On Gift Economies

Citizen agency is a pr firm, that said their specialty is helping companies integrate themselves into communities and build relationships with the personages and institutions of those communities. What powers their success is not ,I believe, the whimsical and careless (anti) business model that Tara Hunt puts forward in “the gift”, but a seemingly effortless ability to apply peer to peer models to mainstream marketing and communication. To be critical, their success likely relies on a combination of their knowledge of the markets they serve and their ability to exploit new media niches rather than on an esoteric concept of social bliss through gift giving.
What Hunt and Anderson are describing in their articles isn’t so much revolutionary as it is the intangible economy of good business and courtesy. Perhaps their clients never had such traits, or lost them as they expanded but the idea of offering more, “going the extra mile” as a company or service provider is nothing new. While it is niave to assume that because companies are interested in improving community relations they necessarily are interested in improving an imagined social condition, Hunt does assert that creating actual public relationships is the client’s responsibility.
Which brings up practical considerations for journalists and media workers, if gift giving (working for free) is what will develop us as individuals within the new media to what public do we give our time and abilities? Paying rent and food is the bottom of any job, and its easy to get idealistic about your motives when you have plenty to give, but the current dillution of media means there are plenty of people willing to give it away for free. While this may enhance our collective intellect or foster a sense of community it undermines individual journalistic and media skill in favor of sheer masses of information.
Possible solutions to the employment problem range from working in consultancy to taking on advertising. What seems to be the most practical however is confining one’s gift giving to the public they wish to address. Thereby exploiting the capital of niche information and enhancing personal position for capital gain.