The Costs of Creation: What is a Desirable Future for Monetised Online Work? — Grant Report #1

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Project Update

Our project seeks to understand what a fair and desirable future for web monetisation looks like in the eyes of those on no or low pay from their online labour.

To date, the project has been going well! We have done a great deal of research design and reflection, aided by interviews with experts on the subject at hand, and have just completed the deliberative focus groups which form the crux of this research.

We're now taking the insights from these and analysing them to inform the report, explainer animation and microsite which will communicate our findings to wider audiences.

Progress on objectives

We aimed to measure our project’s success primarily through two metrics: how many perspectives were represented and mapped through the project, and the level of engagement with our findings generated through our networks of civil society, government, standards setting bodies and industry.

As we are still in the process of analysing our research, we are yet to be in a position to share our findings. However, having completed the research itself, we can confidently say we have mapped a large range of perspectives for two reasons.

Firstly, we managed to include an optimum number of participants to match the research design. Moreover, these were chosen after careful, extensive consideration and prior research into who ought to be included, giving us a detailed sense of the perspectives that ought to be (and could be) in scope.

Secondly, our research methodology - combining a deliberative focus group format with the online polling tool Polis - has worked successfully. This methodology has allowed us to collate, in detail, the perspectives of the large range of participants in the research in two formats: transcriptions of discussions and Polis voting data.

Key activities

Our project includes, in brief, the following overarching stages: research design, recruitment, interviews, focus groups, analysis, deliverables' design and launch. To date these activities have unfolded as planned, and at the time of writing we are analysing our findings and designing the deliverables.

Communications and marketing

The deliverables of our project are a report, a microsite, an explainer animation, and social media infographics. Each of these will be tailored to focus more or less on certain audiences. At the time of writing these are all under design and will form the basis of our wider media strategy beyond the project's launch.

What’s next?

With the remainder of our grant period, we will be analysing our findings, writing them up into our report and using them to inform our wider deliverables, and preparing to launch.

What community support would benefit your project?

Everything is running on track here so nothing needed other than your excitement (we hope!) about what our research will show for the web monetisation community!