Aveda Institute Chicago Social Media Influencers Discussion Questions

1- Compare between the methodologies used by the authors (short answer please)

2- Provide some of the main techniques and characteristics used by social media influencers to construct their authenticity and connect with their audiences.

819241
research-article20192019
SMSXXX10.1177/2056305118819241Social Media + SocietyHurley
Article
Imagined Affordances of Instagram and
the Fantastical Authenticity of Female
Gulf-Arab Social Media Influencers
Social Media + Society
January-March 2019: 1­–16
© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
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https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305118819241
DOI: 10.1177/2056305118819241
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Zoe Hurley
Abstract
This study explores the image sharing site Instagram to reveal how affordances, or uses of the platform, occur within a
nexus of technological architecture, sociocultural contexts, and globalized commercial practices. It suggests social actors
draw upon Instagram’s affordances at material, conceptual, and imaginary levels while using social media. This triadic model
for theorizing affordances of Instagram responds to the need for mapping ontologies and typologies of social media within
increasingly visual, intercultural, and non-Western contexts. The lenses of critical multimodality and a participant-centered
method consider how female Gulf-Arab social media influencers operate through an interplay of shifting affordances in
ways that challenge current conceptions of authenticity surrounding social media influencers. It is suggested that the triadic
affordances of Instagram, occurring at material, conceptual, and imaginary levels, provide both influencers and followers with
strategies of “fantastical authenticity” for navigating conflicting modes of representation and self-presentation within local
and globalized economies.
Keywords
Instagram, affordances, material, conceptual, imaginary, representation, self-presentation
Introduction
Social media, as a technological as well as a social phenomenon, remains a conflated term requiring sharper definitions
of what is meant by “social” and “media,” and how and why
they come together to exercise degrees of control in ways that
are often highly gendered and increasingly commercialized
(Bouvier, 2015). The author of this study locates a lack of
precision in theorizing social media that partly results from
the confusion surrounding “affordances.” Yet, before clearer
articulations of the affordances of social media can occur,
clarifications of the term “affordance” are required since it is
inconsistently defined within communications theory and
other disciplines including psychology, human computer
interaction, design, and sociocultural theory. This is an issue
to the extent that these variations subsequently shape (mis)
understandings of social media. Originally coined by Gibson
(1966), “affordances” are “properties of an environment relative to an animal” (p. 285). However, this definition was not
conceived to include collective, sociocultural affordances, or
the ways users’ perceptions, or appropriations of affordances
that can change over time. Furthermore, Eynon (2018) argues
designs, assumptions, and realizations of technologies are
never gender neutral and this study reiterates that neither are
affordances. These issues are addressed through developing a
framework for theorizing the tacit gendering and triadic layering of multimodal affordances. It builds on understandings
of multimodality as occurring through hybrid social configurations, human activity, and agency rather than as fixed and
embedded in material properties and technology (Bouvier,
2016; Machin, 2016). The participant-centered study involved
a focus group of 25 female students at a university in the
United Arab Emirates (UAE). These respondents helped
select the case study samples of five highly popular female
social media influencers from Gulf-Arab countries including
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE. The
author of the article worked with respondents carrying out
multimodal analysis of the influencers’ posts on Instagram to
consider ways the platform’s architecture converges with
influencers and followers to form specific affordances or uses
Zayed University, United Arab Emirates
Corresponding Author:
Zoe Hurley, College of Communication and Media Sciences, Zayed
University, P.O. Box 19282, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Email: Zoe.hurley@zu.ac.ae
Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction
and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages
(https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
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occurring across a triad of material, conceptual, and imaginary levels.
Machin’s (2016) critical multimodal affordance-based
approach is one driven by the social and not by the need to
model exclusively on the basis of language and linguistics. A
multimodal artifact consists of a combination of “modes,”
which is a term used within systemic functional linguistics
(Halliday, 1994) and social semiotics (Hodge & Kress, 1998)
to refer to resources for meaning making. Examples of modes
include speech, images, writing, illustrations, clothing, digital screens, or any material property communicating meaning (Lackovic, 2018). Each of these modes is organized
according to the principles of semiotic resources that are recognized within a social context. The social media application
Instagram consists of the multimodal semiotic resources of
videos, images, sounds, speech, text, captions, and hashtags.
These technological semiotic resources come together to create social meanings that occur in combinations and change
over time to constitute and reflect boundaries of sociality
(Graham, Laurier, O’Brien, & Rouncefield, 2011). Social
media’s semiotic resources not only facilitate but shape and
limit the communications that lead social practices as software fosters certain kinds of social interactions and suppresses others (Unger, Wodak, & KhosraviNik, 2016). This
study’s understanding of multimodal affordances as semiotic
resources goes beyond Oliver’s (2005) proposal to use literary techniques to understand affordances which emphasizes
material features but limits visual and symbolic aspects. It
also goes beyond Nagy and Neff’s (2015, p. 2) efforts to
reconstruct the concept of affordances within communication studies, which although conceptualizing affordances as
simultaneously “material and conceptual,” does not address
the ways technologies and their affordances are highly gendered (Wajcman, 2004, 2009).
This study’s theorizing of gendered, multimodal affordances of social media is therefore developed through a radical re-grounding of Gibson’s (1979) conception of affordances
(Albrechtsen, Andersen, & Pejtersen, 2001; Kaptelinin &
Nardi, 2012). Affordances are defined as involving: (1) material properties linked directly to specific functions or actions
(e.g., sending a text or liking a friend’s post); (2) conceptual
and/or symbolic uses, through linguistic and visual signaling
of identities, lifestyles, and allegiances to national and international communities (i.e., communicating in a particular language, sharing images of hobbies and lifestyle choices,
participating in national customs and rituals); and (3) also at
imaginary levels through aesthetic and digital manipulation
of image, identity, self-presentation, image consumption, and
activities symbolizing and expressing aspirational desires that
may be tacit, (e.g., Anderson, 2006 considers a nation to be a
socially constructed community imagined by the people who
perceive themselves as part of that group). The prolific sharing of images via image based social media like Instagram
contributes to imaginary affordances not only of nationhood
but also contestations, challenges, thinking beyond, or even
Social Media + Society
reconfiguring current versions of socially gendered and
national identities.
This study explores how this critical multimodal regrounding of the concept of affordances provides clearer
articulations of the architecture of social media like Instagram
as well as participant led reflections of the affordances for
users. This is important because it contributes to understandings of the ways social media affordances are not homogeneous or static but vary across triadic levels as well as in
terms of gender and sociocultural contexts, routinely embedded, and taken for granted in technological and social configurations. Furthermore, this study provides insights into
the under researched fields of female Gulf-Arab social media
influencers and perspectives of Instagram followers in the
Gulf-Arab region.
Social Media in the Gulf-Arab Context
Traditionally conservative government media institutions
have struggled to compete with the less formal and booming
social media influencer market in the Gulf-Arab region
(Azaiz, 2017). A survey by Denis, Martin, and Wood (2017)
indicates Instagram is preferred by 55% of 18- to 24-yearolds and is the primary vehicle for this age group in the
region. The popularity of Instagram here, like elsewhere, can
be explained in terms of its multimodal affordances of photographs, filters, hashtags, captions, and videos that enable
postings of pre-prepared content as well as immediate postings of live content. Instagram’s launch of Stories in 2016, is
viewed as derivative of Snapchat’s feature of video posts that
last 24 hr, and a direct attempt to capitalize on their popularity. Ahmed (2016) says the ephemerality of disappearing
content is appealing to young people, giving a sense of
authenticity. Although Instagram’s Stories, since 2017, can
now be saved permanently, they still retain this sense of
immediacy and apparent authenticity. Although these indicators of Instagram’s popularity are generalizable elsewhere,
for example, in Anglo-American and South East Asian contexts (Abidin, 2018), this study’s surveying of social media
literature and methods of participant centered multimodal
exploration, indicates how affordances vary across sociocultural contexts in ways that are also highly gendered.
While the Gulf-Arab region is vast, rapidly changing, and
heterogenous, its oil and gas-based economies underwent
rapid economic modernization while retaining conservative
sociocultural traditions (Malachova, 2012). Gulf-Arab
women are sometimes portrayed as oppressed, but their lives
are highly varied, and they do not necessarily view themselves in this way. Furthermore, they are considered potential
agents of social and economic change, driving developments
as a result of investments in education (Romano, 2017).
Many of these changes are played out through visual modes
of dress, style, and identity presented via social media, offering Gulf-Arab women a range of multimodal affordances to
explore and perform their identities in different ways
Hurley
(Bouvier, 2016). Social media has also played a crucial yet
controversial role in enabling women to participate in the
public sphere and drawn attention to issues they deem important, for example, the social media campaigns of activists
petitioning for the rights of women to drive in Saudi Arabia
(Agarwal, Lim, & Wigan, 2012) or the right to wear the hijab
(veil) as postcolonial resistance (Golnaraghi & Dye, 2016).
A crucial aspect of this has been the power of visual representation by women who have traditionally been denied
these opportunities. Homi Bhabha (1994) in the Location of
Culture develops intercultural understandings, questions
about cultural crossovers, and third spaces. Similarly, visual
culture is also understood as both “globalizing and localizing—quite often simultaneously” and contexts are not easily
bounded or static and they change over time (Gruber &
Haugbolle, 2013, p. 106). What it means to be “social” in one
context differs to another and what is social about social
media therefore also needs to be precisely defined (Jensen,
2010). Indeed, Papacharissi (2015b) points out all media by
definition have been social. To address these complexities,
the author views social media as occurring in a reciprocal
relationship with its social context, as these both define and
constitute one another. To understand social media, like
Instagram, as cultural activity necessitates a focus on its
material, conceptual, and imaginary affordances. Importantly,
this focus needs to occur in relation to social actors and situated contexts to avoid universalizing and ethnocentric
perspectives.
Social Media Influencers
Literature surrounding female social media influencers provides an overview of strategies for maintaining and extending celebrity and microcelebrity, imported and adapted
within the visually orientated architecture of Instagram. A
number of authors have established the ways that social
media entertainment, often consumed on mobile devices,
offers distinct modes of address to traditional media. It features both established celebrities and amateur creators across
a series of platforms, including Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat,
and Instagram as well as reality television. Cunningham and
Craig (2017) suggest that the social media platforms offer
distinct “technological affordance” without fully defining
this concept (p. 72). As mentioned, this article advocates the
importance of defining this key term to understand the intersection of social media architecture, social actors, and sociocultural contexts. Furthermore, defining affordances offers
insights into strategies of social media influencers as well as
how affordances define their practices and relationship to
authenticity.
Microcelebrity is distinguished from traditional celebrity
to the extent that celebrities are famous for who they are and
a result of their talents and/or roles in films, sporting and
music events, and so on. Microcelebrities, a term coined by
Senft (2013), are famous for what they do involving online
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self-presentation practices to strategically attract followers,
through sharing personal information for marketing purposes, mobilizing online identity as a brand in itself
(Marwick, 2015; Senft, 2013). Marwick (2015) says
Instagram users’ approaches to microcelebrity differs to
users’ approaches on preceding platforms including blogs,
webcams, Twitter, and YouTube previously written about
(Marwick & boyd, 2011; Senft, 2008) specifically due to the
visual orientation of the platform and emerging visual selfpresentation strategies. Abidin (2018) discusses the wide
uptake of Internet celebrity by an economically elite group
who have managed to transform digital fame into a selfbrand. This differs to a business scholars’ definition and has
an anthropological focus on the cultural role of influencers
in society. This study adapts this socially orientated definition of “influencer” as a vocational practice, occurring on
Instagram and centering around self-presentations and identity performances as a means to self-brand, communicate
lifestyles, and advertise products. While this type of
Instagram influencing is commercially orientated, it converges within a framework of social and cultural phenomena. The cultural meanings formulating across these
practices are therefore not limited to consumerism but operate simultaneously within a visual economy of social meanings. Some of these social meanings function at imaginary
levels or the “yet to be” dimension. A number of scholars
have theorized about imagined audiences as mental conceptions of communication (Litt & Hargittai, 2016; Marwick &
boyd, 2011). This study is aligned with this idea of imaginary audiences, occurring in relation to other imaginary
affordances, and builds on it to consider some of the gendered and sociocultural implications of imaginary affordances of social media in the Gulf-Arab context. It is argued
further on in the study that the female Gulf-Arab social
media influencers’ posts on Instagram dispense with the
modes of realism and documentary style images used previously by microcelebrities on YouTube and earlier Instagram
practices as a strategy to convey authenticity (Marwick,
2015). Although Instagram affords instant, on the go, as
they happen posts, there is nothing instant about female
Gulf-Arab social media influencers’ posts on Instagram,
occurring through highly scripted, choreographed, staged,
digitally manipulated processes, involving extensive architectures of digital labor. This suggests that whereas celebrities garnered attention for who they are, microcelebrities for
what they do, female Gulf-Arab social media influencers
appeal for their performances of what they and their followers could potentially or imaginatively be as they incorporate
a range of luridly colorful and fantasy style visual props,
costumes, and locations. Building on Banet-Weiser’s (2012)
analytic framework, Cunningham and Craig (2017) discard
with the binaries of commercial versus authentic culture
which offers support for the claim that potential ways of
being, presented on Instagram, are not necessarily realist or
authentic in terms of traditional conceptions.
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The role of influencers, socialites, celebrities, and “It”
girls, has a long tradition in advertising, pre-dating microcelebrities on the Internet, going back to the late 19th century.
Influencers in the Middle East region were also featured in
advertising from the 1960s (Otterman, 2007) as consumers
demonstrated a fascination for famous people doing every
day or authentic things. Abidin (2017, p. 1) says influencers
have responded to this fascination with authenticity, building
upon the practices of celebrities and microcelebrities,
through contriving a “calibrated amateurism,” that crafts an
amateur aesthetic of comedy or spontaneity, reinforced by
the affordances of social media tools and platforms. Although
it has been extensively argued that the blurring between personalities and commodities has risen (Evans, Phua, Lim, &
Jun, 2017), in this article, the author believes that the blurred
lines do not just refer to consumers’ alleged needs for more
authentic online marketing campaigns, they also problematize traditional notions of “authenticity” as a mediation of
identity performance.
This is relevant to concerns surrounding the naivety of
younger consumers which may be unfounded as teenagers
online could be more discerning and critical than commonly
assumed (boyd, 2007, 2014). Furthermore, it is relevant to
issues surrounding the “authenticity” of visual representations of Gulf-Arab women that could be stereotypically construed in the West as images of either oppression, from
feminist second wave perspectives (Holt & Jawad, 2013), or
terror and all that is “other” about the Arab world, understood as orientalism (Said, 1998). Interestingly, the images
exchanged via female Arab social media influencers’
accounts on Instagram in the Gulf-Arab region bear limited
resemblance to the stereotypical images of Gulf-Arab women
circulating in Western media (Machin, 2016; Machin &
Mayr, 2012). This reminds us of the importance of thinking
about the circulation of images across national boundaries
and how important it is to ask questions about how images
circulate in the global, visual economy, why and with what
effects (Rose, 2016). Moreover, despite the range of visual
data relating to Gulf-Arab women on the Internet, Piela
(2010) says it is sometimes difficult to identify what is representation (as they are seen by others) and what is self-presentation (as Gulf-Arab women see and present themselves).
Conversely, social media like Instagram are also framed
through commercial practices as the lifestyles, customs, and
activities of Gulf-Arab women are packaged, commodified,
and consumed as idealized in ways that blur the dichotomy
of self/other (re)presentations. Therefore, just as there is
nothing really instant about female Gulf-Arab social media
influencers’ Instagram posts, ways of being social and/or an
authentic social actor are rarely instantaneous and instead
highly mediated and engineered through a range of technologies, social, and historical practices. Subsequently, greater
awareness of these mediations of authenticity result in significant contestations of the term.
Social Media + Society
Representations of Authenticity
A number of social media scholars have emphasized the crucial role that representations of authenticity play in social
media entertainment. For example, Banet-Weiser (2012)
first problematizes the term and Papacharissi (2015a)
explains how authenticity operates dialogically and in ways
that are continuously tested through affective interactions.
Nevertheless, the author of this article intends to problematize conceptions of authenticity, and its role in visual social
media like Instagram, even further through outlining a broad
etymology of the concept and its intersections with triadic
affordances of Instagram. Philosophically, concepts of
authenticity can be dated to the 17th-century Cartesian sense
of the self and beliefs that the mind is separate to the body
and we can consciously think our way through life
(Simmons, 2012). However, this view of authenticity has
been undermined since it is accepted that we are a lot less in
control of ourselves than we like to admit due to psychological, physiological, and material causes. Existentialists like
Sartre (1906-1980) were concerned with how modern people could live authentically and existentialism is a treatise
for being authentic. Yet, from an existentialist perspective,
being authentic is not necessarily something we can just
decide, or marketers can replicate in advertising campaigns.
As Sartre said, “If you seek authenticity for authenticity’s
sake you are no longer authentic,” (Sartre & Pellauer, 1992).
Conversely, this existential perspective seems to function
from a position of privilege since only those members of
society who have enough capital are free to try and live life
as they choose (if this is possible), which brings us to an
important point in this article about the need to conceptualize authenticity as an ideal. Authenticity understood from
this perspective is that it is an idealization rather than something tangible or concrete.
Goffman’s (1956) dramaturgical understandings of the
self as a theatrical identity performance also offer useful
insights into the concept of authenticity as idealized performance. For Goffman, identity is not a natural or genetic
state but a series of idealized performances that people present which are unconscious and conscious but can also be
contrived to achieve, obtain, or even deceive. Social media
provides a digital platform for idealized identity performance and experiment, for example, on Instagram users can
make use of various filters and avatars to alter, enhance, and
transform their appearance. These aesthetic representations
of authenticity can also be drawn upon as a successful marketing strategy (Gaden & Dumitrica, 2015) to attract followers. Abidin (2017, p. 6) suggests the concept of “calibrated
amateurism” is an adaptation of Goffman’s (1956, pp.
28-68) theories of strategic interaction, and in particular, the
notion of “front region” and “backstage” identity performances. However, Goffman’s dramaturgical approach, in
relation to authenticity and social media influencers, has
limitations since it implies a deliberate authorship or
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performance of the self that operates in terms of conscious
binaries or divisions. Alternatively, post-structuralists
(Butler, 1990; Foucault, 1979) discuss performative identities, dispensing with unified or authentic notions of the self
entirely, and from this perspective the self is far more fragmented and multifaceted, undermining the sense that identity can be “authentic” because identity is never singular or
coherent. We all have a number of identities which we call
upon at different times, but the multimodal affordances of
Instagram enable users to draw upon social semiotic
resources of identity, shifting representations as ideational,
idealized, and imaginative affordances. In other words, filters, emojis, audio, video, and captions mediate social media
influencers’ constructions of rich multimodal depictions of
themselves, conjuring, creating, and capturing self-presentations of idealized authenticity that are not easily realized
or necessarily desirable in the offline world. A social media
influencer can offer a series of differing versions of idealized authenticity, yet retain some sense of an identity thread
across them due to Instagram’s multimodal affordances. The
mosaic structure of Instagram, offering serialized visual
posts, enables a display of varied identity representations or
fragments. Furthermore, Instagram can also help us view
identity (re)presentations as a process of bricolage (LéviStrauss, 1962). Individuals and social media influencers
draw on the range of multimodal affordances available via
Instagram and make do with them the best they can as digital bricoleurs, using the identity constructs at hand and
recombining them to create something new.
However, although the uses of semiotic resources can
reformulate satirical, contested, and idealized or aspirational
identity representations, it is important to remember the
extent to which many of these identity representations are
formulaic, reproducing dominant discourses and ideological
sociocultural scripts. These increasingly marketized or
branded identities can also be understood in terms of the
logic of neoliberalism. Although generally perceived as an
economic and political process, Shamir (2008) suggests neoliberal practices are disseminated through, “a certain imagination of the ‘market’ as a basis for the universalization of
market based social relations” (p. 3). This neoliberal imaginary extends then not only to the ways we currently interact
and work in a globalized economy but to the ways we imagine ourselves. Social media influencers are also operating
within this neoliberal imaginary and the blurring of lines
intensifies further.
Duffy and Hund’s (2015) discussion of ways social media
influencers’ digital labor is routinely obscured indicates one
of several roles social media plays in perpetuating neoliberalism. Neoliberalism takes many shapes and forms and does
not have a linear history so whereas some women benefit
others are oppressed as the gap between the rich and poor
increases (Brown, 2015; Harvey, 2005). Although some
female social media influencers are earning substantial
amounts of income other women, in Nigeria, for example,
are running social media micro-businesses and earning less
than a dollar a day (Dorcas, 2013). Brown (2015) argues that
within neoliberalism, all conduct is economic as all spheres
of existence are framed and measured in economic terms and
metrics. This affects women in specific ways as government
services, maternity pay, kindergartens, child support are all
removed. Economic pressures on women intensify, yet their
ability to articulate them decreases within dehumanizing
neoliberal rationales. Social media influencing involves
women in commodifying their personal and family lives as
marketable performances, and as seemingly “having it all,”
although the efforts of the digital labor that go into the production of their posts are hidden or backgrounded (Kress &
Van Leeuwen, 1996). This female digital labor, therefore,
becomes a 21st century version of feminine mystique
(Friedan, 1963). Followers trust in social media influencers
because they provide imagined affordances of thriving in a
harsh and alienated neoliberal economy (Giroux, 2014).
Female Gulf-Arab social media influencing can also be
thought of as digital versions of 18th-century European
female conduct manuals, 19th-century romantic fiction, or
20th-century women’s magazines, communicating feminized, marketable scripts.
Multimodal Affordances of Instagram
Analyzing social media in terms of multimodal affordances
therefore enables considerations of social media influencers’
posts on platforms like Instagram, not only in terms of what
is novel or new but in ways they draw on a wider historical
semiotic and multimodal heritage. Kress and Van Leeuwen
(1996) point out that texts have always been multimodal,
consisting of color, image, lettering modalities. To illustrate
this is the following social semiotic reading (Barthes, 1977;
Machin, 2007) of the Czech painter Mucha’s (1897)—Bieres
de la Meuse—Beer from the River Meuse in Belgium (Figure
1). The art nouveau style advert denotes a woman adorned in
a crown of flowers and ribbons. Leaning on an overflowing
mug of beer, exposing one naked shoulder, eyes avoiding a
direct gaze, an eyebrow slightly raised, and her finger coyly
resting on painted red lips.
Images connote values and ideas, and Machin (2007) says
we can “ask what the cultural associations of elements in the
image are” (p. 25). To answer these questions, a critical multimodal reading of the image occurred in terms of the staging
of the image, the social actor’s gaze, and positioning; use of
visual props, clothing, and decorations; color and modality;
location and text as well as how these modes come together
to communicate meaning. As the author of this article, my
individual and 21st century reading of the advert, based on
these categories, is of an enigmatic woman possessing a feminine mystic or charm due to her calm yet slightly suggestive
pose and gaze. It is what Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996)
refer to as an “offer” image where the model is an object of
contemplation drawing the viewer into her mental world. As
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Social Media + Society
identity, operating as “imagined affordances” in terms of
being not fully realized in conscious, rational ways (Nagy &
Neff, 2015, p. 1). Van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999) discuss
the ways semiotic resources create social “scripts,” (Machin,
2007, p. 14) which convey and encourage ways of operating
in the world. The modes of escapism described in the Mucha
advertisement incorporate scripts of feminized escapism.
This article proposes that these semiotic resources offer
imagined affordances, which although tacit are interesting
cross fertilizations of intercultural semiotic representations,
drawing on conventions that have been built up over time,
and circulating across cultures (Machin, 2007). Female GulfArab social media influencers’ uses of these decorative,
imagined affordances often run contrary to stereotypical
images depicting Arab women (Morey & Yaqin, 2011).
However, to find out more about what female Gulf-Arab
Instagram followers’ think about the affordances of Instagram
required a respondent centered method for conducting the
critical multimodal analysis.
Methods
Figure 1. Bieres de la Meuse by Mucha 1887 (Mucha
Foundation, 2018), screengrabbed June 2018.
a painting, rather than a photograph with realist associations,
the advertisement can be understood as a symbolic image,
allowing visual props to operate in non-realist ways. There is
a fantastical or fairy-tale quality, framing beer drinking as
escapism. The caption is written in an ornamental calligraphic font, displayed in a banner embracing the woman
sitting at the entrance to a garden. The word, “Meuse” meaning river, is in larger font and connotes river as flow, working
as a repetition of the flowing beer. In this semiotic frame,
beer drinking and flow connote rest, an escape from reality
and occur with a mythical realm which the model offers to
her viewers.
Curiously, the multimodal affordances of this advertisement share parallels with the semiotic constructions of the
female Arab social media influencers’ posts discussed further on in this article. This is surprising considering the
vastly different socio-historical contexts of 19th-century
Europe and 21st century Arabian-Gulf context and raises the
difficulty of bounded interpretations of visual representations across historical and geographical modes (Rose, 2015).
Instagram’s filters, captions, and emojis, often imported
across platforms like Snapchat, also provide social media
influencers with multimodal affordances to decorate themselves in flower-crowns and fairy-tale decorations, similar to
the ones decorating the woman in the painting. These fantastical filters, function not simply at aesthetic levels but
enhance social semiotic and multimodal performances of
This study was part of a wider research project into social
media influencers taking place at a university in the UAE
which ran from September 2017-June 2018. This section of
the project involved a focus group of 25 female Gulf-Arab
university students, aged 18-24 years, who were recruited
due to their interest in social media. These media and communications undergraduates were active and articulate followers of female Gulf-Arab social media influencers on
Instagram and fluent in both English and Arabic. Their bilingualism was an important feature as the female Gulf-Arab
influencers’ code-switch between English and Arabic. The
study took place over a series of 24 focus group sessions during which the participants selected the five highly popular
influencers who have a substantial number of followers in
the Arabian-Gulf (Azaiz, 2017). In terms of ethics, the chosen Instagram accounts occur within the public domain and
fully informed ethical consent was obtained from the participants and informed all stages of the research.
The participant led analysis built on the critical multimodal methods piloted by the author in the above description
of the Mucha beer advertisement, based on Machin’s (2007)
critical multimodal approach, to reveal the tacit social meanings embedded. In total, 105 images across the influencers’
accounts were analyzed by the respondents and researcher.
As mentioned in the pilot, analytical criteria included the
staging of the images; the social actors’ gaze and positioning;
use of visual props, clothing, and decorations; color and
modality; location and text and the ways these modes combine to create social meanings.
First, participants were asked to discuss the influencers’
posts and the ways they connote values, ideas, and cultural
associations (Machin, 2007). Second, themes of the focus
group scripts were based around the triad of material,
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Table 1. Female Arab Influencer Variables.
Influencer
Country
Number of followers
@hudabeauty
US born, daughter of Iraqi immigrants,
based in the United Arab Emirates
Kuwait
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
United Arab Emirates
23.5 million
@nohastyleicon
@model_roz
@lojain_omran
@taimalfalasi
conceptual, and imaginary affordances theorized in the study.
Affordances were separated into discussions about the affordances that influencers capitalized upon and, in particular,
the theme of authenticity. Next, the ways these affordances
are actually mobilized by their followers were discussed by
the participants, providing understandings of the interactions
and convergences of Instagram’s architecture. As mentioned
previously, this offers a conception of both the architecture
of social media like Instagram, as well as its affordances, as
non-static, fluid, and contestable but also operating within
the constraints of current cultural-historical and economic
contexts.
To analyze the findings of the focus group discussions and
critical multimodal analysis, the author transcribed the
recorded conversations and images on the qualitative software analysis tool NVivo. This enabled systematic as well as
simultaneous scrutiny of the main themes, including values,
ideas, and cultural associations generated by the posts as
well as discussions of the triadic affordances and notions of
authenticity. Coding and analyzing these transcriptions
enabled emic findings emerging from within the focus group
discussions to be explicated at an etic level from the perspective of the author and connections to the literature. New
understandings were also allowed to emerge through the regrounding of the concept of triadic material, conceptual,
imaginary affordances, and understandings of authenticity.
Findings and Discussion
The five female Arab social media influencers, selected by the
focus group, came from Gulf-Arab countries, including Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE. The influencers’ number of followers ranged from 2.4 to 23.5 million indicating not only
their popularity but also the significant revenues involved. The
female Arab influencers’ ages went from mid-20s to early 30s,
and in terms of appearance they could all be described as conventionally slim and attractive. Out of the five influencers
included in the sample, two wore Muslim head scarves, known
as shaylas in the region although only one of them wore a
shayla in every post. Table 1 summarizes these key variables.
In terms of traits, they all depicted glamorous lifestyles,
fashionable clothing, and were heavily made up or in the process of having make-up applied. Once again, these characteristics are typical of female social media influencers elsewhere
5 million
7.9 million
5.8 million
2.4 million
capitalizing on strategies of glamor, personal intimacy, and
showcasing economically privileged lifestyles. Like the South
East Asian influencers, described by Abidin (2014, p. 125), the
Arab influencers presented hegemonic ideals of beauty and a
blurring of “lifestyle and work,” occurring as a form of feminine mystic. Abidin (2014, p. 124) suggests influencers go to
extreme lengths to capture attention in a competitive “war of
eyeballs,” from followers who live vicariously through them.
These vicarious pleasures that influencers provide to their followers, are aspects of the material, conceptual, and imaginary
affordances theorized in this article. Working with the focus
group in this study helped to reveal the extent to which these
vicarious pleasures are socially situated, gendered, and operating as contextually specific affordances. Furthermore, the case
study discussions raised interesting questions about conceptions of authenticity.
Case Study
@hudabeauty
@hudabeauty (Figure 2) is the influencer based in the UAE,
with a staggering 23.5 million followers at the time of the
focus group study (which increased to 26.9 million at the
time of writing). Huda Kattan is a brand in her own right,
founder and CEO of a commercially successful make-up
line. In terms of visual analysis of her Instagram icon image,
@hudabeauty’s direct gaze provides what in multimodality
is called a “demand” image (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 1996).
This is a visual form of direct address that asserts the agency
of the participant who “demands the viewer enter into some
kind of imaginary relation” with her (Kress & Van Leeuwen,
1999, p. 381).
In terms of positioning, @hudabeauty’s icon image shows
her bare shoulder, underlined by a white top, emphasizing
her tanned, glowing skin, and confident demand gaze.
Interestingly, her exposed shoulder and the way she rests her
fingers on her chin are similar to the model’s pose in the
Mucha advertisement and @hudabeauty also has the look of
a woman possessing feminine mystique. However, this shifting mode of address, from an offer image in the Mucha
advertisement to a demand pose in @hudabeauty’s Instagram
advertisement, emphasizes @hudabeauty’s agency in directing the gaze of her viewers.
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Social Media + Society
Figure 2. @hudabeauty, screengrabbed, June 2018.
In terms of the values, ideas, and cultural associations
conveyed, respondents viewed her as “modest but modern;
humble and kind.” Despite, being the CEO and majority
owner of Huda Beauty, with an estimated worth of
US$550 million (Sorvino, 2018), respondents suggested she
was on Instagram to “share her tips and knowledge” about
make-up due to her “generosity” and wish “to help” fellow
girls from the region. Respondents articulated a strong aspect
of her appeal was her physical similarity to themselves and
their belief she was an icon they could realistically emulate.
One participant said, “Huda shows us any girl can be beautiful with the right make-up and application techniques.” In
one of the images, Huda puts forward an exposed shoulder
and presses against a gigantic bunch of pink roses. This floral
motive of femininity is also present in the Mucha advertisement, yet @hudabeauty’s demand gaze accentuates feminine
power rather than passivity. Nevertheless, this assertiveness
was not considered as threatening by the respondents and
occurred within accepted or normative parameters of feminine beauty. For example, when asked about the video of the
dog receiving a spa treatment and massage, in one of @hudabeauty’s posts, respondents explained that @hudabeauty’s
posts are always “fun, entertaining, help us forget about our
problems and just be pretty.”
Overall, analysis of @hudabeauty’s account, occurring
through the discussions suggested she displays traits typical of
popular female influencers in other regions, such as hegemonic
beauty. The posts operate in terms of specific advertorial
modes, including dissemination, instigation, and aggregation
as @hudabeauty encourages followers to respond, circulate,
share, and emulate content (Abidin, 2016a, 2016b). She also
communicates with followers through building what Abidin
9
Hurley
Figure 3. @nohastyleicon, screengrabbed, June 2018.
(2016b) terms parasocial relations (PSR) via varying modes of
intimacy, commercialism, interaction, and disclosure. PSR
refer to followers’ relationships with influencers and media
being consumed and can be considered as an illusionary experience of a connected and intimate relationship. These feelings
or PSR are carefully nurtured through influencing mechanisms,
including the visual interaction cues of framing, gaze, stance,
props, comments, hashtags, and so on, and operate as conceptual affordances, in terms of signaling allegiance to particular
lifestyles and cultural norms, as well as imaginary affordances,
as followers imagine partaking in these activities as acts of
desire and wish fulfillment.
Abidin’s (2016b) perspective that followers also engage
in a form of tacit labor through PSR, sharing, and emulating
of content, further correlates with the triadic affordance
framework of this study. The respondent discussions and
author analysis indicated that the @hudabeauty’s Instagram
offers affordances at a material level, as participants view
and engage with posts; at conceptual levels, as they learn
about beauty rituals, labor toward hegemonic beauty ideals
to increase their feminine worth, and participate in a community of followers; at imaginary levels, aspiring to membership of a successful or imaginary community of hegemonic
beauties, with significant material and social success, participating in the public sphere in ways unprecedented by most
women in Arabian-Gulf. Conversely, these affordances are
presented as an effortless mastery of feminine mystique and
reproduction of feminized scripts. Nevertheless, @hudabeauty simultaneously provides comic relief and escape
from the serious realities of women having to achieve ideals
of attractiveness and agency, for example, the dog video
interjects an element of satire and humor.
@nohastyleicon
Values, ideas, and cultural associations connotated by the
Kuwaiti influencer Noha Nabil, or @nohastyleicon (Figure
3), also operate through PSR mechanisms typical of influencers elsewhere symbolizing feminine mystic and “having
it all” (Duffy & Hund, 2015, p. 1). @nohastyleicon lists her
occupations as “Engineer, Media Influencer, Forbes ME top
2017, Lifestyle, Proud MaMa” and the images above reference this range of activities. In the video, she is promoting a
German kitchen company but despite being a trained engineer her struggle to open a kitchen drawer, as a source of
humor, is juxtaposed with the effortless ease of opening it by
her male counterparts. Respondents in the focus group suggested that this was testament to her “ordinariness,” “everyday charm,” being “just like us,” rather than a reduction of
her range of abilities or a common stereotypical representation of feminine impracticality.
The sequence of posts included in Figure 3, as well as
other images on @nohastyleicon’s Instagram, promote a
number of brands and locations which are framed via parasocial modes of intimacy, commercialism, interaction, and disclosure. In the focus group discussions, the effects of these
PSR mechanisms were notable. Participants spoke about
who they considered to be “fake.” For the focus group being
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Social Media + Society
Figure 4. @model_roz, screengrabbed, June 2018.
non-fake or genuine seemed to mean being reliable in a neoliberal sense. Someone who was reliable was a person who
could brand, market, and perform every aspect of their identity for their influencer campaign and do this while being
strategically authentic. @nohastyleicon is submerged in conspicuous consumption of expensive designer bags, fur coat,
sunglasses, and European locations. She is clearly working,
but this work or digital labor is conveyed as fun, effortless,
and empowering as indicated by either her smiles or confident head on gaze. She is another example of what Senft
(2013, p. 350) calls the branded-self, succeeding in the
“attention economy.” In this sphere, everything is for sale, on
show and everyone is a commodity even @nohastyleicon’s
own son who can be visually consumed via her Instagram as
he consumes toys. His role here is what Abidin (2017, p. 2)
calls “filler” content, providing authenticity to the shared
snippets of “everyday life.” For the focus group respondents,
these contrived acts of authenticity were interpreted as
“friendly and innocent.” @nohastyleicon’s gaze and degree
of social distance were interpreted as “close and intimate.”
Her attitude was considered benevolent and “able,” and this
was enhanced through the visual modality, warm colors, and
non-threatening mixture of warm browns, pinks, and
yellows. The multimodal affordances were audio–visual,
captured through images and video, helped the focus group
also feel “connected” enough to like, comment, interact, and
share her posts and advice.
@model_roz
The focus group also discussed how Saudi Arabian @model_
roz (Figure 4), promoting plastic surgery, lip-implants, and
blue hair was to be considered “authentic” and “not fake.”
Their invested confidence in this influencer was also revealed
through the semiotic analysis and discussion of her “nonthreatening, gentle, feminine” gaze; “close and intimate”
social distance; benevolent attitude; and “friendly, cool” blues,
pinks, and cream modalities.
The focus group discussions indicated influencers, like
@Model_roz—the Saudi Arabian living in Los Angeles
(LA) marketing products to Middle Eastern followers, successfully navigate being a neoliberal branded-self through
gaining attention in the visual “war of eyeballs” (Abidin,
2014, p. 119). Interestingly, @Model_roz’s striking appearance offers a stark alternative to traditional images of Arab
women, covered in black robes and veils, typically
Hurley
11
Figure 5. @model_roz, screengrabbed, June 2018.
circulating in Western media. Her direct gaze in a number of
the posts operates in a demand mode yet her parted lips,
long eyelashes, and sideways glance are coy and sultry in
ways that are reminiscent of the Mucha model. Her hair is
dyed an array of blues and blonds and when the focus group
were asked about her striking appearance and the ways this
differs to the modest dress code traditionally favored by
women in Saudi Arabia, they explained that it was “totally
appropriate” as she was in LA. In other words, she is a bricoleur making the most of the social semiotic resources
available. In one image, she wears a blue netted veil, but this
is not the kind of face covering typical in the Gulf-Arab
region. Nevertheless, @model_roz’s “authenticity” can be
thought of as a veil or a mask, not of black cloth, but of a
mediated and multimodal identity performance and PSR
mechanisms. This mediated, multimodal “sharing” of herself, and promotion of products were seen as “sharing” by
the focus group. They expressed deep feelings of admiration
and trust in her while acknowledging that she is selling
something in every post. According to the focus group, it is
acceptable that “everything is for sale” within the world of
social media influencers. It was assumed that everything
and everyone participating in the social media landscape is
doing so for commercial gain. Projecting a fantasy or giving
a performance of “authentic” life is the important thing as
authenticity itself becomes commodified.
While Gaden and Dumitrica (2015) discuss the strategized modes of authenticity that influencers use, the author
of this article believes this account remains within a neoliberal logic and is too similar to marketing language. Abidin’s
(2016a) notion of “subversive frivolity,” goes further in
explaining the identity experiment and performance of
female Arab social media influencers. Subversive frivolity
refers to the satirical and playful self-portraits or selfies in
the Singaporean context. She suggests that selfies enable
female social media users to grapple with the conflicting
demands of identity construction and performance on their
own terms. This correlates with the ways social media is
understood, within this study, as providing material and conceptual architecture for constructing semiotic self-presentations. However, it does not reach as far as the concept of
fantasy or idealized authenticity emerging from this research.
“Fantastical authenticity” is therefore the term coined in this
study for referring to versions of authenticity occurring at
imaginary levels. It is an admission of the struggles surrounding authenticity as well as evidence of the imaginary
affordances provided by social media to imagine, play, and
perform. For example, @model_roz (in Figure 5) provides a
spectacle of fantastical authenticity in the images below:
bathing in marshmallows, dancing in a white bridal gown in
a field of flowers, walking down the street in a red ball gown,
or juggling purple stars.
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Social Media + Society
Figure 6. @lojain_omran, screengrabbed, June 2018.
These PSR mechanisms, operating through modes of fantastical authenticity, were discussed with the focus group
respondents who viewed @model_roz’s self-presentations as
acts of performance that nevertheless resonated deeply with
how they feel. One respondent explained that although she
would not dress, or act like @model_roz, she enjoyed the
posts because: “they make me feel happy and free. She (@
model_roz) loves being a woman, wearing beautiful clothes,
doing things that girls love.” When asked whether these representations were “real,” the respondents explained that this
was not the purpose of the posts and they do not signify actually doing the things that were shown, rather they depicted a
state of mind, imagination, and fantasy. In other words, they
offer a range of imaginary affordances similar to a child’s
fancy-dress-box of clothing and props utilized for play acting. It is interesting that the respondent refers to @model_
roz as both a “woman” doing things “girls love” and this
juxtaposition of feminine maturity and innocence indicates
the role that fantasy, fairy tales, and myths have played in
sexual and identity development. These are contradictory
realms of self-presentation and are echoed in other feminized
genres including the romance novel (Radway, 2006).
Interestingly @model_roz, like Mucha’s model, is depicted
as the lone protagonist in her identity performance of fantastical authenticity.
@lojain_omran
The respondents’ interpretations of the Saudi Arabian influencer—@lojain_omran (Figure 6), also indicated strong elements of fantastical authenticity.
Fantastical authenticity in these posts, according to the
respondents, depicts a “lovely and varied life” as @lojain_
omran’s world of blossoms and balloons is “like a fairy-tale”
or romance, full of exciting possibilities, shifts in multimodal
affordances, and colorful modes. Analysis of these posts
reveals a range of identity self-presentations, including wearing a Muslim headscarf/shayla in one post or showing off
cascading hair in another. Cultural, national, and religious
identity signals are therefore depicted as something optional
Hurley
13
Figure 7. @taimalfalasi, screengrabbed, June 2018.
or as easy as putting on a new outfit or applying a digital
filter. It is theorized that these are representations of fantastical authenticity, offering narratives of freedom where GulfArab women can be their fantastical–authentic selves if only
within a social media realm.
@taimalfalasi
These elements of fantastical authenticity are also present in
the UAE social media influencer @taimalfalasi’s Instagram
(Figure 7). While submerged in commercial activity, such as
the Dubai Shopping Festival, there is the similar fairy-tale or
fantasy aesthetic occurring throughout the social media
influencers’ posts, for example, the images of galloping
horses and sparkling backdrops. Interestingly, @taimalfalasi
was the least popular influencer for the focus group. The
focus group said although they like the way she supports
local businesses in the UAE, they found her “irrelevant.”
Coincidently, she is the most traditionally dressed and so
least fantastically authentic in terms of appearance.
Conclusion
Overall, female Gulf-Arab influencers, like social media
influencers in other contexts, blur the lines between offline
and online, fact and fiction, trust and deception, authenticity
and fantasy. It is argued that the multimodal affordances of
social media, at material, conceptual, and imaginary levels,
offer bricolage identities for individuals and communities
navigating contradictions of a neoliberal imaginary.
Contestations of authenticity and identity performances
came through in the findings and support the literature suggesting social media influencers’ authenticity is staged,
crafted, and calibrated. This occurred to such extents in the
female Gulf-Arab influencers’ posts that the modes of
authenticity occurring were viewed as fantastical identity
performances. However, these modes of fantastical authenticity are not entirely new and occurred in earlier forms of
media as varying configurations of feminine mystique, via
advertising, feminized culture, and representations of female
ontologies. This study is important in theorizing how understandings of social media practices can be expanded through
critical multimodal analysis and the ways social meanings
occur across cultures and are built up over time (Bouvier,
2015; Machin, 2016). Just as Kriady (2016) discusses the
politicized character of reality television in the Arab world,
this author argues that social media plays a highly politicized
potential in the lives of Gulf-Arab women.
This participant-centered study indicated that social
media influencers in the Arabian-Gulf rely on techniques of
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Social Media + Society
microcelebrity and the tacit labor of their followers that are
mirrored elsewhere and discussed previously in social media
literature (Abidin, 2018; Marwick, 2015; S. Senft, 2013; T.
M. Senft, 2008). However, female Gulf-Arab social media
influencers also mobilize other key strategies and, in particular, fantastical authenticity. This focus on Gulf-Arab female
visual culture expands the scope of social and political actors
contributing and constructing definitions of reality and
simultaneously provides insights into the ways visual representations on social media define real and imagined ways of
being that are highly gendered yet differ according to sociocultural context. Future research should explore emerging
trends in computer-generated digital influencers, for example, @shudu.gram with 141,000 followers or @limiquela
with 1.4 million, to explore how the crafting, digitalization,
and simulation of female authenticity on Instagram are intensifying. These fantastical modes of authenticity are problematic in being unobtainable yet simultaneously offer potential
for imagining beyond current gendered ways of being.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
ORCID iD
Zoe Hurley
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9870-8677
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Author Biography
Zoe Hurley (PhD Candidate, Lancaster University) is the assistant
dean for student affairs in the College of Communication and
Media Sciences at Zayed University, United Arab Emirates. Her
research interests include critical social media studies, multimodal
critical discourse analysis, change laboratories, and design-based
interventions.
Article
Social media celebrity and the
institutionalization of YouTube
Mingyi Hou
Convergence: The International
Journal of Research into
New Media Technologies
2019, Vol. 25(3) 534–553
ª The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1354856517750368
journals.sagepub.com/home/con
Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Abstract
This study explores the industrial underpinning and the cultural logic of social media celebrity.
Social media visibility may be considered as an alternative way to fame as it bypasses the gatekeeper
role played by the entertainment and mass media industries. However, the institutionalization of
social media platforms like YouTube and the professionalization of amateur content creation may
lead to social media becoming a new locale for industrialized celebrity manufacturing. Taking
YouTube beauty vloggers as an example, this study shows that being a celebrity on social media is
economically embedded in an industrial structure constituted by the platform’s business model,
technical affordances, the advertising market, and commercial cultural intermediaries. Social media
celebrity’s status is achieved not only through a set of affiliative, representational, and celebrification techniques, but also by engaging in meticulous entrepreneurial calculation considering the
abovementioned industrial factors. This emerging industrial structure is associated with a new
cultural logic of celebrity that distinguishes the fame native to social media from that on the silver
screen and television. This study shows that social media celebrity is characterized by staged
authenticity, managed connectedness with audience, the abundance of celebrity figures, and the
cultural preoccupation with self-sufficient uniqueness.
Keywords
Beauty vlogger, cultural logic, industrial structure, institutionalization, social media celebrity,
YouTube
Introduction
If we understand fame as the status where ‘an individual rises above the rest of population’ and
‘poses an imagination of self upon them’ (Braudy, 1986: 17), the conditions and strategies to
achieve such status and the content of the imagination change throughout history. In other words,
this status is sensitive to the social structure and the extent and modes of communication in a
society (Braudy, 1986: 587). Fame in the form of modern celebrity is characterized by its reliance
Corresponding author:
Mingyi Hou, Culture Studies Department, Tilburg University, Warandelaan 2, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Email: m.hou@tilburguniversity.edu
Hou
535
on the electronic mass media, an exuberant entertainment industry, and a consumer market that
emerged in the early 20th century in Western societies (Marshall, 1997; Rojek, 2001; Schickel, 2000;
Turner, 2014). Modern celebrity is conceptualized as industrially manufactured media representation, which is traded as a highly replaceable cultural commodity (Gamson, 1994; Turner, 2014).
The advent of social media has brought new dynamics and temporality into celebrity culture
(Gamson, 2011; Turner, 2010). Its participatory affordances enable ordinary aspirants to fame to
conduct self-branding and self-celebrification practices, thus maintaining an audience of peer users
as their fan base. As a result, celebrity status may be achieved in a DIY manner, bypassing the
gatekeeper role of media and entertainment industries (Turner, 2014). This type of celebrity
personality and celebrity practices have been referred to as ‘micro-celebrity’ (Marwick and
boyd, 2011; Senft, 2008), as they ‘operate within a relatively limited and localized virtual space,
drawing on small numbers of fans such as the followers of a particular subcultural practice’ (Turner,
2014: 72). The YouTube beauty vlogger (also called beauty guru or beauty YouTuber), who uploads
beauty- and lifestyle-related videos, attracting views and subscribers for one’s channel, is a token of
this new type of celebrity. However, as ordinary people are gaining access to celebrification techniques, social media platforms like YouTube are undergoing a process of institutionalization. More
and more homegrown YouTube stars are turning into professional content creators (Burgess, 2012;
Kim, 2012; Morreale, 2014). Beauty vloggers stand in the frontier of this professionalization process
as they align precisely with beauty and fashion consumer verticals, thus receiving more opportunities
for various forms of monetization (Lobato, 2016).
Against such a context of institutionalization of YouTube and the professionalization of content
creators, this study takes the beauty vlogger as an example to demonstrate that YouTube channels are
becoming another locale for industrialized celebrity manufacturing. Besides conceptualizing ‘microcelebrity’ as a set of self-representational techniques that borrow from mass media celebrity culture
(Gamson, 2011; Garcı́a-Rapp, 2017; Jerslev and Mortensen, 2016; Marwick, 2016; Tolson, 2010;
Turner, 2014), it may be argued that social media also gives rise to a new type of celebrity with its
distinctive industrial strength and cultural logic. While I am sympathetic to the label ‘microcelebrity’ proposed by Senft (2008) and Turner (2014), this study refers to celebrity practitioners
represented by beauty vloggers as social media celebrities. This is because, first, I would like to
emphasize the fact that their fame is native to social media platforms. Second, many successful
beauty vloggers operate within a mainstream discourse of consumerism and also display a disciplined, hegemonic femininity in their media representation (Keller, 2014). Some of them can
even aggregate large audiences within certain demographics, comparable to those of TV programs
(Vonderau, 2016). In this case, beauty vlogging is not necessarily a subcultural practice.
While previous studies regarding the industrial factors of YouTube are often conducted at
corporate level, either focusing on a technical and political economic analysis of the platform, or
the industrial logic of intermediary firms operating around it (Cunningham et al., 2016; Lobato,
2016; Van Dijck, 2013; Vonderau, 2016), this study tries to complement previous research by
focusing on vloggers and YouTube channels at a local level. Through an ethnographic approach,
I explore the entrepreneurial calculation involved in managing a YouTube beauty channel. More
specifically, I examine how beauty vloggers’ celebrity status is achieved by navigating through
several factors including the platform’s technical affordances, revenue model, beauty and fashion
consumer market, as well as commercial cultural intermediaries. Combining previous studies’
findings on social media celebrities’ representational techniques and my empirical investigation of
the entrepreneurial calculation, I discuss the cultural logic of this new type of celebrity, explaining to
what extent and in what respects it is different from traditional celebrity.
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Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 25(3)
Literature review
The self-representational techniques of social media celebrity
Previous studies on social media celebrity prioritize the investigation of aspirants’ performative
and representational strategies (Gamson, 2011; Garcı́a-Rapp, 2017; Jerslev, 2016; Marwick, 2016;
Turner, 2014). These studies demonstrate how the logic of branding and celebrification, which
used to be reserved for media professionals and traditional celebrity, now infiltrates ordinary
people’s everyday life. Micro-celebrities construct an image of the self to be consumed by peer
users, thus attracting them as a fan base. Popularity is the goal in this practice, and a set of
affiliative techniques are used (Marwick and boyd, 2011). However, what has been branded and
celebrated seems to be very different. Whereas traditional celebrities’ image is characterized by
extraordinariness, perfection, glamour, and distance, social media celebrities attract attention
through the performance of ordinariness, intimacy, and equality (Gamson, 2011; Turner, 2014).
For instance, Jerslev (2016) finds that the famous British vlogger Zoe Sugg (Zoella) addresses
her viewers like a girl next door, informally, and by discussing mundane everyday events.
Although uploading makeup tutorials, she adopts a position equal to her fans by rejecting her role
as a professional expert. She also films confessional videos, honestly exposing moments of
uneasiness in her life. Also focusing on beauty vloggers, Garcı́a-Rapp (2017) explores how different types of video content help gurus maintain their celebrity status. She finds that although
beauty know-how videos may attract viewers at first, it is vlogs allowing viewers to know the
guru’s life through affective connections that turn viewers into loyal subscribers. The number of
subscribers on YouTube is an important popular marker indicating a guru’s ability to attract
engaged and repeatedly returning audiences.
The representation of ordinariness, intimacy, and equality by social media celebrities creates a
sense of authenticity characterizing their videos. However, authenticity is a performed effect and it
is always relational and context-dependent (Grazian, 2005). It is through a comparison with traditional celebrities’ perfection, extraordinariness, and traces of heavy industrial production that we
can feel authentic about a no-makeup look facing a camera in the setting of a bedroom. In other
words, authenticity on YouTube does not refer to a reflection of reality without mediation;
instead, it is a specific means and content of representation. As Marwick (2013b) discovers, for
fashion bloggers, authenticity specifically means three things: ‘a palpable sense of truthful selfexpression’, ‘a connection with and responsiveness to the audience’, and ‘an honest engagement
with commodity goods and brands’.
We may also notice that personalities in reality TV have long been employing the self-branding
and self-representational practices. Andrejevic (2004) shows that openness and self-disclosure are
the preferred qualities for candidates in reality TV programs, and the strategies to establish intimacy, ordinariness, and equality are not native to the Internet either. Corner (2002a: 260) suggests
that reality TV’s sense of authenticity is achieved by the ‘documentary imperative’, featuring
content such as high-intensity incidents, anecdotal knowledge (first-person gossipy accounts), and
snoopy sociability (amused bystander witnessing routines in other people’s working life). It’s not
difficult to discern the traces of this imperative in popular vlog videos such as ‘one day in my life’,
‘my morning routine’, and other confessional videos.
Having in mind the representational techniques underscoring social media celebrity, this study
tries to complement our understanding regarding the newest development in social media
celebrity culture from the perspective of industrial factors. In order to do so, we first need to
Hou
537
understand that attention and influence on social media are not only a matter of personal
aspiration to fame, but are also the need of marketers and publicists as a tool for communicating
commercial messages.
Social media celebrities as social media influencers
The contemporary Internet is multifaceted and multipurpose, as it is embedded in a wide array of
social activities as infrastructure (Hine, 2015). Homegrown stars are regarded by marketing and
publicity practitioners as social media influencers, whose media visibility and original content can
be leveraged to promote brand messages. Hearn and Schoenhoff (2016) state that the authentic and
trustworthy personal brand of social media celebrities can be capitalized by companies and
advertisers for consumer outreach. From one perspective, they extend traditional celebrities’
function of personalizing the process of consumption (Dyer and McDonald, 1998). From another
perspective, marketers now search for brand storytellers instead of someone who only lend their
name to the brand. The trustworthy and intimate relationship between the influencers and communities, built through narratives, helps contextualize brand images and messages (Khamis et al.,
2017).
Not only do brands seek out for celebrity influence among audiences, marketing practices in
today’s converging media environment also actively contribute to the production of celebrity
image (Hackley and Hackley, 2015). The media exposure and representation brought about by
endorsement contributes to celebrity status and celebrity image. The reciprocal relationship
between the marketing system and celebrity is also implicated in the quantitative models developed by marketers to identify social media influencers. Among other popular metrics such as the
number of followers and reposts, the number of industry events or brand cooperations that a social
media celebrity has participated in is also an important index in evaluating his or her popularity
(Booth and Matic, 2011).
The institutionalization of YouTube
In order to understand the newly emerging industrial structure behind social media celebrity, we
may first turn to its predecessor: traditional celebrity in the entertainment and mass media
industries. The birth of American motion picture industry demonstrates the starting point of
industrialized celebrity production (Gamson, 1994; Schickel, 2000). From then on, film stars, TV
personalities, and singers become commodities manufactured and traded for the aim of profit,
introducing a break from the earlier forms of theatrical and artistic fame. Rein et al. (1987) suggest
that celebrity stands in the center of this business, supported by and supporting eight subindustries,
including entertainment, communication, publicity, representation, appearance, coaching, endorsement, and legal and business services industry. Comparably, the business model of commercial
intermediary firms operating around YouTube resembles very much this structure. Lobato (2016)
finds that many tasks performed by different types of multichannel networks (MCNs) are actually
extensions of existing media work.
The industrial underpinning of social media celebrity is closely associated with the platform’s
technical affordances and business model. Kim (2012) argues that YouTube used to be a ‘virtual
village’, where amateurs share their user-generated content in online communities. Now, it has
been institutionalized into a platform inhabited by professionally generated content. He points out
that as legacy media are strategically digitalized, new media like YouTube also imitate the role of
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Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 25(3)
television, by legally managing the distribution of broadcasting content and smoothing links
between contents and commercials. The series of copyright lawsuits by YouTube have forced the
platform to implement strict copyright policies, making user-generated original content a crucial
revenue target.
YouTube’s industrialization process is also evident in how the company discursively constructs
its business as a facilitating but neutral ‘platform’, thus positioning itself strategically among users,
advertisers, professional content creators, and legislative regulators (Gillespie, 2010). In Gillespie’s observation, the word ‘platform’ in the contemporary IT industry ‘suggests a progressive and
egalitarian arrangement, promising to support those who stand upon it’ (Gillespie, 2010: 350). In
this sense, for ordinary users, YouTube empowers them to speak and interact freely; for advertisers
and professional content owners, YouTube helps them to connect with their target audience
efficiently. YouTube also actively manages its legislative environment, again by discursively
constructing the business as a platform. In some policy issues, YouTube emphasizes its role as the
facilitator of unfettered circulation of information. In other cases, it downplays this active role,
presenting itself as a mere intermediary, and thus leaving the liability of controversial content to
content providers and users.
Besides YouTube’s strategic self-positioning against various constituencies, the institutionalization process can also be observed from how YouTube positions its users. In 2010, the
famous ‘Broadcast Yourself’ logo was removed from YouTube’s home page. Instead of conceptualizing users as broadcasters, they are now positioned as content creators. In the ‘creator
hub’ function, directions are listed to support users to ‘create and share great videos’, ‘connect
with fans’, and ‘build a business and get help to grow’. The guidance presupposes that users
upload videos with the intention to achieve large numbers of views and economic rewards. Both
Burgess (2012) and Van Dijck (2013) emphasize the role of interface design in directing usage.
As the creator hub invites professional video providers, the user-friendly, TV-like video display
page invites more audience-centric users.
Cunningham et al. (2016) theorize the institutionalization of YouTube against a larger context
of industrial convergence and the emergence of a new screen ecology. The industrial culture of
mass media featuring premium content is interpenetrating with IT companies’ cultural logic of
‘scale, automation, permanent beta, repaid prototyping and iteration’ (Cunningham et al., 2016:
379). The result is a clash of business cultures between the IT industry and Hollywood’s incumbents. They point out that as both business models aim at monetizing screen content, companies
like Google/YouTube and Facebook have already developed large user bases and have access to
extensive behavioral data, enabling them to configure the audience precisely and deliver advertisements more efficiently. In a similar vein, Van Dijck (2013) argues that the unique selling point
of YouTube, compared to the broadcast industry, is its ability to bring specified audience groups to
content and advertisers. While the search engine function is the connecting force in this process,
what YouTube lacks is attractive professionally produced content. Of course, YouTube also
cooperates with major broadcast producers to fill their channels. Nevertheless, this premium
content model meets fierce competition with other transaction- and subscription-based platforms
such as Netflix and Amazon in the online video distribution ecology (Cunningham and Silver,
2013). Thus, homegrown creators, who can provide advertiser-friendly contents and engaged
subscribers, become a strategic niche for YouTube in this new screen ecology.
Homegrown YouTube stars are professionalized with the help of commercial cultural intermediary
companies like MCNs. Most MCNs ‘provide non-professional creator with technical, promotional and
advertising services, in exchange for a share of customer’s ad revenue’ (Lobato, 2016: 351). On the one
Hou
539
hand, these services are the extension of media work done by media buyers, ad agencies, agents, and
managers in the traditional entertainment industry. On the other hand, MCN’s business model aims
at scale and volume by devoting more resources to top-level talents (the big personalities) and automated, impersonal services to a large pool of potential talents. The flourishing of MCN companies
helps YouTube professionalize homegrown content creators as they can increase the quality of
videos and avoid copyright infringement. More importantly, as an increasing number of users sign up
for the YouTube Partner Program, the ad revenue they can get is significantly lowered. MCNs
therefore become an important middleman to reintroduce market scarcity and bridge professional
content creators with their economic sources on the advertising market (Cunningham et al., 2016).
Data collection
In this study, I apply digital ethnography as an approach to explore the entrepreneurial calculations
that YouTube beauty vloggers conduct when managing their accounts and media representation.
Rather than rendering beauty videos as multimodal texts, an ethnographic approach enables me to
view vlogging as a contextualized cultural and economic practice on YouTube (Hine, 2000; Varis,
2016). It helps me explore how beauty-related content is produced with a prospect of channel
growth and audience engagement.
As a YouTube user myself, I also watch beauty- and lifestyle-related videos. In this sense,
I regard myself as an insider in the YouTube beauty community with certain emic knowledge
about the field – useful as a basis for this systematic ethnographic study. In terms of research
participants, I did not rush to select the most subscribed to personalities, or the ones that have
attracted the most attention from mass media. Instead, I relied mostly on YouTube’s algorithm by
searching with a series of keywords such as ‘beauty gurus’ and ‘beauty vloggers’. These are the
terms often used to refer to beauty vloggers in news media. The search results were then based on
the popularity algorithm including but not limited to the number of subscribers, views, and ratings.
In this way, I approached the field as an ordinary user interested in beauty-related information.
After I clicked into each channel, other related channels were recommended by YouTube.
This sampling method is similar to snowball sampling; however, in this case, I made use of the
‘connective affordances’ of YouTube (Van Dijck, 2013). The sample size in the current study is
10 beauty vloggers and 17 YouTube channels, as 7 of the vloggers have a second life vlog channel
besides the main beauty channel (see Table 1).
The data collection process is divided into three steps and the major instrument is observation
(see Figure 1). First, in order to make myself familiar with the vloggers’ content, I watched their
five most recent videos and top ten all-time most viewed videos. The observation also included the
information boxes for the videos, an important location for search engine optimization practices. I
also browsed the general layout and design of the channels to see how content is organized by the
vloggers. Second, having gathered knowledge of the general content and format of beauty vlogs, I
turned to third-party analytical tools to gain an overview on the development of the vloggers’ main
channels. The websites Socialblade.com, VidStatsX.com, and ChannelMetrics.com provide diachronic data analytics based on various popular metrics.1 It was at this step that I chose Tati
Westbrook’s channel (user URL: glamlifeguru; screen name: Tati) as a major focus for the third
step of observation, because her channel has experienced a significant growth since September
2015.2 Third, I watched more videos by Tati from her playlists. I then explored how she reflected on
her YouTube career in an interview with Tubefilter, and how she was discussed by audiences in the
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Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 25(3)
Table 1. Selected vloggers and channels.
Main channel
Subscriber counta
Benthany Mota
Estée Lalonde
FleurDeForce
Ingrid Nilsen
Itsjudytime
Lily Pebbles
Nikkiphillippi
Tanya Burr
Tati
Zoella
10,342,410
1,174,519
1,415,347
3,993,180
1,374,527
376,571
1,390,170
3,656,007
2,493,957
11,538,219
Claimed by MCN
Second channel
None
MakerStudio
StyleHaul
BigFrame
Digitsshow
StyleHaul
StyleHaul
StyleHaul
None
StyleHaul
BenthaysLife
Everyday Estée
Fleur DeVlog
TheGridMonster
ItsJudysLife
ThePhillippis
More Zoella
a
Data retrieved on January 28, 2017.
Figure 1. Data collecting procedure.
discussion sections on Reddit and GuruGossip.3 The discussion threads on these two websites
provide more general reflections on Tati’s channel and her overall style as a vlogger.
Entrepreneurial calculation
Beauty vlogging at the conjuncture of industries
As discussed above, traditional celebrity is economically embedded in an industrial structure
of multiple stakeholders. Comparably on YouTube, a beauty vlogger is also positioned at the
conjuncture of several industries: a social media platform, commercial cultural intermediaries,
and the advertising market. For entrepreneurial vloggers, making YouTube videos may start as a
hobby but then become their occupation. In Tati Westbrook’s interview with Tubefilter, she
claimed that she started the channel with a clear goal to make beauty vlogging her career.4
Indeed, successful content creators can make millions of dollars per year. In June 2015, Forbes
published a list of ‘The World’s Highest Paid YouTube Stars’.5 Michelle Phan, the role model
Hou
541
for many beauty vloggers, had earned $3 million from her channel and her makeup product line
over the past year.
Beauty vloggers monetize their videos in several ways. The first is through the YouTube Partner
Program. Content creators can join the program by displaying automatedly distributed advertisements in their channels and videos, and share 55% of the ad revenue with YouTube. A key
factor in this means of monetization is cost per mille (CPM), or cost per thousand views. For every
1000 ad views, advertisers pay a certain amount of money to YouTube and content creators. We
should note that CPM is an advertiser-oriented figure, instead of creator-oriented. It is the
advertisement market on YouTube that decides CPM instead of content creators. When the need
for YouTube ads is high, for instance, in holiday seasons, the ad prices are high. Some ads are
placed by bidding for keywords, so if a keyword is popular among advertisers, the CPM for that ad
is also high. In this situation, content creators need to optimize their content and metadata of their
videos so as to make sure high CPM ads appear in their channels.
Many beauty vloggers now sign up for a MCN. In general, MCNs can provide content creators
with technological, financial, legal, talent developing, and marketing solutions. In return, MCNs
extract certain amounts of revenue from content creators. Previous studies have shown that MCN
stands in the middle ground of industrial convergence between traditional entertainment industries
and IT companies and is one of the major forces in professionalizing amateur content creators
(Cunningham et al., 2016; Lobato, 2016). In Table 1, we can see that 8 of the 10 vloggers I have
selected are claimed by top MCNs. It is not surprising that five of them have joined StyleHaul,
since it specializes in the beauty and lifestyle vertical.
MCNs can help beauty vloggers to develop branded content, indicating that beauty and fashion
industries nowadays also need a ‘hype’ or ‘vibe’ in the digital world through images of social
media celebrities. Beauty vloggers in this case are ‘social media influencers’ or ‘key opinion
leaders’ in marketing lingo, whose authenticity and trustworthiness can be leveraged for commercial messages. This is where we see the tension between communal and commercial cultures.
In beauty- and fashion-related videos, vloggers are expected to give honest reviews and recommendations. A common situation I have discovered is that vloggers express explicitly in their
videos that they are in collaboration with a brand, or a certain company sends the product to them.
Here, my findings regarding vloggers’ attitudes toward being authentic are consistent with those of
Marwick’s (2013b), who believes that one should engage with advertising honestly and set personal experiences of the products as a prerequisite to endorsement.
Sometimes, vloggers try to make brand sponsorship a win-win situation for everyone by providing discount links for the sponsored products in videos, so that vloggers get paid, companies get
sales, and subscribers get discounts. There are also national policies regarding advertising in online
content. For instance, the Advertising Standards Authority issued new guidelines for YouTube
product placement and advertising in the United Kingdom. Now YouTubers need to put the word
‘Ad’ in the title of their videos. This new policy received certain criticisms from content creators.
The famous British beauty vlogger Fleur stated in an interview with BBC that putting the word
‘Ad’ in a video title sends out a far stronger message than required, distracting viewers from the
content when a 10-min video only contains 30 s of paid content.6
Beauty vlogger channel format
Beauty vloggers’ channels publish beauty-, fashion-, and lifestyle-related content. Nowadays,
it is common for a beauty vlogger to have two or more channels: one ‘main channel’ posts
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Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 25(3)
beauty-related videos, while the second channel focuses on their daily activities and other miscellaneous content. Garcı́a-Rapp (2017) also discovered that beauty gurus’ videos can be categorized into two types: commercial-oriented and community-oriented. The former is represented
by beauty know-how videos and the latter by vlogs. While vlogs in the early days of YouTube
often featured a user sitting in their bedroom talking directly to the camera, now vlogging is more
and more associated with the ‘slice of life’ idea, where YouTubers take the camera with them
(almost) everywhere they go and document their daily lives. For instance, London-based beauty
vlogger Estée Lalonde’s second channel is called ‘Everyday Estée’.7
These vlogs indeed demonstrate social media celebrities’ representational techniques of
interactively disseminating information about one’s everyday and private life (Gamson, 2011), but
we should also note one economic consideration behind them. Contemporary marketing strategies
prioritize storytelling which contextualizes brand information in the celebrity endorser’s life,
casting the brand in a cultural ambience (Hearn and Schoenhoff, 2016; Khamis et al., 2017). I find
that beauty vloggers also embed branded messages in ‘slice of life’ vlogs by, for instance, inviting
viewers to peep into a mundane morning grooming routine where sponsored products are featured.
In this case, what is promoted is not only a good product, but a contextualized product suitable for a
busy Monday morning. We can see that while marketing strategies try to blur the generic boundary
between advertisement and content, fusing them into ‘story’, on YouTube, it is also difficult to
draw a clear line between community-oriented and commercial-centered videos.
In vloggers’ main channels, there are three major types of content: tutorial, consumer review,
and consumption exhibition. One may know a beauty vlogger first from his or her makeup tutorials,
where the vlogger does makeup in front of the camera. The makeup looks are anchored in certain
social settings (e.g. holiday makeup, everyday makeup, beach makeup) or imitate role models (e.g.
the Kardashian look). Although these videos are titled as ‘tutorials’ and audiences may indeed
acquire skills they are eager to lear…