Understanding Identity Presentation in Medical Crowdfunding

People desire to present themselves favorably to others. However, medical crowdfunding beneficiaries are often expected to present their dire medical conditions and financial straits to solicit financial support. To investigate how beneficiaries convey their situation on medical crowdfunding pages and how contributors perceive the presented information, we interviewed both medical crowdfunding beneficiaries and contributors. While beneficiaries emphasized the serious of their medical situations to signal their deservedness of support, contributor participants gave less attention to that content. Rather, they focused on their impression of the beneficiary's character formed by various features of contributions such as the contributor's names, messages, and shared pictures. These contribution features further signaled common connections between the beneficiary and contributors and each contributor's unique involvement in the beneficiary's medical journey. However, the contribution amount resulted in judgement about other contributors. We suggest design opportunities and challenges that apply these results to the design of medical crowdfunding interfaces.

[1]  Julia Sisler,et al.  Crowdfunding for medical expenses , 2012, Canadian Medical Association Journal.

[2]  James D. Herbsleb,et al.  Impression formation in online peer production: activity traces and personal profiles in github , 2013, CSCW.

[3]  Nicole Fritz,et al.  Prioritizing Flexibility and Intangibles: Medical Crowdfunding for Stigmatized Individuals , 2017, CHI.

[4]  Gordon Burtch,et al.  Reducing Medical Bankruptcy Through Crowdfunding: Evidence from GiveForward , 2014, ICIS.

[5]  Wai-Tat Fu,et al.  The Art and Science of Persuasion: Not All Crowdfunding Campaign Videos are The Same , 2017, CSCW.

[6]  Lena Mamykina,et al.  Constructing identities through storytelling in diabetes management , 2010, CHI.

[7]  Teresa Lynch,et al.  “Better everyone should know our business than we lose our house”: Costs and benefits of medical crowdfunding for support, privacy, and identity , 2018, New Media Soc..

[8]  Robert E. Kraut,et al.  Growing closer on facebook: changes in tie strength through social network site use , 2014, CHI.

[9]  W. Pratt,et al.  Managing the Personal Side of Health: How Patient Expertise Differs from the Expertise of Clinicians , 2011, Journal of medical Internet research.

[10]  William T. Harbaugh.  The Prestige Motive for Making Charitable Transfers , 1998 .

[11]  Jaegul Choo,et al.  Project Recommendation Using Heterogeneous Traits in Crowdfunding , 2021, ICWSM.

[12]  Jeffrey T. Hancock,et al.  Warrants and deception in computer mediated communication , 2010, Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work.

[13]  Wai-Tat Fu,et al.  The Power of Collective Endorsements: Credibility Factors in Medical Crowdfunding Campaigns , 2016, CHI.

[14]  E. Goffman.  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , 1959 .

[15]  Sean A. Munson,et al.  From "nobody cares" to "way to go!": A Design Framework for Social Sharing in Personal Informatics , 2015, CSCW.

[16]  Ethan Mollick.  The Dynamics of Crowdfunding: An Exploratory Study , 2014 .

[17]  Cliff Lampe,et al.  A familiar face(book): profile elements as signals in an online social network , 2007, CHI.

[18]  Susan Leigh Star,et al.  Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work , 1999, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[19]  Brandon Van Der Heide,et al.  Self-Generated Versus Other-Generated Statements and Impressions in Computer-Mediated Communication , 2009, Commun. Res..

[20]  Jennifer Marlow,et al.  Activity traces and signals in software developer recruitment and hiring , 2013, CSCW.

[21]  Debra Lauterbach,et al.  It's not that i don't have problems, i'm just not putting them on facebook: challenges and opportunities in using online social networks for health , 2011, CSCW.

[22]  Munmun De Choudhury,et al.  Mental Health Discourse on reddit: Self-Disclosure, Social Support, and Anonymity , 2014, ICWSM.

[23]  Xuan Zhao,et al.  The many faces of facebook: experiencing social media as performance, exhibition, and personal archive , 2013, CHI.

[24]  Bob Holmes.  Not by money alone , 2016 .

[25]  Amy Voida,et al.  Legitimacy Work: Invisible Work in Philanthropic Crowdfunding , 2016, CHI.

[26]  Marti A. Hearst,et al.  Assessing attractiveness in online dating profiles , 2008, CHI.

[27]  Xuan Zhao,et al.  See friendship, sort of: how conversation and digital traces might support reflection on friendships , 2012, CSCW.

[28]  Wai-Tat Fu,et al.  Show me the money!: an analysis of project updates during crowdfunding campaigns , 2014, CHI.

[29]  Karrie Karahalios,et al.  "Not by Money Alone": Social Support Opportunities in Medical Crowdfunding Campaigns , 2017, CSCW.

[30]  Alan Borning,et al.  Collaborative Sensemaking during Admin Permission Granting in Wikipedia , 2011, HCI.

[31]  Karrie Karahalios,et al.  Labor Saving and Labor Making of Value in Online Congratulatory Messages , 2015, SocInfo.

[32]  Eric Gilbert,et al.  Predicting tie strength with social media , 2009, CHI.

[33]  David R. Thomas,et al.  A General Inductive Approach for Analyzing Qualitative Evaluation Data , 2006 .

[34]  Elizabeth Gerber,et al.  Understanding and leveraging social networks for crowdfunding: opportunities and challenges , 2014, Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.

[35]  James D. Herbsleb,et al.  Social coding in GitHub: transparency and collaboration in an open software repository , 2012, CSCW.

[36]  Sean A. Munson,et al.  When Personal Tracking Becomes Social: Examining the Use of Instagram for Healthy Eating , 2017, CHI.

[37]  Nicole B. Ellison,et al.  Managing Impressions Online: Self-Presentation Processes in the Online Dating Environment , 2006, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[38]  Elizabeth Gerber,et al.  Crowdfunding , 2013, ACM Trans. Comput. Hum. Interact..

[39]  Elizabeth Gerber,et al.  Understanding the Effects of Crowdfunding on Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy , 2015, CSCW.

[40]  Robert E. Kraut,et al.  Support matching and satisfaction in an online breast cancer support community , 2014, CHI.

[41]  David R. Millen,et al.  Identity management: multiple presentations of self in facebook , 2007, GROUP.