"It's not yet a gift": Understanding digital gifting

Kwon, Hyosun; Koleva, Boriana; Schnädelbach, Holger; Benford, Steve

Abstract

A myriad of digital artifacts are routinely exchanged online. While previous studies suggest that these are sometimes considered to be gifts, CSCW has largely overlooked explicit digital gifting where people deliberately choose to give digital media as gifts. We present an interview study that systematically analyzes the nature of digital gifting in comparison to conventional physical gifting. A five-stage gift exchange model, synthesized from the literature, frames this study. Findings reveal that there are distinctive gaps in people’s engagement with the digital gifting process compared to physical gifting. Participants’ accounts show how digital gifts often involve less labor, are sometimes not perceived as gifts by the recipient and are rarely reflected on and reciprocated. We conclude by drawing out design implications for digital gifting services and rituals.

Citation

Kwon, H., Koleva, B., Schnädelbach, H., & Benford, S. (2017). "It's not yet a gift": Understanding digital gifting. In CSCW '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (2372-2384). https://doi.org/10.1145/2998181.2998225

• Conference Name: 20th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2017)
• Conference Location: Portland, Oregon, USA
• Start Date: Feb 25, 2017
• End Date: Mar 1, 2017
• Acceptance Date: Oct 28, 2016
• Publication Date: Feb 25, 2017
• Deposit Date: Oct 31, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 25, 2017
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 2372-2384
• Book Title: CSCW '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
• ISBN: 978-1-4503-4335-0
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2998181.2998225
• Keywords: Digital gift, Framework, Gift exchange, Interaction design, Rituals, Gifting process
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/843009
• Publisher URL: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2998181.2998225
• Related Public URLs: https://cscw.acm.org/2017
• Additional Information: Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing. New York : ACM Press, 2017, ISBN: 978-1-4503-4335-0 doi:10.1145/2998181.2998298