Because the economic story that cro

Because the economic story that crowdfunding backers each author often remains internal, and the social norms governing the use of crowdfunding have not fully settled, the web of intersecting expectations and promises between backers and project initiators often becomes visible only when these expectations are violated. As argued by Judith Butler in Antigone’s Claim, the precise line between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour is only apparent after it is breached, through the spectacle of punishment (2002). Particularly in hybrid social-economic digital forums like crowdfunding platforms, whose newness precludes a shared history and the regulations that collective memory can produce, controversies over participants’ actions reveal the vastly disparate assumptions underlying individuals’ participation, and are themselves the very moments that produce the community’s future rules and norms.