Congratulations to PhD candidate Martin Lukk and Professor Erik Schneiderhan on the recent publication of their book GoFailMe: The Unfulfilled Promise of Digital Crowdfunding. In their book, the authors draw on interviews, survey data, and analysis of thousands of crowdfunding campaigns reveal how sites like GoFundMe fall short of providing the help they promise. They find that crowdfunding, a response to the insufficient social safety nets in Canada and the United States, fails to provide help to those seeking it, but generates revenue for the sites hosting crowdfunding campaigns. Schneiderhan and Lukk consider how crowdfunding, like other for-profit and technological solutions, fail to address social inequality.
GoFailMe: The Unfulfilled Promise of Digital Crowdfunding is published by Stanford University Press. Receive 20% off at www.sup.org with code GOFAILME20.
Martin Lukk is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology. Martin’s research interests include politics, inequality, and digital technology. He’s particularly interested in how income inequality shapes political identities and the role of internet platforms in social welfare.
Erik Schneiderhan is Associate Professor and Associate Chair at the University of Toronto Mississauga. His fields of study include the sociology of culture, political sociology, and theory.