Platformization in the Digital Comics Industry – Leaving Comic Creators Behind

Abstract

Webcomics have become an incredibly influential part of the comic industry. Traditional publishers look to webcomic platforms, where creators can establish an extensive following for their comics, to pick out successful titles to transition to print. These publishers are also trying their hand at the platform model, developing platform-like systems (PLS) to appeal to a digitally orientated readership. These movements afford platforms an immense amount of power to affect the comics industry. The ways they are shaping business directions and user expectations are consistent with the dynamics of platformization outlined by Poell et al. (2022). This thesis investigated the structures and mechanisms of webcomic platforms to determine how they engineer platformed effects and their ramifications for comic creators as a vulnerable group. Additionally, it assessed how these effects were reflected by digital comic PLS and how that affected their practice. Ten platforms and PLS, capturing a variety of industry players, were observed using a variation of Light et al. (2016)’s walkthrough method. The data captured from these observations was analysed using Braun and Clarke (2022)’s reflective thematic analysis approach. My findings revealed that the recommendation and sorting techniques of platforms and PLS demonstrate orientations towards newness, quantification (less so for PLS) and low-value exchange terms. These orientations were exaggerated by mechanics that encouraged habitual return, success based on metric logics, and comic monetisation that devalued the individual comic product. This was to the detriment of comic creators, whose efforts to support themselves via relationship- based crowdfunding were not sustained by platforms and PLS. The ways comic creators have become reliant on webcomic platforms to build a following, based on the entanglement of the print and digital comic industries, places pressure on them to weather these negative effects to seek success.