Crowdfunding Journalism: The Case Of France
Résumé
In a context of economic crisis, particularly affecting the media sector, building innovative and sustainable business models is a necessity. Crowdfunding is increasingly present in the funding of journalism in a variety of forms. It can take the form of one-time or regular support. It may be the sole source of revenue (especially for small projects) or just an additional revenue stream. The participation 51of journalists in this type of scheme requires a new know-how: creating a direct link with a community, using social networks to attract attention and adapting to crowdfunding platforms constraints and formats (Carvajal et al., 2012). More often than not, community participation is limited to financial support and rarely involves collaboration on the substance of journalistic work. Nevertheless crowdfunding creates a more direct and close relation with the readers that implies different ties with journalists (Aitamurto, 2011). Our paper proposes to present the results of an empirical research carried out between 2016 and 2017 upon 5 French journalistic startups that regularly resort to crowdfunding. Our empirical material includes interviews, observations and the use of internal documentation. Our results show that some of the most important aspects of these crowdfunding projects are transparency, accountability and the implication of the audience in the definition of journalistic projects. Most of the media we examined wouldn’t have existed without crowdfunding. Consequently, the use of crowdfunding has a positive effect on media pluralism.