Getting the crowd to care: An examination of health-related crowdfunding in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

Crowdfunding campaigns are increasingly initiated as a means of taking care of friends and family who are facing health-related challenges. Where particular treatments and medications are unfunded or unavailable domestically, money raised through crowdfunding platforms may be used in lieu of state-funded care. As a nascent phenomenon, health-related crowdfunding has begun to receive scholarly attention in recent years; yet, further research is needed into the practices and experiences of users in order to understand the implications – both at an individual and structural level – of this increasingly popular means of financing care. Providing an empirical contribution to the limited literature on health-related crowdfunding, within which few studies have engaged face-to-face with users of crowdfunding platforms, this thesis presents a reflexive thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with, and the online campaigns of, 15 Givealittle campaigners. As the first study of its kind in the Aotearoa New Zealand context, this research also extends existing crowdfunding literature theoretically by engaging with a care ethics framework, arguing for its value in conceptualising and articulating the process of care, in particular through its ability to connect practices and experiences of care across different scales. Engaging with recent theorising on the politics of deservingness and the commodification of care, I argue that the crowdfunding process can be both cathartic and fraught for funding recipients and their loved ones. Campaigners may not feel they have a choice in turning to crowdfunding in the context of shortfalls in public cover. Further, the process may pose difficulties, for instance in burdening their time and energy; however, despite such challenges, many participants also emphasised strong feelings of emotional support through their campaigns. Nonetheless, in a commodified context, the ability of funding recipients to access the care they need is contingent on raising the money required, and their ability to do so is shaped by how ‘deserving’ they are deemed by donors. As such, in order to be taken care of through health-related crowdfunding, hopeful recipients must embody and enact the deserving subject, a reality that is likely to exacerbate inequalities in access to healthcare in Aotearoa New Zealand.