The Gift You'll Never Stop Giving!

Exchange in our society makes the world go around. Gift exchange is an important factor in any relationship and is seen in a multitude of different ways. There are 3 types of reciprocity, generalised, balanced and negative. (Reading) The focus of this blog will be on generalised and balanced reciprocity on social media. Generalised reciprocity is where gifts are constantly exchanged between people and exact values are ignored, in western societies, this usually happens between close friends and family. If the values were monitored in these exchanges, the relationship would have strain and most likely break. Whereas, balanced reciprocity is direct and exact values are measured. All exchanges like this happen within a certain time frame and have three steps. Sending the gift to someone, that person then receiving the gift then receiving the reciprocated gift. Usually with these types of relationships aren’t as close as there is not gift always in exchange between each other. This gift could be multiple items, money, items, services etc. On any social media, this form of exchange occurs all the time except instead of currency or real items it is with ‘likes’ and ‘follows.’

Picture of a Present

Instagram is a great example to highlight this form of exchange. Using Mauss’ gift economy works well within a social media environment. (Lecture) When you like or follow someone on Instagram, there is a social obligation for the other person to like your posts back and/or follow you. When receiving the gift (like and/or follow), this can also give you joy or status which are additional values to the gift. Within this type of a society, a problem emerges when someone does not reciprocate a like or follow. This would indicate that most relationships on social media are balanced reciprocity, as likes and follows are being traded with equal value. Although the deviant people of this type of society and their relationship with each other would have generalised reciprocity. 

Likes and followers would be given by the initial person and between the deviants, an equality may never be made meaning a constant relationship would exist. However, in both cases, counting the number of likes given to each other would lead to a strain existing between the relationship. As the amount of posts made between accounts can vary differently which would make it difficult for people to equally like each other’s posting.

Another concept that could be gifted online other than ‘likes’ and ‘follows’ is social capital. Social capital is term coined by Pierre Bordieu and he defines it as, “Social capital is the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition.” An example of this would be influencers and celebrities on social media.

This blog has identified what gift exchange is and its relationship with social media. This is done by looking at Instagram and applying Mauss’ gift exchange to it and looking at the concept of social capital by Pierre Bordieu.

Reference List

Gauntlett, D. (2011). Three approaches to social capital. Retrieved from http://davidgauntlett.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/gauntlett2011-extract-sc.pdf

Kuttainen, V. (2019). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narratives and the Making of Place in [PowerPoint file]. Retrieved from https://www.jcu.edu.au/learn

Lechte, J. (2003). Exchange, Key contemporary concepts. London, UK: Sage UK. Retrieved from https://search-credoreference-com.elibrary.jcu.edu.au/content/entry/sageukcc/exchange/0

Sirromet. (2018). Gift Wrap [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.sirromet.com/store/gift-wrap