Peer-to-peer evaluations as narcissistic devices: fabricating an entrepreneurial community

Pénélope van den Bussche · Claire Dambrin

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Sharing Economy and Platforms Digital Marketing and Social Media Digital Economy and Work Transformation

Abstract

Purpose This paper investigates online evaluation processes on peer-to-peer platforms to highlight how online peer evaluation enacts neoliberal subjects and collectives. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses netnography (Kozinets, 2002) to study the online community of Airbnb. It is also based on 18 interviews, mostly with Airbnb users, and quantitative data about reviews. Findings Results indicate that peer-to-peer platforms constitute biopolitical infrastructures. They enact and consolidate narcissistic entrepreneurs of the self through evaluation processes and consolidating a for-show community. Specifically, three features make evaluation a powerful neoliberal agent. The object of evaluation shifts from the service to the user's own worth (1). The public nature of the evaluation (2) and symetrical accountability between the evaluator and the evaluatee (3) contribute to excessively positive reviews and this keeps the market fluid. Social implications This paper calls for problematization of the idea of sharing in the so-called “sharing economy”. What is shared on peer-to-peer platforms is the comfort of engaging with people like ourselves. Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature on online accounting by extending consideration of evaluation beyond the review process. It also stresses that trust in the evaluative infrastructure is fostered by narcissistic relationships between users, who come to use the platform as a mirror. The peer-to-peer context refreshes the our knowledge on evaluation in a corporate context by highlighting phenomena of standardized spontaneity and euphemized evaluation language. This allows evaluation processes to incorporate a market logic without having to fuel competition.

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References

2002The Field behind the Screen: Using Netnography for Marketing Research in Online Communities 1992Political Power beyond the State: Problematics of Government 2001Technologies of the Self 2010Production, Consumption, Prosumption 2012Access-Based Consumption: The Case of Car Sharing: Table 1.1996The death of the social? Re-figuring the territory of government 2012Toward a Comparative Sociology of Valuation and Evaluation 2015The sharing economy: A pathway to sustainability or a nightmarish form of neoliberal capitalism?

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