behind the larger question of the meaning of gifting in online spaces, this study scrutinizes complex mechanisms of giving and receiving, through the discussions on the gift as an object, online identities and online communities. It suggests online interactions bring about novel perspectives of gifting. Without the assumed prior relations between the giver and the receiver, the gift as an object gains utmost importance defining exchange. The ceremonial gifting becomes a puzzle solving activity about the receive may want. Benefiting from the methods of ethnographic fieldwork, this case also contributes to the anthropological studies of online spaces. It offers new methodological approaches to ethnographic studies of online spaces. |
| Supervisor | Dafinger, Andreas; Zentai, Violetta |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/sahiner_poyzan.pdf |
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