The development of online platforms guided by algorithms and supported by new business models converted in the primary way through which people gather resources or promote their activities, either online and offline. Authors, such Jenkins (2006) and Patel (2017), argue that the increased popularity of social media platforms in recent years has opened up cultural production to almost everyone who can access it, resulting in a proliferation of amateur cultural production and collaborative co-creative production. The development of online platforms guided by algorithms and supported by new business models converted in the primary way through which people gather resources or promote their activities, either online and offline. Authors, such Jenkins (2006) and Patel (2017), argue that the increased popularity of social media platforms in recent years has opened up cultural production to almost everyone who can access it, resulting in a proliferation of amateur cultural production and collaborative co-creative production. Online crowdfunding is conceptualized as a collaborative system to raise funds for specific projects, and crowdsponsoring is the sum of donation and reward-based models without financial reward for backers who voluntarily adhere. Its application to arts is growing internationally (Bannerman, 2013), with some effectiveness evidences about its potential as a tool for social engagement and value co-creation. Scholars argue that one strength of sharing economy is the so called “crowd asset, linked to non-monetary benefits of crowdfunding as crowd wisdom and feedback, considering the crowd as a source of information” (Marom, Swart, Grell 2015 : 2). Therefore we question what are the crowd asset resources and by who and how are they capitalized. In this paper we intend to investigate the characteristics and effects of online platforms and algorithms application to creative industries and artistic projects’ production and communication within crowdfunding ecosystem. We aim to describe and analyze how online platforms and algorithms materialize their technicality and social constructions, as well as which affordances are provided to their users. We pretend to integrate this analytical perspective with the more in depth (personal and professional) experiences of 2.0 media makers, creative industries workers life-histories to understand the challenges and market pressures that they are facing and which are the future priorities about their career development and skills required. To achieve our objectives we select as case-study the main Portuguese crowdsponsoring platform, drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, to cross social media analysis, content and statistical analysis with in-depth interviews with platform’s managers and users. Recent implementation of different models to share creative and economic resource share, online and offline, are considered for further research development and comparison.

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