Please subscribe!: influencers, social media, and the commodification of everyday life

Crystal Abidin

Research output: Thesis › Doctoral Thesis

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Abstract

Internet users are branding themselves into a popular form of social media microcelebrity known as "Influencers". As shapers of public opinion, they accumulate followers on social media through textual and visual narrations of their personal, everyday lives and commodity their personae by constructing "advertorials". Influencers calibrate themselves in digital and physical spaces to sustain their "relatability", a notion emically understood as accessibility, authenticity, believability, emulatability, and intimacy. Throujj, longterm ethnographic fieldwork, personal interviews, media analyses, and archival research, I adopt an anthropological perspective to investigate Influencers in the "lifestyle" genre in relation to personae, femininities, taste, intimacies, and attention.
Original languageEnglish
QualificationDoctor of Philosophy
Publication statusUnpublished - 2016

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intimacy
social media
everyday life
narration
follower
femininity
authenticity
public opinion
commodity
genre
Internet
interview

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Abidin, Crystal. / Please subscribe!: influencers, social media, and the commodification of everyday life. 2016.
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Abidin, C 2016, 'Please subscribe!: influencers, social media, and the commodification of everyday life', Doctor of Philosophy.

Please subscribe!: influencers, social media, and the commodification of everyday life. / Abidin, Crystal.

2016.

Research output: Thesis › Doctoral Thesis

TY - THES

T1 - Please subscribe!: influencers, social media, and the commodification of everyday life

AU - Abidin, Crystal

PY - 2016

Y1 - 2016

N2 - Internet users are branding themselves into a popular form of social media microcelebrity known as "Influencers". As shapers of public opinion, they accumulate followers on social media through textual and visual narrations of their personal, everyday lives and commodity their personae by constructing "advertorials". Influencers calibrate themselves in digital and physical spaces to sustain their "relatability", a notion emically understood as accessibility, authenticity, believability, emulatability, and intimacy. Throujj, longterm ethnographic fieldwork, personal interviews, media analyses, and archival research, I adopt an anthropological perspective to investigate Influencers in the "lifestyle" genre in relation to personae, femininities, taste, intimacies, and attention.

AB - Internet users are branding themselves into a popular form of social media microcelebrity known as "Influencers". As shapers of public opinion, they accumulate followers on social media through textual and visual narrations of their personal, everyday lives and commodity their personae by constructing "advertorials". Influencers calibrate themselves in digital and physical spaces to sustain their "relatability", a notion emically understood as accessibility, authenticity, believability, emulatability, and intimacy. Throujj, longterm ethnographic fieldwork, personal interviews, media analyses, and archival research, I adopt an anthropological perspective to investigate Influencers in the "lifestyle" genre in relation to personae, femininities, taste, intimacies, and attention.

KW - Influencers

KW - Social media

KW - Self-branding

KW - Microcelebrity

M3 - Doctoral Thesis

ER -

Abidin C. Please subscribe!: influencers, social media, and the commodification of everyday life. 2016.

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