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The Algorithmic Celebrity: The Future of Internet Fame and Microcelebrity Studies: The Future of Internet Fame and Microcelebrity Studies
... La microcelebridad hace referencia al conjunto de prácticas estratégicas de autopresentación basadas en las de la celebridad (Marwick, 2010), cuyo objetivo es el de crear de sí mismo una mercancía que pueda ser consumida por otras personas (Hearn, 2008;Marwick, 2010). Con el éxito de dichas prácticas en plataformas digitales, la microcelebridad es considerada además como la posición que un sujeto disfruta y como una práctica laboral (Marwick, 2019). Dicha figura lucha por la atención en plataformas digitales a través del uso estratégico de la intimidad y el trabajo emocional para atraer seguidores Raun, 2018). ...
... Además, en muchas ocasiones dichas empresas se benefician social y económicamente del trabajo del creador mientras que este ni siquiera lo ve monetizado. Dicha disponibilidad para convertir capital social en económico da lugar a que no solo se aproveche el trabajo de personas con grandes seguidores, sino que los microinfluencers son considerados cada vez más importantes ya que resultan más naturales y de confianza (Marwick, 2019). Por tanto, se observa claramente cómo la fama es un continuo en cómo se comienza a industrializar la práctica de la microcelebridad y se desarrolla la industria del influencer, un fenómeno global formado por agencias que asocian marcas convencionales con microcelebridades a través de las plataformas digitales (Marwick, 2019). ...
... Dicha disponibilidad para convertir capital social en económico da lugar a que no solo se aproveche el trabajo de personas con grandes seguidores, sino que los microinfluencers son considerados cada vez más importantes ya que resultan más naturales y de confianza (Marwick, 2019). Por tanto, se observa claramente cómo la fama es un continuo en cómo se comienza a industrializar la práctica de la microcelebridad y se desarrolla la industria del influencer, un fenómeno global formado por agencias que asocian marcas convencionales con microcelebridades a través de las plataformas digitales (Marwick, 2019). ...
El uso de las redes sociales y de las nuevas tecnologías en general nos expone a nuevos estímulos y sistemas de valores. La forma en que percibimos a las empresas, instituciones e individuos ha cambiado tangencialmente. Es por esta razón que resulta fundamental educar a los usuarios en competencias mediáticas dentro de este ecosistema que les permitan actuar como prosumidores inteligentes y eficientes en el consumo y producción de información.
Asimismo, los contenidos digitales están indisolublemente vinculados a la comunicación mediática, que tradicionalmente se encargaba de la transmisión social de información y la generación de opinión pública. Esta confluencia entre medios de comunicación, audiencia y prosumidores como nuevos agentes informativos requiere el interés del sector académico e investigaciones en esta línea que promuevan una transmisión de información veraz, contextualizada y argumentada a través de las nuevas vías digitales.
... The omnipresence and centrality of social media in the lives of citizens has modified both the ways of carrying out political communication (Casero-Ripollés, 2018) and the social meaning and the way the figure of celebrity is constructed (Marwick, 2019). These two transformations are key to understanding the appearance of the influencer-politician figure (Hinck & Rasmussen, 2021;Starita & Trillò, 2022;Gandini, Ceron & Lodetti, 2022). ...
... These figures are capable of attracting the attention of users on a massive scale and creating a feeling of interconnection with their followers ("perceived interconnectedness") (Abidin, 2015), as well as economically exploiting their fame (O'Meara, 2019). To this end, influencers develop continuous aspirational work (Duffy, 2017) that allows them to communicate desirable and glamorous, but also relatable and authentic lives (Marwick, 2019), thus gaining visibility and engagement among their followers (Cotter, 2019). Along these lines, a series of conventions in the strategic management of identity have been crystallised in the collective imaginary associated with Instagram, taken from the way in which influencers present themselves (Caro-Castaño, 2022). ...
Resumen La influencia de la cultura de los medios sociales en la comunicación política ha propiciado la aparición de la narrativa del político-influencer como la adaptación del político-estrella al medio. El trabajo analiza la comunicación de la política Isabel Díaz Ayuso y la de su fandom (ayusers) en Instagram durante un periodo no electoral (junio 2021-junio 2022). Para ello, se realizó un análisis de contenido cuantitativo y cualitativo sobre el perfil oficial de la política y las cinco cuentas ayusers con más seguidores. Los resultados muestran que Díaz Ayuso utiliza estrategias características del discurso publicitario y comercial de los influencers, encontrándose una mayor presencia de marcas y celebridades que de representantes políticos o información sobre sus iniciativas de gobierno. La decisión de mostrar contenidos personales y comerciales, siguiendo la lógica de la humanización del político, es además premiada por sus seguidores, que manifiestan más engagement hacia estas publicaciones. En paralelo, su fandom se centra en ensalzar el atractivo físico de Díaz ayuso y el ataque político a la izquierda (regional y nacional). Así, su comunicación y la de los ayusers funciona de modo complementario en Instagram: la política se muestra siempre activa y positiva, de acuerdo con la lógica del medio y los mandatos culturalmente asociados al género femenino, mientras que su fandom incorpora los contenidos políticos y de ataque. El trabajo avanza en el conocimiento sobre las narrativas de humanización del político en los medios sociales, así como en la creciente importancia del fandom en un contexto de campaña permanente. Palabras clave Comunicación política; celebrity politics; Instagram; influencer marketing; fandom; Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
... La omnipresencia y centralidad de los medios sociales en la vida de los ciudadanos ha modificado tanto los modos de hacer comunicación política (Casero-Ripollés, 2018), como el significado social y la manera de construir la celebridad (Marwick, 2019). Estas dos transformaciones son clave para comprender la aparición de la figura del político-influencer (Hinck y Rasmussen, 2021;Starita y Trillò, 2022;Gandini, Ceron y Lodetti, 2022). ...
... Estas figuras son capaces de atraer masivamente la atención de los usuarios y crear con sus seguidores una sensación de interconexión ("perceived interconectedness") (Abidin, 2015), así como explotar económicamente su fama (O'Meara, 2019). Para ello, los influencers desarrollan un continuo trabajo aspiracional (Duffy, 2017) que les permite comunicar vidas deseables y glamurosas, pero también cercanas y auténticas (Marwick, 2019), para ganar de este modo visibilidad e involucración entre sus seguidores (Cotter, 2019). En esta línea, ha cristalizado en el imaginario colectivo asociado a Instagram una serie de convenciones en la gestión estratégica de la identidad tomadas del modo en que se presentan los influencers (Caro-Castaño, 2022). ...
Resumen La influencia de la cultura de los medios sociales en la comunicación política ha propiciado la aparición de la narrativa del político-influencer como la adaptación del político-estrella al medio. El trabajo analiza la comunicación de la política Isabel Díaz Ayuso y la de su fandom (ayusers) en Instagram durante un periodo no electoral (junio 2021-junio 2022). Para ello, se realizó un análisis de contenido cuantitativo y cualitativo sobre el perfil oficial de la política y las cinco cuentas ayusers con más seguidores. Los resultados muestran que Díaz Ayuso utiliza estrategias características del discurso publicitario y comercial de los influencers, encontrándose una mayor presencia de marcas y celebridades que de representantes políticos o información sobre sus iniciativas de gobierno. La decisión de mostrar contenidos personales y comerciales, siguiendo la lógica de la humanización del político, es además premiada por sus seguidores, que manifiestan más engagement hacia estas publicaciones. En paralelo, su fandom se centra en ensalzar el atractivo físico de Díaz ayuso y el ataque político a la izquierda (regional y nacional). Así, su comunicación y la de los ayusers funciona de modo complementario en Instagram: la política se muestra siempre activa y positiva, de acuerdo con la lógica del medio y los mandatos culturalmente asociados al género femenino, mientras que su fandom incorpora los contenidos políticos y de ataque. El trabajo avanza en el conocimiento sobre las narrativas de humanización del político en los medios sociales, así como en la creciente importancia del fandom en un contexto de campaña permanente. Palabras clave Comunicación política; celebrity politics; Instagram; influencer marketing; fandom; Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Caro-Castaño, L., Marín-Dueñas, P. P., y García-Osorio, J. (2024). La narrativa del político-influencer y su fandom. El caso de Isabel Díaz Ayuso y los ayusers en Instagram. Revista Mediterránea de Comunicación/Mediterranean Journal of Communication, 15(1), 285-303. https://www. Abstract The influence of social media culture on political communication has led to the emergence of the influencer-politician narrative as the adaptation of the celebrity-politician to the medium. This paper analyses the communication of the politician Isabel Díaz Ayuso and her fandom (ayusers) on Instagram during a non-electoral period (June 2021-June 2022). To this end, a quantitative and qualitative content analysis was carried out on Díaz Ayuso's official profile and the five most followed fandom accounts. The results show that Díaz Ayuso uses the same advertising and commercial strategies as influencers. Also, the presence of brands and celebrities was greater than that of political representatives or information about their own government initiatives in her posts. The decision to show personal and commercial content, following the logic of the politician's humanisation, is rewarded by her followers showing more engagement towards these themes. At the same time, her fandom focuses its publications on praising Díaz Ayuso's physical attractiveness and the political attack on the left (regional and national). Thus, Díaz Ayuso and the ayusers' communication work in a complementary way on Instagram: the politician is always active and positive, in accordance with the logic of the medium and the cultural ideas associated with the female gender, while her fandom incorporates political and attacking content. This research advances knowledge about the narratives of humanisation of the politician in social media, as well as the growing importance of fandom within a context of digital permanent campaigning. La narrativa del político-influencer y su fandom. El caso de Isabel Díaz Ayuso y los ayusers en Instagram The influencer-politician narrative and his/her fandom. The case of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and the ayusers on Instagram
... From Noonouri, a computer-generated character stylized with anime features, to Shudu, the world's first digital supermodel, they represent the extremes of anthropomorphizing of virtual agents. Similar to their human counterparts, these VIs engage in the practice of microcelebrity (Marwick, 2018). As the influencer strives to appeal to audiences (by feeding content to) and communities (engaging in content with), the follower becomes an active agent, and even the commodity, in the exchange (Senft, 2013). ...
... the acceptability of emotional attachment to inanimate objects (Sharabiani, 2021) to allow their VIs to gain popularity and followers. However, if similar norms do not hold in other cultural contexts (Motschenbacher, 2018), then this approach may perpetuate the Anglocentrism of studies of internet-based phenomenon (Marwick, 2018). ...
Virtual influencers engage in emotional sharing to gain and keep followers. However, given that many people use social media for diversion purposes, this emotional sharing may hinder users‘ ability to escape from everyday emotional experiences, particularly for highly empathetic individuals. Using a between subjects, randomised experimental design, we explore how empathy affects reactions to virtual vs. human influencers, showing that those
highest on empathy are more likely to follow a virtual influencer, and rate her as more socially attractive, than a comparable human influencer; these results disappear when the influencers‘ true nature is unknown to participants. We postulate that these results represent an ―escapism effectǁ , where the virtual influencer is expected to provide greater diversionary benefits from everyday human emotional experiences and require fewer cognitive resources in the form of emotional sense making. We present practical implications and future research opportunities arising from this effect.
... Instead of promising everyone fifteen minutes of fame, social media now allow users to address their followers as fans, regardless of their number, so that everyone can become famous to just fifteen people (Senft 2013). 'Celebrity,' which no longer only refers to the privileged few who enjoy widespread fame, has become a set of self-presentation strategies, a subject position, a labour practice that anyone can practice on social media (Abidin 2018, Giles 2018, Marwick 2018. Digital studies scholars Theresa Senft (2008) and Alice Marwick (2013Marwick ( , 2018, among others, term this particular set of self-presentation strategies and practices 'micro-celebrity,' which places self-branding strategies and fame on a continuum that everyone can more or less practice and enjoy respectively. ...
... 'Celebrity,' which no longer only refers to the privileged few who enjoy widespread fame, has become a set of self-presentation strategies, a subject position, a labour practice that anyone can practice on social media (Abidin 2018, Giles 2018, Marwick 2018. Digital studies scholars Theresa Senft (2008) and Alice Marwick (2013Marwick ( , 2018, among others, term this particular set of self-presentation strategies and practices 'micro-celebrity,' which places self-branding strategies and fame on a continuum that everyone can more or less practice and enjoy respectively. One can argue that 'celebrity' now broadly describes an experience of being recognised by far more people than one can recognise back, as Ferris (2010, p. 393) suggests. ...
Pet influencers are rising stars on social media, and many everyday social media users also curate profiles for their pets for fun. This study established a cat Instagram account and uses ethnographic methods to investigate the phenomenon of pet Instagram as a kind of affective community co-habited by humans and nonhuman others. Recent studies of micro-celebrity have emphasised the practice of micro-celebrity-engaging in self-promotion and addressing followers as fans-as a calculating self-presentation strategy used by many successful influencers to update their status. In fact, as this study shows, many everyday social media users also perform as a celebrity to promote themselves and others, like rescue cats, without striving for money and their own status. This article reaffirms that the micro-celebrity is an ordinary, somewhat pleasurable experience for everyday social media users, whose selves constantly cross boundaries to build affinity with others, rather than merely presenting the extended self to serve one's ego. Moreover, this case study of pet Instagram shows that the practice of micro-celebrity on social media as teamwork can affectively, productively, and playfully reaffirm how the self is always part of and constituted by multiple others, including nonhuman animal others.
... Viewing turned out to be the most highlighted metrics in and by YouTube (Burgess & Green, 2009b;Van Es, 2020), despite the not-so-distant expectations regarding more communal (and no longer available) categories such as "most responded" or "most discussed" (e.g.: Jenkins et al., 2013, p. 186). The central role of opaque algorithms (Andrejevic, 2011;Marwick, 2019;Rieder, Matamoros-Fernández, & Coromina, 2018), exemplified by the default search setting by "most relevant", and the evidence of concentration of views in few channels and contents (Bärtl, 2018) reinforce the dissonance between the initial expectations and the current situation. The centrality of this kind of automated gatekeeping questions (1) the extent of the common users' agency regarding what is watched, commented or shared, and, as a consequence, ...
... Nevertheless, they still need to systematically create contents within specific genres and with considerable production values, and to monetize their videos within YouTube, which implies attracting somewhat large audiences so they can be exposed to advertising on the platform. The most famous YouTubers are a different kind of professional content creators: their contents may not be the ones that could appear in broadcast television, but they are not the idyllic teenagers in their bedrooms recording informal and spontaneous videos with low-spec and cheap equipment either, nor are they necessarily microcelebrities with a narrow reach and thematic focus (Marwick, 2019;Pereira et al., 2018a). Hence, these users may simultaneously be a reflex of YouTube's former signature -"Broadcast Yourself", abandoned in December 2011 (Van Dijck, 2013)and another type of professional content creators and celebrities, part of an influencer industry (Marwick, 2019) whose personal brands may be associated with other brands and products and become "even more influential by collaborating with traditional media" (Holland, 2017, p. 60). ...
YouTube is one of the most popular websites amongst the Portuguese youth and their homegrown stars, the YouTubers, are beloved entertainers. This paper presents a qualitative study based on four focus groups with 36 teenagers, aged 12 to 16 years old, and it has three main objectives: to understand their motivations for using it; how this platform (and its contents and authors) interplay with their identity and socialization; and to acknowledge their perspectives on YouTube and YouTubers. It concludes that the sample is made up of very regular viewers, with critical insights on the platform and its contents and creators, but who, despite this overall popularity amidst friends and the easiness of ways to share their interests, regard YouTube and YouTubers as funny entertainers for more individual practices.
... Literatüre bakıldığında dijital dünyada markalar için görsel bir iletişim aracı olarak kullanılan sanal etkileyiciler ile ilişkili çalışmaların sınırlı sayıda olduğu gözlenmektedir. Bu kapsamda gerçekleştirilmiş çalışmalardan bir bölümü Instagram üzerinde aktif olan sanal etkileyicilerin "etkileyici" (influencer) kavramının dönüşümüne etkisi üzerine yoğunlaşmıştır (Marwick, 2019;Hubble, 2018 Ha, vd., 2020). Ancak, yeni bir çalışma unsuru olarak değerlendirilebilecek sanal etkileyicilerin antropomorfizm bağlamında değerlendirildiği çalışmalar literatürde oldukça kısıtlıdır. ...
... Gerçekleştirilen araştırmaların bir diğer odak noktasının ise sanal karakterler şeklinde tasarlanmış olan sanal etkileyicilerin "gerçeklik" olgusu bağlamında tartışılması olduğu görülmektedir(Işıtman, 2018; Molin ve Nordgren, 2019;Adriani, 2019; Chiluwa ve Samoilenko, 2019; Dahle ve Olsson, 2019;Seymour, 2020). Sanal etkileyicilere yönelik gerçekleştirilen çalışmaların bir bölümünde söz konusu karakterler yapay zekâ teknolojisiyle üretilmiş robotlar olarak ele alınırken(Marwick, 2019;Işıtman, 2018; Dahle ve Olsson, 2019;Rodin, 2019; Appel vd., 2020;Kuhnle, 2019;Stubb, 2019; Seymour vd., 2020;Lu, 2020) karşılaşılan diğer çalışmalarda ise bu karakterler Bilgisayar Üretimli İmgeleme (CGI-Computer Generated Imagery) şeklinde adlandırılan dijital karakterler olarak betimlenmektedir(Hubble, 2018; Kadekova ve Holiencinova, 2018;Kluizenaar, 2019; Jauffret ve Kastberg, 2018). Literatürde henüz güncelliğini korumakta olan sanal etkileyici kavramına yönelik tek bir yaklaşımın bulunmamasının yanı sıra bu karakterlerin üretim altyapısına ilişkin tartışmalar da devam etmektedir.Sanal etkileyicilere ilişkin gerçekleştirilen önceki çalışmalar değerlendirildiğinde, Kadekova ve Holiencinova'nın çalışmasında sanal etkileyicilerin sosyal medya pazarlamasında kullanımının, markalar açısından gerek genç kuşağın teknolojik gelişmelere ilgi duyması ve kolay adapte olması, gerekse de sanal etkileyicilerin istenilen doğrultuda kodlanarak, tasarlanarak geliştirilebilmesi, sınırlarının reklam veren ekip tarafından belirlenebilmesi anlamında daha avantajlı olduğu bulgusuna erişilmiştir(Kadekova ve Holiencinova, 2018). ...
Son dönemlerde gelişen teknolojiyle birlikte bilgisayar üretimli imgeleme (Computer Generated Imagery) temelli sanal karakterler olan sanal etkileyiciler (virtual influencers) etkileyen pazarlama (influencer marketing) alanında kullanılmaya başlanmıştır. İnsanın fiziksel ve davranışsal özelliklerinin atfedildiği bu sanal karakterlerin sosyal medya paylaşımlarında insan gibi duygu ve davranışlar sergiledikleri görülmektedir. Bu çerçevede, insan olmayan varlıklara insan benzeri özellikler, motivasyonlar ve duygular yüklenmesi yaklaşımına dayanan antropomorfizm kavramı sanal etkileyicilerin sosyal medya stratejilerini inceleyebilmek adına önemli bir eksen oluşturmaktadır. Araştırma, sosyal medya paylaşımları üzerinden sanal etkileyicilerde bulunan antropomorfik biçimleri ve bu biçimlerin sosyal medya pazarlamasındaki rolünü ortaya çıkarmaya odaklanmaktadır. Bu çerçevede içerik analizi yöntemi kullanılarak gerçekleştirilen çalışmada, Instagram üzerinde hesabı açılarak ünlenen ilk sanal etkileyici olarak adlandırılan Lil Miquela’nın Instagram hesabı üzerinden ilerlenerek sanal etkileyicilerin sosyal medya stratejilerinde antropomorfizm kullanımı bağlamında yararlanılan açıların ortaya çıkarılması amaçlanmaktadır. Araştırma kapsamında elde edilen bulgulara göre insan gibi görünmek ve davranmak üzerine kurgulanmış sanal etkileyici Lil Miquela’nın sosyal medya paylaşımlarında jest temelli, yapısal ve karakter temelli antropomorfik biçim izlerinin sıklıkla bulunduğu görülmektedir. İnsan etkileyicilerle rekabet etmesi beklenilen sanal etkileyicilerin kullanıcı etkileşiminin önemli olduğu Instagram platformunda insani yönlerinin öne çıkartılmasının stratejik olarak tercih edildiği ortaya çıkmaktadır.
... El asentamiento de esta idea en un contexto de creciente precariedad laboral ha normalizado que este capital se convierta en un objetivo vital razonable en algunos sectores profesionales (Hearn & Schoenhoff, 2016). Desde esta perspectiva, los influencers son aquellos que han alcanzado la cúspide de esta visibilidad a través de los medios sociales y explotan su fama económicamente (Abidin, 2016;O'Meara, 2019) como prescriptores-as comerciales y de estilos de vida (Castelló-Martínez & Del-Pino-Romero, 2015;Segarra-Saavedra & Hidalgo-Marí, 2018, 2020Marauri-Castillo et al., 2021) o creadoresas de audiencias sociales (Marwick, 2019). ...
... De acuerdo con Duffy (2017), los influencers desarrollan un "trabajo aspiracional" para atraer hacia sí la atención e involucración de amplias audiencias sociales ante la perspectiva de un beneficio profesional a futuro. Los influencers han dado así lugar a una floreciente industria (Abidin, 2016), pero también a una narrativa específica de la identidad basada en la exposición del consumo visible y los gustos de libertad en publicaciones, lugares comunes de la cultura de la celebridad (Marwick, 2019). Estas figuras han adaptado la narrativa aspiracional de las celebridades al ámbito digital, conectándola con el discurso del emprendimiento y la marca personal, ya que a menudo se presentan como emprendedoresas (Hearn & Schoenhoff, 2016;Duffy, 2017;Hurley, 2019). ...
Jugando a ser influencers: un estudio comparativo entre jóvenes españoles y colombianos en Instagram Resumen El trabajo explora y describe cómo presentan su identidad en Instagram jóvenes colombianos y españoles de acuerdo con el juego social y los capitales simbólicos que infieren como normativos a partir de la figura del influencer. La metodología combina la técnica del grupo focal (7 grupos) con el análisis de contenido de los perfiles de los informantes (N= 651). En total, participaron 53 universitarios de primer curso del ámbito de las industrias creativas. Los resultados muestran que el trabajo desarrollado por los influencers ha cristalizado en un género narrativo aspiracional que estos jóvenes tienden a emular para mostrarse conforme al habitus de Instagram y ser reconocidos como agentes legítimos. Así, su autopresentación presenta tres rasgos: 1) preferencia por mostrar prácticas que expresan estatus como el ocio y los gustos de libertad, 2) predominio de un tipo de retrato y gestualidad que evita las marcas de autoproducción y aspira a una audiencia global, y 3) la normalización del discurso autopromocional. La mayoría de estos estudiantes utiliza Instagram como un juego donde compiten por la acumulación de visibilidad concebida como validación relacional, aunque entre la muestra colombiana aparece una visión más profesional de la plataforma. Finalmente, Instagram constituye para todos un juego serio donde reconocen sentirse demasiado expuestos, lo que les lleva a desarrollar prácticas de autovigilancia como la consulta a los pares, el uso de cuentas secundarias y el borrado de publicaciones. Palabras clave Medios sociales, identidad, influencers, trabajo aspiracional, autovigilancia, autopromoción, industrias creativas.
... This concept, which has been established in a context of precarious employment growth, has made it normal for such capital to be a reasonable key objective in some professional sectors (Hearn & Schoenhoff, 2016). From this perspective, influencers are those who have reached the peak of visibility by means of social media and have exploited their fame for financial gain (Abidin, 2016;O'Meara, 2019) as opinion leaders for brands and lifestyles (Castelló-Martínez & Del-Pino-Romero, 2015;Marauri-Castillo et al., 2021;Segarra-Saavedra & Hidalgo-Marí, 2018, 2020 or as creators of social audiences (Marwick, 2019). ...
... In the words of Duffy (2017), influencers have given rise not only to a flourishing industry (Abidin, 2016) but also to a specific narrative of identity based on showing conspicuous consumption and luxury activities in their posts, something that is commonplace in celebrity culture (Marwick, 2019). These figures have adapted the aspirational narrative of celebrities to the online world, connecting it with a discourse on entrepreneurship and personal branding since they often present themselves as entrepreneurs (Duffy, 2017;Hearn & Schoenhoff, 2016;Hurley, 2019). ...
This paper explores and describes how Colombian and Spanish young people present themselves on Instagram according to the social game and the symbolic capital that they infer as normative from influencers. The methodology used combines the focus group technique (seven groups) with a content analysis of the profiles of the informants (N = 651). In total, 53 first-year creative industries university students participated. The results show that the work developed by the influencers has given rise to an aspirational narrative genre that young people tend to emulate according to the Instagram habitus in order to be recognised as leading players. Their self-presentation has three main features: a) a preference for showing ‘in-classifying’ practices such as leisure and tastes for freedom; b) the predominance of a specific type of profile and gestures that avoids self-production markers and aspires towards a global audience; and c) the normalisation of self-promotional discourse. Most informants experience Instagram as a game in which they compete to accumulate visibility conceived as relational validation, although in the case of Colombian informants there is a more professional outlook towards the platform. Finally, for all of them, Instagram constitutes a serious game, and many of them admit to feeling too exposed. As a result, they have implemented self-surveillance practices, such as consulting with peers before posting photographs, using secondary accounts and deleting posts.
... En este punto, la figura del influencer en el escenario digital cobra un especial sentido, pues sus juicios en forma de recomendación condicionan las decisiones de aquellos que se sienten identificados o simplemente anhelan esa forma de vida(Ingrassia et al., 2022). Las redes sociales han estimulado la proliferación de microcelebridades, que mediante el discurso de la autenticidad y de la revelación estratégica de información de interés ganan la atención y el favor de la audiencia(Kim y McDonald-Liu, 2023;Marwick, 2019).En apenas unos años, la tecnología ha posibilitado un entorno comunicativo marcado por la retroalimentación y la interacción simétrica bidireccional, en coherencia con el protagonismo que los museos desean aplicar sobre sus públicos(Villaespesa y Wowkowych, 2020). A través de las redes sociales, los museos no solo tienen a su alcance una herramienta para aten- ...
Las redes sociales favorecen el encuentro entre el público del museo y la institución. La bidireccionalidad que impera en ellas sugiere a la academia interesarse no solo por la comunicación iniciada por las instituciones culturales, y sobre la que existe una extensa literatura, sino por las expresiones, más o menos espontáneas, publicadas por los visitantes. Estos contenidos son una prueba directa de su concepción del museo, experiencias vividas en ellos e, incluso, funciones asignadas. La consolidación de TikTok como plataforma de intercambio de videos cortos, unido a la adhesión masiva de perfiles jóvenes y el uso de algoritmos que favorecen la navegación infinita, avalan que sea seleccionada como objeto de estudio. Con el fin de conocer cómo se representa el museo en los videos privilegiados por TikTok, los rasgos de los influencers culturales y la conversación que sus contenidos suscitan, se analiza una muestra representativa de audiovisuales y sus comentarios. Los datos revelan una predisposición de los jóvenes hacia las propuestas gratuitas, participativas y que les hagan pasar un buen rato. Se debate sobre el papel del marketing de influencia aplicado a museos dado el efecto llamada que a través de los comentarios se constata.
... A large body of research has looked at the norms of feminine visibility on social media platforms and how these are performed and negotiated to create visual currency around qualities like thinness [19]. There are also studies on the economic elements of social media feeds capitalising on idealised femininity, including micro-celebrity and influencing via idealised self-productions [20,21]. Researchers have also begun exploring idealised masculinities online; for instance, the emergence of men who are fitness influencers and their promotion of masculine body characteristics, such as having a "six-pack" and narrow hips [22] or racialised masculinities [23]. ...
In this paper, we draw upon a study exploring how COVID-19 and social isolation impacted young people’s (aged 13–18) experiences of online sexual and gendered risks and harms in England during nationwide lockdowns and upon their return to school. We explore the complexities, tensions and ambiguities in youth navigating algorithmised feeds on social media apps such as TikTok and content featuring idealised cis-gendered, heterosexualised feminine and masculine embodiment. Young people repeatedly witness hateful and abusive comments that are algorithmically boosted. We argue that this toxic content normalises online hate in the form of body shaming and sexual shaming, developing the concept of the postdigital to analyse the offline, affective, embodied and material dimensions of online harm, harassment and abuse. We also explore young people’s direct experiences of receiving harmful comments, including girls’ and gender and sexuality-diverse youth’s experiences of body and sexual shaming, as well as boys’ experiences of fat shaming; which, in many instances, we argue must be classified as forms of image-based abuse. Using our postdigital lens, we argue that the ways heteronormative, cis-gendered masculine and feminine embodiment are policed online shapes behaviour and norms in young people’s everyday lives, including in and around school, and that better understanding and support around these issues is urgently needed.
... The fact that 30% of the content that people consume on X (formerly known as Twitter) is generated by technology serves as a sobering reminder of how serious the subject is. This could lead to hyperreality, in which readers react without being able to distinguish between reality and simulations, or it could result in anthropomorphism, in which technology can easily display expressions based on human emotions (Marwick, 2018;Epley et al., 2007;Baudrillard & Glaser, 1994). As technology continues to improve, the distinction between the genuine and the fake becomes increasingly hazy, opening new possibilities for privacy concerns, data security, and the potential impact of virtual influences on society. ...
The metaverse is an emerging virtual frontier that is becoming a new marketing channel for brands to showcase their products and services. Brands can now use the services of influencers (both human and virtual) to influence consumer decisions. The metaverse and other new-generation Web 3.0 technologies are used in marketing campaigns to take advantage of immersive and augmented reality environments. Influencers use strategies different from traditional e-commerce, B2B, and social media marketing. Virtual showrooms, events, and product launches engage with consumers to co-create products and give a memorable consumer experience. The metaverse provides opportunities for community building and user-generated content that is more social proof. As technologies improve, influencers get more engaged in the metaverse. Measuring and evaluating influencer campaigns, ethical considerations, legal and regulatory frameworks, and long-term implications of influencer campaigns are some areas of future study.
... Specifying a certain number of followers that would turn a user into a microcelebrity is difficult, especially since in order to increase the number, followers can also be purchased. In addition, the practices underlying the phenomenon may be similar no matter if the person in question is reaching or influencing a certain number of followers or not (Marwick [2019]: 162; for the problem of identifying influential users see Segev et al. [2018]). Accordingly, it is useful to choose the criterion of a public, i.e. unrestrictedly visible accounts, and the use of hashtags to attract new followers, instead of a certain number of followers. ...
The number of elderly influencers on Instagram is increasing. When analyzing a sample of corresponding posts, it is noticeable that fashion, especially fancy or vintage fashion, plays a central role. By choosing extraordinary looks, elderly influencers, whose age is by no means concealed, communicate self-determination and independence from the opinions of others – both also in connection with life experience. Their followers consider them as cool and empowering: this way, they can positively influence society’s perception of elderly people, take away younger recipients’ fear of aging, and act as role models. However, a noticeable divide emerges, as the elderly influencers are apparently well-educated and presumably also wealthy and enjoy good health. In social comparison, many of those of the same age would probably perform poorly. Therefore, it can be concluded that elderly influencer may be beneficial to their recipients and to society as a whole, but that addressing the social conditions that enable old people to live a fulfilled life is largely ignored.
... Simultaneously, it still hosts other sorts of content and creators, from the biggest YouTubers to microcelebrities, who are increasingly similar to the former but have a narrower reach and thematic focus (Marwick, 2019). Overall, YouTubers' origins may be traced back to a webcam/amateur culture, but these performers are now hybrid content creators that engage in the construction of characters ideally perceived as authentic, which often depends on the serial production of self-centered content, and its commercialization and association with other established practices in the cultural industries (Pereira et al., 2018). ...
This article presents an exploratory study on what themes were discussed in all Game-of-Thrones’ transmedia-world-related videos uploaded by two YouTube fan-channels (Talking Thrones and GrayArea), over a period of one year after the premiere of the final episode of this HBO series. Qualitative content analysis mapped 79 different themes within a sample of 57 videos. The most pervasive themes are related to the YouTubers’ expression of their personae as fans, but also as content creators. Specific traits (story, plots, characters, storytelling) of Game of Thrones, the books on which it is based, and their transmedia relation are also regular themes. A netnographic analysis of the most viewed video and of the YouTuber’s comments and upvotes in its comment section pointed toward similar outcomes: the YouTuber was beyond the status of a fan expressing his preferences, he was also a content creator referencing his own work and being praised by his audience.
... 219). If, for Hatsune, this involved the networked creativity and participatory fandom of the mid-2000s web (Sone, 2017), for virtual influencers, it is their embrace of the affordances and vernaculars of specific social media, and further, their adoption of strategies of social media microcelebrity (see Marwick, 2018). ...
Informed by my first six months of doctoral research, this paper offers a topography of virtual influencers that at once acknowledges their continuation of and breaking with the precedents of a lineage of “virtual beings” who have achieved celebrity status. Responding to the ahistoricism of much recent commentary, it draws on archival press and web research to situate virtual influencers at the intersection of technological advancements, discourses, and anxieties similarly characterising Hollywood’s “synthespians” at the turn of the twenty-first century; the legacy of “virtual idols” in East Asia (also known as “Vocaloids” in Japan); and the latter’s recent democratisation by a new generation of “vTubers” across video-sharing sites. Recognising this cross-medium migration of virtual celebrity—from anime, video games and blockbuster cinema to the participatory web—this paper adopts a platform-specific lens to highlight the affordances, cultures and vernaculars of specific social media as essential to virtual influencers’ aspiration to, and attainment and maintenance of, attention and fame.
... La microcelebridad se presentaría, según Marwick, como el resultado de los constantes cambios en la cultura de masas. La autora la entiende, pues, como una práctica social que, con el desarrollo y éxito del fenómeno, termina convirtiéndose en una práctica laboral (Marwick, 2019). Así, el practicante de la microcelebridad usa de manera estratégica la intimidad y el trabajo emocional para atraer seguidores a través de la narración de lo cotidiano (Caro, 2017). ...
Aunque existen abundantes trabajos sobre las comunidades de fans y, en menor medida, sobre las microcelebridades, la relación entre ambos ha sido solo superficialmente abordada. Este trabajo persigue, pues, estudiar la adaptación del fenómeno fan al entorno online y las microcelebridades. AuronPlay es uno de los youtubers más relevantes del panorama nacional e internacional, con 24,5 millones de suscriptores. Este trabajo parte de un diseño de investigación exploratorio-descriptivo de carácter cualitativo. Se emplean la entrevista estructurada en línea —con 44 entrevistas a fans españoles de AuronPlay— y el análisis del discurso. Se pretende así abordar la relevancia del youtuber en un determinado contexto social/comunicacional y las percepciones y el comportamiento de sus fans como comunidad de seguidores de una microcelebridad. El éxito de AuronPlay parece relacionarse con una comunicación cercana y constante con la comunidad mediante plataformas digitales. Coexisten procesos de identificación y proyección. Los propios fans son conscientes de la influencia del youtuber sobre ellos en la manera de hablar, el consumo de contenidos o la percepción de la realidad. La comunidad se constituye como un apoyo a la microcelebridad y una expansión de su imaginario. Pese a todo, la relación entre microcelebridad y comunidad tiene un carácter parasocial.
... These are commercially desirable because word-of-mouth is important for these products, videos are a natural way in which to communicate the look of the product and demonstrate how to use them, and there are huge beauty and fashion markets (e.g., in France: Sokolova & Kefi, 2020). The belief that beauty product reviews can form part of a financially rewarding strategy on YouTube (in the UK: Bishop, 2018a; see also Marwick, 2018) can produce the side effect that increasing resources are devoted to produce high-quality interesting beauty content, pulling YouTube users away from the remainder of YouTube. Thus, YouTube may be creating a social pressure for female appearance conformity through the success of its high-quality beauty videos, but it is not clear if similar gendering trends operate throughout the site. ...
As one of the world's most visited websites, YouTube is potentially influential for learning gendered attitudes. Nevertheless, despite evidence of gender influences within the site for some topics, the extent to which YouTube reflects or promotes male/female or other gender divides is unknown. This article analyses 10,211 YouTube videos published in 12 months from 2014 to 2015 using commenter‐portrayed genders (inferred from usernames) and view counts from the end of 2019. Nonbinary genders are omitted for methodological reasons. Although there were highly male and female topics or themes (e.g., vehicles or beauty) and male or female gendering is the norm, videos with topics attracting both males and females tended to have more viewers (after approximately 5 years) than videos in male or female gendered topics. Similarly, within each topic, videos with gender balanced sets of commenters tend to attract more viewers. Thus, YouTube does not seem to be driving male–female gender differences.
... In both emergency communication and activist communication, indeed, a timely circulation of reliable information constitutes a key element for effective coordination. A related topic is the role of so-called influencers, a broad and fuzzy category that includes different types of users who appear, from time to time, to be able to exert a significant influence over other users and which include so-called Twitter celebrities, off-line celebrities, users showing expertise on specific topics, and 'common users' (Marwick & boyd, 2011;Marwick 2018). ...
The article describes how ordinary citizens used Twitter as an emergency-management tool during the heavy floods that occurred in Sardinia, Italy, in November 2013. The case study constitutes an example of digital volunteering in the aftermath of a disaster event. The article applies the connective action framework (Bennet & Segerberg, 2012) for a deeper understanding of the dynamics of self-organized disaster communication activities on social media. Utilizing a dataset of 93,091 tweets that used the hashtag #allertameteoSAR (weather alert in Sardinia), the analysis focuses on: 1) the roles and patterns of influence among the main actors; and 2) the strategies for a peer ‘curation’ and sharing of a disaster-recovery oriented communication. The article highlights the role of Twitter celebrities and engaged ordinary users as digital volunteers and explains how they succeeded in activating bottom-up disaster-relief oriented communication.
Research on the beauty influencer economy highlights the role that racism plays in platform labor, as race is a prominent determinant in the hierarchy of influencers. While the literature on beauty influencers reveals the multi-faceted labor necessary for success in the genre, less attention is given to the ways that skin tone discrimination—or colorism—defines one’s subject position as a beauty influencer. I argue that skin tone is an identity characteristic that ultimately multiplies the labor required of beauty influencers, particularly for Black women with darker complexions. The extra labor required of persons from a marginalized subject position within a marginalized population is called Racial Phenotype Labor (RPL). Due to racist beauty standards and historical disdain for African phenotypes, Black people—and Black women specifically—with phenotypic features perceived as undesirable enter the digital influencing economy at an additional disadvantage. Societal preference for lighter skin impels darker-skinned creators to complete additional physical, emotional, and mental work in the beauty influencing community. This research asserts that the first layer of RPL involves skin tone work, where beauty influencers must combat the negative preconceptions and discourses typically associated with dark skin. I also suggest that they must combat these biases while simultaneously presenting themselves as marketable to cosmetics companies, viewers, and platform algorithms. This research study uses methodological triangulation through critical technocultural discourse analysis, thematic analysis, and autoethnography to analyze the beauty content of two prominent Black influencers—both advocates against colorism. Ultimately, I conclude that colorism remains especially gendered and functions as an agent of racial capitalism within the digital influencing economy.
The Matrix trilogy emerges as a philosophical work questioning the complex structure of modern society and the individual’s place within it. This article examines the Matrix films in light of Émile Durkheim’s concept of anomie and Jean Baudrillard’s simulation theory, attempting to understand the intricate structure of today’s digital society. Anomie, a condition resulting from the weakening or collapse of social norms, perfectly reflects the situation of humans in the Matrix universe. Simulation theory, defining a world of signs and symbols that replace reality, demonstrates that the Matrix itself is a perfect example of simulation. The article relates themes such as alienation, loss of meaning, and questioning of reality perception experienced by the characters in the films to the problems of today’s digital age. New social dynamics created by technologies such as social media, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence are reinterpreted in light of Durkheim and Baudrillard’s theories. In conclusion, this examination through the Matrix trilogy provides a powerful tool not only for understanding the films but also for analysing the complex structure of the digital age we live in and making predictions about the future. While this analysis helps understand how the perception of reality is shaped and how social norms evolve, it allows to rethink the position of the individual in the digital age.
Although influencer marketing and marketer-generated brand anthropomorphism have been extensively studied, consumer-generated imagery influencers (CGIIs) have barely scratched the surface even though it is a rising phenomenon. This is the first study to explore the concept of CGIIs through social media platforms using netnography approach. Results indicate consumers' (1) positive attitude, (2) negative attitude, and (3) prediction to what CGII will represent in future. Common factor is that it is a distraction from reality, and if controlled and used right, it would have a massive reach, creativity, and engagement compared to ‘classic influencers’. Having an emotional connection is not necessary towards humans; it could be powerful and real with CGIIs too as they show care and create relationships. The utopian scenario would be bridging the gap between physical and virtual experiences. The major worry is the ethics and moral values, in which strict regulations need to be applied. This study provides a basis of what is yet to come in the metaverse era.KeywordsVirtual influencerComputer-generated imagery influencerNetnographyAvatarSocial media
The emerging attention to the role of WhatsApp in African politics tends to examine it as a conduit for misinformation, or as part of a suite of digital tools that destabilize existing hierarchies. Within these larger transformations, African policymakers are finding ways of incorporating WhatsApp into their professional practice. This small-n study aims to understand more about the dynamics of elite influence and consensus building via participant observation of African WhatsApp groups that are dedicated to shaping the framing, construction and meaning of intra-continental trade policy in advance of the African Continental Free Trade Area coming into effect. I report how these groups view WhatsApp as a ‘technology of Pan-Africanism’ but also how this platform facilitates ‘backstage activism’ and self-promotion within elite cultures. The study also notes elite recruitment, and motivation, as well as these elites’ self-conception of science, technology, and innovation.
Purpose
This paper aims to address some limitations in existing approaches to the study of mis- and dis-information and offers what the authors propose as a more comprehensive approach to framing and studying these issues, geared toward the undergraduate level of learner. In doing so, the authors prioritize social shaping of technology and critical informatics perspectives as lenses for explicating and understanding complex mis- and dis-information phenomena. One purpose is to offer readers an understanding of the mis- and dis-information studies landscape, and advocate for the merit of taking the given approach the authors outline.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper builds upon design-based research (DBR) methods. In this paper, the authors present the actual curriculum that will be empirically researched in 2022 and beyond in a program of iterative DBR.
Findings
Findings of this conceptual paper comprise a fully articulated undergraduate syllabus for a course the authors entitled, “Disinformation Detox.” The authors will iterate upon this curriculum development in ongoing situated studies conducted in undergraduate classrooms.
Originality/value
The value and originality of this article is in its contribution of the ontological “innovation” of a way of framing the mis- and dis-information knowledge domain in terms of social shaping and critical informatics theories. The authors argue that the proposed approach offers students the opportunity to cultivate a complex form of what Milner and Phillips describe as “ecological literacy” that is in keeping with the mis- and dis-information problem domain.
Disneyland is one of the most Instagrammed locations and its mediation reveals cultural changes related to place and identity. Using a grounded approach to analyze the posts of influential Instagram users who tag their posts at Disneyland, this study shows how place is mediated through new logics developed on social media. Instagram users favor fantasy elements of Disneyland, such as escapism and childhood nostalgia, over other historical elements of the parks and its midcentury U.S. American values. Disney has responded by synergistically integrating new media logics, as seen in the creation of vibrantly colored, limited-run food and merchandise. The intersection between Disneyland and Instagram shows how place is being transformed for the lenses of consumers seeking experiences, food, and merchandise in late capitalism.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of post content, post media and post scheduling strategies on online engagement on Twitter in context of micro celebrities in Pakistan.
Design/methodology/approach
For this research, micro celebrities of Pakistan have been defined as the target population. Secondary data consisting of 464 tweets from walls of six micro celebrities belonging to both genders and diverse set of socio-political fields was collected. Tweedie estimation analysis was run to accept or reject the hypotheses. Mean values with standard deviations were utilized to analyze the different engagement patterns of dichotomous variables (content type, content language, mentions, hashtags, text, images, links, videos, hour of the day and day of the week) on online engagement.
Findings
Content type, content language, content length, hashtags, mentions, images, links, videos, hour of the day and day of the week have been found to have a significant relationship with online engagement on Twitter.
Research limitations/implications
First, the study has been conducted in context of micro celebrities on Twitter. It did not include influencers on other social media networks. Second, study considered only quantitative aspects of engagement based on secondary data ignoring qualitative aspects of phenomenon due to time and methodology constraints. Third, study did not include link clicks as a measure of engagement as clicks data is not publicly available on the posts.
Practical implications
The study contributes significantly to find out valuable “micro celebrity” strategies in Pakistan. The study suggests micro celebrities to tweet soft content in Urdu language along with relevant hashtags and mentions to get higher engagement on their tweets. Further, tweets should contain maximum number of characters. Micro celebrities should not insert images, links and videos in their tweets as these media types result in lower engagement on Twitter. Micro celebrities should tweet at low hours and weekends.
Social implications
As this study focuses on investigation of better engagement practices for micro celebrities, it will help general public to express themselves more effectively through social media.
Originality/value
First, this is the first study that investigates the online engagement model for micro celebrities. Second, the online engagement model designed in this study has yet not been investigated to best of our knowledge. The theoretical model combines multiple engagement factors discussed in previous studies conducted on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.
This article critically explores whether and how computer-generated imagery (CGI) characters are jamming public relations and influencer practices. We use Miquela, a virtual character with 3 million Instagram followers as a case study. We examine Miquela’s (and her creators’) communication strategies to identify what makes her so appealing to postmillennial audiences, luxury and indie brands, and civil rights activists alike. Valued at USD125 million, Miquela is algorithmically moulded as a fashionista, singer and civil rights warrior to maximise visibility, influence and emotional release. ‘Her’ discordant, uncanny human/nonhuman ethos simultaneously attracts, intrigues and defies. To study Miquela’s case we built a four-tiered theoretical framework (parasocial relations, identity influence, culture jamming, and algorithmic branding) using the Freudian concept of ‘the uncanny’ as connecting thread; and a mixed method that includes digital ethnography, textual and sentiment analysis. We aim to make a contribution to studies on the use of digital media in PR.
This is one of the first textbooks to explore the phenomenon of Influencer Marketing and how it fits within marketing communications to build brands and their communities. Influencers – those who can impact a brand’s marketing and advertising strategies as well as build brand communities – are making extensive use of the new digital and traditional communications platforms. Influencers offer brands the ability to deliver the “right” communication and marketing messages to a specific target audience.
Across four core sections, this book brings together the key theory and practical implications of this new marketing tool: how it works as part of communications campaigns, including how to select the right influencers and measure their success, the dark side of influencer marketing, and the legal and ethical framework. With contributions from authors across the globe, each chapter is also accompanied by an in- depth case study – from the Kardashians to Joe Wicks – that demonstrates how the theory translates to practice.
Influencer Marketing is important reading for advanced, postgraduate and executive education students of Marketing, Digital Marketing, Marketing Communications, Brand Management and Public Relations. With its accessible style and practical content, it is also highly valuable for Marketing Communications, Branding and PR specialists.
Emerging developments in AI will have a tremendous impact on the world of media and entertainment. While the general public is focused on entertainment-related technology such as virtual reality and augmented reality, perhaps more significant is the technological transformation of how media experiences are created. Many of the signals about how and where these technologies will affect our lives are below the surface, deeper inside the pre-production and post-production process. This chapter will survey some of the ways in which AI affects the stories we consume, issues of ethics and equity surrounding the use of the AI in media, and early signals that presage a tectonic shift in the business of content production.
Through a particular study of online entertainment reviewing, this chapter explores the emergence of a new strategic persona in contemporary culture. It investigates the way that the production of entertainment-related commentary, reviews and critiques online is increasingly defined by a complex relationship and intersection with what is described as a dual strategic persona. Along with a public presentation of the self as reviewer across multiple platforms, the new online film reviewer is also negotiating how their identity and value are aggregated and structure into algorithms. These algorithms construct a second persona that reviewers are constantly working out to construct and improve to make themselves more visible in this different online world of reviewing. The chapter investigates how the prominent website, Rotten Tomatoes, is connected to reviewers and how these same reviewers maintain their presence and visibility for their followers via sites like Rotten Tomatoes and other platforms and pathways to their audiences.
Drawn from the notion that Twitter is a suitable context for micro-celebrity practices (Marwick, 2010) this research examines interactions between Indonesian Twitter-celebrities called selebtwits and their followers. The results suggest that several strategies include: stimulated conversation, audience recognition, and various level of self-disclosure that have been conducted by the selebtwits to maintain the relationship with their followers. This research also found that from the follower viewpoint, interaction with selebtwits is often perceived as an “endorsement” and “achievement”. However, there are others who are not particularly fond of the idea of the selebtwits-follower’s engagement. Some selebtwits-followers’ interactions lead to “digital intimacy”, while others resemble parasocial interaction and one-way communication. Furthermore, this study suggests that in the broader context, selebtwits are perceived in both positive and negative ways.
On the African continent, the use of Internet and social media has been growing at an incredible speed in the past decade. Social media have thus been used in an array of instances such as election periods, natural disasters, and political crises. However, previous research on social media has barely taken a look at the use of social media during war. By investigating on the use of Twitter during the post electoral crisis in Côte d’Ivoire in 2010/2011, this study wants to emphasize the potential of social media for the development of democracy in the context of crisis, war, and limited media freedom. Through a content analysis of Twitter and qualitative expert interviews with Ivoirian bloggers, this study found that Twitter was mainly used for political debate and crowdsourcing information. The crisis turning over to a civil war, the network was used in particular by a small group of active citizens and bloggers, operating as technically versed opinion leaders, to provide humanitarian help for the population caught in the crisis. Results further showed that mobile devices played a crucial role for the use of Twitter within the country and indicated that the post electoral crisis considerably contributed to the discovery of Twitter in Côte d’Ivoire. A central finding is that Twitter, on the one hand, was used for diffusing false information and expressing verbal violence and, on the other hand, it served to verify information and throwback rumors.
This article explains the origin puzzle of the 2013 Moral Monday protests in North Carolina. Social media were marginal to the emergence of this civil disobedience movement, yet a common view is that digital technology’s weak ties are an integral part of large-scale collective action in the digital era. Instead, strong offline ties with structured organizations were critical to its emergence. Qualitative data show that a network of structured organizations, grassroots organizing, traditional media, and an ideological response to an economic and political crisis worked together to propel this large-scale movement. In effect, both structural and cultural factors shaped the activism in this case, not individual or digital explanations. Consequently, this article also traces the historic phases of social movement theory, situating a digital emphasis as part of an evolving focus on social movement origin mechanisms. Emergence scholarship on digital activism would benefit from expanding the entry point of protest earlier and broader than a hashtag’s debut, as digital explanations may not be as distinct of a theoretical construct as previous research suggests.
Algorithms, as constitutive elements of online platforms, are increasingly shaping everyday sociability. Developing suitable empirical approaches to render them accountable and to study their social power has become a prominent scholarly concern. This article proposes an approach to examine what an algorithm does, not only to move closer to understanding how it works, but also to investigate broader forms of agency involved. To do this, we examine YouTube’s search results ranking over time in the context of seven sociocultural issues. Through a combination of rank visualizations, computational change metrics and qualitative analysis, we study search ranking as the distributed accomplishment of ‘ranking cultures’. First, we identify three forms of ordering over time – stable, ‘newsy’ and mixed rank morphologies. Second, we observe that rankings cannot be easily linked back to popularity metrics, which highlights the role of platform features such as channel subscriptions in processes of visibility distribution. Third, we find that the contents appearing in the top 20 results are heavily influenced by both issue and platform vernaculars. YouTube-native content, which often thrives on controversy and dissent, systematically beats out mainstream actors in terms of exposure. We close by arguing that ranking cultures are embedded in the meshes of mutually constitutive agencies that frustrate our attempts at causal explanation and are better served by strategies of ‘descriptive assemblage’.
An illuminating investigation into a class of enterprising women aspiring to “make it” in the social media economy but often finding only unpaid work Profound transformations in our digital society have brought many enterprising women to social media platforms—from blogs to YouTube to Instagram—in hopes of channeling their talents into fulfilling careers. In this eye-opening book, Brooke Erin Duffy draws much-needed attention to the gap between the handful who find lucrative careers and the rest, whose “passion projects” amount to free work for corporate brands. Drawing on interviews and fieldwork, Duffy offers fascinating insights into the work and lives of fashion bloggers, beauty vloggers, and designers. She connects the activities of these women to larger shifts in unpaid and gendered labor, offering a lens through which to understand, anticipate, and critique broader transformations in the creative economy. At a moment when social media offer the rousing assurance that anyone can “make it”–and stand out among freelancers, temps, and gig workers—Duffy asks us all to consider the stakes of not getting paid to do what you love.
Social media technologies collapse multiple audiences into single contexts, making it difficult for people to use the same techniques online that they do to handle multiplicity in face-to-face conversation. This paper investigates how content producers navigate 'imagined audiences' on Twitter. We talked to participants with different types of followings to understand their techniques, including targeting multiple audiences, concealing subjects, and maintaining authenticity. For some, the techniques of audience management resemble those of 'micro-celebrity' and personal branding, representing strategic self-commodification. Our model of the networked audience assumes a many-to-many communication through which individuals conceptualize an imagined audience evoked through their tweets.
This chapter examines the video-sharing platform Vine, which allows users to upload very short (6.5-second) self-made videos set to play on loop. Vine has been noted for promoting content by its Black contributors, and girls and young women are a significant presence on the site, but who profits when their user-generated vine content goes viral? This chapter examines the case study of Peaches Munroee, a Black American teenager whose video “Eyebrows on Fleek” went viral in 2014, and who fought to take ownership of the viral commodity that she created. By tracing the contours and conditions for this video’s success and analysing how girlhood and race are integral to Munroee’s self-presentation, this chapter shows how representations of Black girlhood circulate as valuable and highly “shareable” commodities.
This chapter investigates the dynamics of teenage girls' musical.ly productions in relation to microcelebrity inspirations and (non)aspirations, and centrally details the mixed methodologies involved in the research process. The analysis focuses on the flow of the musical.ly app as evidenced through the walk-through method and young girls' engagements with the platform as solicited through personal observations and two small focus group discussions.
Around the mid-2000s, the first wave of young Thai women who attained fame organically on the internet emerged when their photos and profiles were widely shared by friends and fans in web communities and discussion forums. Comprising mainly of students, these women were known as “net idols” and celebrated primarily for their looks, as online conversations focused on their beauty, cosmetic and dressing skills, and overall pleasant appearance. Since then, some of these net idols have parlayed their online popularity into commercial exchanges and partnerships by advertising for clients, evolving into a commercial form of microcelebrity known as “influencers” (Abidin, 2016), while still others progressed into different forms of internet celebrity confined only to online fame as social capital without further tangible returns. In this chapter, we review the conceptual history of net idols and a subset of influencers known as “beauty bloggers” in Thailand, drawing on observations and content analyses of net idols’ Instagram posts, beauty bloggers’ Facebook posts, conversations from selected discussion boards, and popular sentiment about these internet celebrities in tabloids and online websites. Most of the content is originally in Thai and translated by the first author.
This chapter will consider the workings of microcelebrity in the context of an evolving Indian cyber public. In the contemporary moment, large-scale battles for control over the world’s youngest and increasingly digitally active demographic are in full swing – both by corporations like Facebook through efforts like Free Basics, as well as by ideologues who wish to mold the “idea of India” in certain ways. While digital spaces are often framed as liberating, there are also extremely strong conservative forces that are well established. It is within this context that I would like to examine the recent growth of the Indian online comedic scene whose popularity has increased by leaps and bounds. My particular focus will be the comedy collective of AIB (All India Backchod), who are most prominent on Youtube. This collective has garnered significant popularity through their deployment of viral comedic videos riffing off on various aspects of Indian society and have also made socially aware videos around hot button issues like gay rights and women’s rights. I would like to examine their treatment of gender and sexuality particularly in the context of it being made up primarily of straight men and how that has affected their engagement both with the content of their videos, as well as their ability to leverage their online visibility. I will be using ideas of postcolonial cyberspace as theorized by Nishant Shah (2015) as well as theorists of microcelebrity and the use of humor such as Theresa Senft (2013).
Lauren Berlant explores individual and collective affective responses to the unraveling of the U.S. and European economies by analzying mass media, literature, television, film, and video.
This article will look to YouTube’s algorithm to assess how such forms of mechanical decision-making can create a discriminatory visibility hierarchy of vloggers, favouring middle class social actors who make highly gendered content aligned with advertisers’ demands and needs. I have selected entrepreneurial beauty vloggers as a case study for this article; beauty vlogging is defined as the demonstration and discussion of cosmetic use, often from a vIoggers’ own bedroom (Banet Weiser, 2017; Nathanson, 2014). This is a deeply entrenched genre on the site; beauty vlogging is a full-time job for some successful participants, and a source of pocket money for many more. Moreover, beauty vlogging is an effective illustration of how the YouTube algorithm causes the polarization of identity markers such as gender. Indeed, for female participants, I hypothesize that YouTube actively promotes hegemonic, feminized cultural outputs, created by beauty vloggers with significant embodied social and cultural capital. That is to say, for women on YouTube, the algorithm privileges and rewards feminized content deeply entwined with consumption, beauty, fashion, baking, friendships and boyfriends in the vein of the historical bedroom culture of the teenage magazine. A secondary hypothesis is that beauty vloggers’ own understandings of YouTube’s algorithmic processes are learned and embodied within their own practices, influencing modes of self-presentation, tone of voice, choice of content covered, words and sentence structures used. I argue that it is essential to situate all beauty vloggers’ experience and content as specific to the platform of YouTube; it is their continued success on the YouTube platform that underwrites the value of their brands. In other words, even highly successful vloggers remain beholden to YouTube’s technologies of visibility, they are not safe from the sovereignty of the algorithm.
The making of the entrepreneurial self is a dominant trope of contemporary media culture, and a multitude of media formats across divergent national contexts showcase the contemporary obsession with media visibility and the attainment of celebrity status as the most aspirational form of social mobility. In Singapore, commercial lifestyle blogs are prime examples of entrepreneurial identity-making as websites almost exclusively created by young women, showcasing user-generated content oriented around the pleasures of consumption as a means of empowerment, self-actualisation and individualisation. By analysing content on a selection of blogs, this article aims to answer the following questions: To what extent are Singaporean women's identities contingent upon material consumption as a means of identity creation? How do blogs created by women demonstrate an entrepreneurial investment in their appearance and feminine corporeality as the means of perceived empowerment, even at the expense of more formal and structured forms of individualisation, such as education?.
Influencer commerce has experienced an exponential growth, resulting in new forms of digital practices among young women. Influencers are one form of microcelebrity who accumulate a following on blogs and social media through textual and visual narrations of their personal, everyday lives, upon which advertorials for products and services are premised. In Singapore, Influencers are predominantly young women whose commercial practices are most noted on Instagram. In response, everyday users are beginning to model after Influencers through tags, reposts and #OOTDs (Outfit Of The Day), unwittingly producing volumes of advertising content that is not only encouraged by Influencers and brands but also publicly utilised with little compensation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Instagram Influencers and followers in Singapore, this article investigates the visibility labour in which followers engage on follower-anchored Instagram advertorials, in an attention economy that has swiftly profited off work that is quietly creative but insidiously exploitative.
There has yet to be a definitive study of cute culture that is organically Singaporean. Drawing on existing work on East Asian cute culture and the regional popularity of commercial social media microcelebrities or ‘Influencers’ in Singapore, this article annotates three modes of agentic cute used to obscure the soft power that Influencers hold. Through the qualitative textual and visual analysis of content from three popular Singaporean Influencers, and their associated blogs and social media, this article examines how three tropes that I term ‘the Doll’, ‘the Darling’ and ‘the Dear’ are enacted as cute femininities among adult woman. It argues that the subversive power of this performative cuteness is obscured by the corresponding sensual delight, romantic docility and homosocial desire that the Influencers develop in tandem with their cute self-presentations. By continually emphasizing stereotypical gendered relationships with their male partners, and relations with their followers, these Influencers are able to position themselves as non-threatening and submissive, when they are in fact quietly subverting these hierarchies for personal gain.
This article analyzes the gendered expectations of authenticity in online amateur media performances through a reading of the 2006 vlog series lonelygirl15. Actress Jessica Rose was part of an artistic collective that created the character of Bree, a teenage girl who posted a series of confessional vlogs on YouTube under the screen name lonelygirl15. The vlog quickly went viral due, in part, to the almost immediate suspicion that the series was "fake." Through a close reading of both the coverage of the sting that revealed Bree's true identity, and the narrative of the series itself, the author illustrates how the series aestheticizes precarity in order to facilitate escalating modes of intimacy with Bree's character. By placing such demands within the longer history of girls media production, such as the video work of Sadie Benning and Camgirl websites, this article argues that the reaction to the series makes visible the increasing political significance of the entanglement of economic concerns and identity production within the networked social sphere.
This essay addresses the difficult politics of 'internationalizing' cultural studies. In an effort to participate in ongoing conversations about, and around, 'internationalizing' cultural studies, this essay invites us to attend to the frames of reference that can sometimes underlie our efforts at 'internationalizing' cultural studies. Examining larger issues such as our frequent unexamined points of departure into the 'international', the geo-politics of knowledge production, academic protocols and practices, the gross unevenness in transnational exchange and circulation of knowledge, the continued hegemony of English as a language that secures academic legitimacy, this essay probes some of the obstacles that can often confront attempts at decolonizing cultural studies.
Two sides of the same coin: Exploring the brand and influencer relationship in influencer marketing
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