Arts Entrepreneurship in the Digital Age -Opportunities and challenges for visual artists who use social media
(2017) ENTN19 20171Department of Business Administration
- Abstract
- The purpose of this study is to explore the opportunities and challenges for self-employed artists who use social media for their business. The research is focused on painters and illustrators who have digitalised and commercialised their own artwork.
The method follows a qualitative research framework with a comparative design of multiple cases on the level of individual artists. Seven artists from different international sociocultural contexts have participated in the study, with online audiences ranging from 60 to 280 thousand followers. The analysis of the empirical data is based on the constant comparison technique, where the data is turned into codes and arranged into concepts and categories, thus cases are compared with each other... (More) - The purpose of this study is to explore the opportunities and challenges for self-employed artists who use social media for their business. The research is focused on painters and illustrators who have digitalised and commercialised their own artwork.
The method follows a qualitative research framework with a comparative design of multiple cases on the level of individual artists. Seven artists from different international sociocultural contexts have participated in the study, with online audiences ranging from 60 to 280 thousand followers. The analysis of the empirical data is based on the constant comparison technique, where the data is turned into codes and arranged into concepts and categories, thus cases are compared with each other within each category.
The research limitations derive from the common criticism of qualitative research, mainly in the form of replicability issues, subjectivity of the authors, lack of transparency, and inability to generalise the findings. The authors aimed to mitigate these risks as much as possible.
Through the analysis of the findings, the authors have recognised three interconnected, overarching themes: “Liberation of the Artist”, “Artistic Self-expression”, and “Balancing Art and Business”. Each theme encompasses its own set of challenges and opportunities and is tightly connected to the artist‟s social media activity. A conceptual model is presented which visualises the relationships between these themes and social media use.
In conclusion, social media has liberated artists from geographical and institutional barriers around their business. However, the artist still needs to manage their artistic ego online by avoiding unproductive attention seeking, reductionism, and cynicism. Artists need to be authentic, consistent and honest to their online community and to their craft, in order to experience organic audience growth. Artists should also add social capital to their business in order to meet the demands of that growth, with the ultimate goal being to generate more time for artistic self-expression.
This paper is an academic master thesis in the field of Entrepreneurship. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/8914184
- author
- Dimitrov, Georgi LU and Edgecombe, Isabella LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- ENTN19 20171
- year
- 2017
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- Entrepreneurship, arts entrepreneurship, artist, digitalisation, virtual embeddedness, social media
- language
- English
- id
- 8914184
- date added to LUP
- 2017-06-14 13:57:07
- date last changed
- 2017-06-14 13:57:07
@misc{8914184,
abstract = {{The purpose of this study is to explore the opportunities and challenges for self-employed artists who use social media for their business. The research is focused on painters and illustrators who have digitalised and commercialised their own artwork.
The method follows a qualitative research framework with a comparative design of multiple cases on the level of individual artists. Seven artists from different international sociocultural contexts have participated in the study, with online audiences ranging from 60 to 280 thousand followers. The analysis of the empirical data is based on the constant comparison technique, where the data is turned into codes and arranged into concepts and categories, thus cases are compared with each other within each category.
The research limitations derive from the common criticism of qualitative research, mainly in the form of replicability issues, subjectivity of the authors, lack of transparency, and inability to generalise the findings. The authors aimed to mitigate these risks as much as possible.
Through the analysis of the findings, the authors have recognised three interconnected, overarching themes: “Liberation of the Artist”, “Artistic Self-expression”, and “Balancing Art and Business”. Each theme encompasses its own set of challenges and opportunities and is tightly connected to the artist‟s social media activity. A conceptual model is presented which visualises the relationships between these themes and social media use.
In conclusion, social media has liberated artists from geographical and institutional barriers around their business. However, the artist still needs to manage their artistic ego online by avoiding unproductive attention seeking, reductionism, and cynicism. Artists need to be authentic, consistent and honest to their online community and to their craft, in order to experience organic audience growth. Artists should also add social capital to their business in order to meet the demands of that growth, with the ultimate goal being to generate more time for artistic self-expression.
This paper is an academic master thesis in the field of Entrepreneurship.}},
author = {{Dimitrov, Georgi and Edgecombe, Isabella}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Arts Entrepreneurship in the Digital Age -Opportunities and challenges for visual artists who use social media}},
year = {{2017}},
}