Celina So

301197591

CMNS 323W

July 20th, 2017

Introduction

In the present age of new media, content is available on the Internet and on any digital device,

usually containing interactive user feedback and creative participation. A defining characteristic

of new media, for example, social media platforms, is dialogue as it enables people around the

world to share, comment on, and discuss a wide variety of topics. Chen (2012) argues the impact

of digital or new media on human society is demonstrated in the aspects of cognition, social

effect, and a new form of aesthetics. Cognitively, new media demands a non-linear nature and

the creation of expectations for content, which directly influences the way people use media.

Socially, the most manifested impact of new media is the effect of demassification, which

denotes that the traditional design for a large, homogenous audience is disappearing and being

replaced by a specific and individual appeal, allowing the audience to access and create the

message they wish to produce (Olason & Pollard, 2004). And lastly, in terms of visual, new

media brings forth a new digital aesthetic view, which refers to, for example, interactivity,

manipulation, the prepurposing and repurposing of content across media, deliberate creation of

virtual experience, and sampling as a means of generating new content (Chen, The impact of

new media on intercultural communication in global context, 2012, p. 1).

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 New media is the main force accelerating the trend of neoliberal economy in human society.

The neoliberal trend has changed the perception of what a community is, redefined the meaning

of cultural identity and civic society, and demanded a new way of intercultural interaction (Chen

& Zhang, 2010). From this perspective, advertising companies has capitalized on the

proliferation of new media through social media platforms to promote their commodities. The

objective of social media platforms, particularly Instagram, is to help companies reach their

respective audiences through captivating imagery in a rich, visual environment (Instagram, n.d.).

Moreover, Instagram provides a platform where the self is commodified and individuals are

locked into a mode of promotion. When companies join these social channels, consumers can

interact with them directly. The ability to like, share, follow and comment on made by

consumers, allows the information about the product to be put out there and repeated, thus, more

traffic is brought to the brand. The affordances of the Internet have enabled the practice of

microcelebrity and self-branding as a means of competing in new media.

Promotional culture has colonized our online social networks to transform contemporary

social, economic, and cultural processes to accommodate and reward the promotion of individual

lifestyles, and has allowed the immaterial labor in social media platforms to propel users from

relative obscurity to become prominent celebrities in this neoliberal economy. This essay charts

the emergence and cultural significance of Instagram within new media with a focus of

microcelebrity examples and how they exemplify the commodity of the self in consumer

capitalism.

Participatory media, user-generated content, commodity signs

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 Marketing and media are mutually dependent. Media relies on advertising revenue for

commercial viability, while advertisers have traditionally relied on media to address the audience

(Reynolds & Darden, 1971). In new media, social media platforms allow consumers to express

and share an opinion about a companys products, services, or business practices. Each

participating consumer who is participating online via social media becomes part of the

marketing department, as other customers read their positive or negative comments or reviews.

Getting consumers to be engaged online is fundamental to successful social media marketing

(Evans, 2010). This is in contrast to traditional media that previously gave control of message to

the marketer, which now shifts the balance to the consumer through social media. This

participatory media is described as e-services, which involve end-users as active participants in

the value creation process (Khurana, 2016, p. 1368). With the advent of social media marketing,

it has become increasingly important to gain customer interest in products and services, which

can eventually be translated into buying behavior. According to Norris (2001), engagement in

social media for the purpose of a social media strategy is divided into two parts. The first is

proactive, regular posting of new online content and conversations, as well as the sharing of

content and information from others via weblinks. The second part is reactive conversations with

social media users responding to those who reach out to your social media profiles through

commenting or messaging (Norris, 2001).

My focus here is the photo sharing application, Instagram, which is one of many social media

platforms for users to express themselves. Through Instagrams unique format, it allows users to

further their intimacy with followers by sharing selected photos and videos with their audience.

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Instagram provides a platform where users and the company can communicate publicly and

directly, making itself an ideal platform for companies to connect with their current and potential

customers (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). In addition, its features allow its users to like and

follow to foster communication. Instagrams features are not only used as communication

tools, but rather, they are commodity signs that help consumer consumption in Instagram. In

The promotional condition of contemporary culture, Wernick argues that commercially

produced signs are part of a sub-field in advertisements (Wernick, 2000). Moreover, he contends

commodity signs are distributed in a commercial medium whose profitability depends on

selling audiences to advertisers they are also designed to function as attractors of audiences

towards the advertising material with which they are intercut (Wernick, 2000). By participating

in these tools such as liking and following a post, users are promoting and sharing the message,

thus reaching more people. This corresponds to Arvidssons concept of immaterial labor where

he contends our ability to look, fantasize, sympathize, be fascinated, or sometimes simple to act

and feel, can constantly be invited to give attention to a particular brand, and thus contribute to

sustaining the immaterial qualities that form the basis of its value (Arvidsson, 2005, p. 236).

Thus, in the context of the Internet, the immaterial labor is our participation in social media.

Social Media and Self-Branding

In the culture of new media, the surface appearance of our self-image is of the highest

importance and value. Wernicks work on promotional culture provides a useful starting point

for the exploration of self-branding as he argues its commodity signs like its like and follow

button is associated with a much broader range of signifying materials than just advertisements.

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This broader range is the commodification of the self because by using social media platforms,

individuals are locked into a mode of constant promotion (Wernick, 2000). With over 700

million registered users as of April 2017, Instagram is the centre of both community and

commerce in the virtual world (Evans, 2010). Instagram allows individuals to produce

inventories of branded selves; their logic encourages users to see themselves and others as

commodity-signs to be collected and consumed in the social marketplace (Hearn, 2008, p. 211).

As a result, the branded self is inflected in the practice of Instagram and its commodity signs

encourage users to actively foster an audience. Hearn (2008) describes profiling practices

egocasting as users spend time creating their public profiles, posting pictures and information

about themselves and connecting with others doing the same (p. 212). Wernick argues

individuals are not only promotion authors but promotion products. The subject that promotes

itself constructs itself for others in like with the imaging needed of its market. Correspondingly,

Hearn (2008) contends self-branding involves the self-conscious construction of a meta-narrative

and meta-image of self through the use of cultural meanings and images drawn from the

narrative and visual codes of the mainstream culture industries. The function of the branded self

is purely rhetorical; its goal is to produce cultural value and, potentially, material profit. The

branded self is a commodity sign; it is an entity that works and, at the same time, points to itself

working, striving to embody the values of its working environment. Here we see the self as a

commodity for sale in the labor market, which must generate its own rhetorically persuasive

packaging, its own promotional skin, within the confines of the dominant corporate imaginary.

This persona produced for public consumption, reflects a self, which continually produces

itself for competitive circulation (Hearn, 2008, p. 201). And positions itself as a site for the

extraction of value. The branded self sits at the nexus of discourses of neoliberalism. As such the

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branded self must be understood as a distinct kind of labor; involving an outer-directed process

of highly stylized self-construction, directly tied to the promotional mechanisms of the post-

Fordist market.

Khamis et al. (2017) argues that enabling ordinary users to assert strong identities can

underpin and animate high public profiles, self-branding makes fame and/or celebrity more

attainable (Khamis, Ang, & Welling, 2017). Thus, the individual carefully produces personal

profiles and snapshots of their busy social lives, while also becoming a promotional object

comprised of an inextricable mixture of what its author/object has to offer, the signs by which

this might be recognized, and the symbolic appeal this is given in order to enhance the

advantages which can be obtained from its trade (Khamis, Ang, & Welling, 2017). As a result,

self-branding through social media pivots on attention and fame, creating a microcelebrity.

Microcelebrity is linked to the notion of self-branding that Marwick argues is a self-

presentation strategy that requires viewing oneself as a consumer product and selling this image

to others (Marwick, 2015, p. 140). Furthermore, it is a mind-set and a collection of self-

presentation practices endemic in social media, in which users strategically formulate a profile,

reach out to followers, and reveal personal information to increase attention and thus improve

their online status (Marwick, 2015, p. 138). Thus, a microcelebrity is someone who carefully

constructs an image and simulacrum of themselves on social media and gains notoriety for it.

The rules of fame are being redefined and rewritten or alternatively, retweeted and

regrammed - something that can be self-constructed through the emergence of the

microcelebrity (Marwick, 2015).

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Examples

Instagram is a linguistic marketplace (Page, 2012), where self-branding and the manipulation of

social phenomena allows for popularity to be gained. An example of microcelebrity is Alexis

Ren who goes by the username @alexisren and has over 10 million followers on Instagram. Like

many other models, Alexis used an online teen audience and popular social networking sites to

begin her rise to fame. Originally, she started out as an amateur model working for clothing

companies, such as Brandy Melville, and dated a famous model, Jay Alvarez to help boost her

platform. Senft (2008) describes microcelebrities as non-actors as performers whose narratives

take place without overt manipulation, and who are more real than television personalities

with perfect hair, perfect friends and perfect lives (Senft, 2008). Alexis engages and monetizes

her following by integrating advertorials into her social media posts and making physical

appearances at events. A pastiche of advertisement and editorial, advertorials in the industry

are highly personalized promotions of products/services that microcelebrities personally

experience and endorse for a fee (Senft, 2008).

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In this picture, Alexis is endorsing a brand called Yamamay Swimwear and promoting her

swimwear line, which has a staggering 471,285 likes. This relates to Wernicks promotional

culture as he argues the realm of public promotion not just as self-advertising, but as an

exchangeable (and promotable) promotional resource both for the individual involved and for

other advertisers (Wernick, 2000). Moreover, Alexis is not only promoting her bathing suit line

and other companies, but she is promoting her fit body and lifestyle to gain more attention. The

body has become the site for self-discipline, personal control, moral obligation, social

presentation and interaction. This makes sense in the historical context of consumer culture since

the body can be worked upon and improved with inexpensive and wellness services. Lavrence &

Lozinski assert that the body is itself the primary site of achievement, it becomes a social

virtue and moral responsibility; the unfit body likewise becomes the sign of moral failure and

social iniquity (Lavrence & Lozanski, 2014, p. 83). Furthermore, Khamis (2017) argues the

hallmarks of all effective branding are theoretically sustained and the brand is consolidated as

audiences/followers/fans embed it within their own individualized media through likes, shares

and comments. This collaborative, dialogic space facilitates self-branding as attention-seeking

users produce a public persona that is targeted and strategic (p. 101).

Other examples of microcelebrities are Tori Levett and Alex Hayes. Although not as many

followers as Alexis, Levett, 19, has more than 110,000 Instagram followers, and Hayes, 17, with

more than 610,000 followers, are reaping the perks such as thousands of likes, adoration in the

comment section, along with cash and freebies from brands desperate to reach young consumers.

In an interview with Ariel Bogle, editor of Masable.com, she notes the Australian teenagers post

pictures of their lives surfing and swimming in Australias beautiful beaches and hanging out

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at music festivals in the latest fashions, which are being carefully documented on the photo-

focused social media platform (Bogle, n.d.). According to Bogle, Australian brands have known

about Hayes for quite awhile due to his semiprofessional surfing and his social media finesse.

There photos are the content and they are the influencers as Bogle writes, while we might to go

the beach with a towel and sunblock, on Instagram, everythings an adventure, fresh and

photogenic and ready for branding (Bogle, n.d.). Moreover, the pair says that theyve learnt that

brands are looking for a highly engaged audience and is watching their every move. Some

people have heaps of followers but they dont get the likes, Levett says. He compares

endorsements of brands are like putting an ad in the newspapers, because they know your basic

reach for each newspaper you put out, Hayes adds. Like if they wanted to reach 100-110,000

people, theyd go to me (Bogle, n.d.). Thus, Alexis, Levett, and Hayes exemplify Wernicks

definition of promotion subjects as he contends, it is a self which continually produces itself for

competitive circulation: an enacted projection, which includes not only dress, speech, gestures,

and actions, but also, through health and beauty practices, the cultivated body of the actor; a

projection which is itself moreover, and inextricable mixture of what its author/object actually

has to offer, the signs by which this might be recognized, and the symbolic appeal this is given in

order to enhance the advantages which can be obtained from its trade (Wernick, 2000).

Have our social networks become brand networks?

In the broader context of new media, social media platforms such as Instagram are social

factories as it extends the logics of the factory to the Internet and have subsumed society and

social activities into the capitalist process of production (Kcklich, 2009). Richard Sennett

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described some of the ramifications of the transition to post-Fordist production methods, which

enterprise risk onto workers and demand that they be more flexible and repeatedly prove their

worth. He suggests, If institutions no longer provide a long-term frame, the individual may have

to improvise his of her life-narrative, or even do without any sustained sense of self (Sennett,

2007, p. 4). Perhaps the integration of both of these things is what we are experiencing now due

to digitally networked and mobile communications into our daily lives. Consumerism helps

Sennetts model by putting a spin on the acquisition of goods and services (Hearn, 2008).

Instagram has permitted continuous interactivity of consumerism. It enhances the compensations

of consumerism by making it seem more self-revelatory, less passively conformist, conserving

the signifying power of our lifestyle gestures by broadcasting them to a larger audience (Hearn,

2008). For example, when you like or follow it generates affective means for commodities

and allows for more traffic to the commodity.

Furthermore, Instagram is structured in a way that encourages consumers to continually

promote and self-brand by replenishing the online profile with fresh content. Social media users

are creative subjectivities producing the information, communication, and network commons

subjectivities producing the information, communication, and network commons collectively

(Marwick, 2015). As a result, Instagram provides a space for the development and expansion of

the commons being produced cooperatively. This corresponds to the concept of social factory

that is developed by Italian autonomist, Tronti, as he claims:

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 at the highest level of capitalist development, the social relation becomes a
moment of the relation of production, the whole society becomes an articulation
of production. In other words, society as a whole lives according to the factory
and the factory extends its exclusive domination over society as a whole (Tronti
quoted in Allmer, 2015, p.172).

Tronti is saying that Capital tends to control society as well as social labor and extends from

consumption to reproduction and the organization of leisure. And as a result, society functions as

a moment of production, where the border between working and spare time becomes

increasingly blurred both spatially and temporally (Allmer, 2015).

The most radical aspect of this socialization of labor is the blurring of waged and
non-waged time. The activities of people not just as workers but as students,
consumers, shoppers and viewers are now directly integrated into the production
process. (Dyer-Witheford quoted from Allmer, 2015, p. 172)

Moreover, Tronti writes the social factory is a factory without walls. Instagram may be

considered as information and communication factories without walls. It marks the total

commodification of social life, human communication, experiences, feelings, and creativity on

the Internet. The whole of social life extends exploitation to networks and is subsumed under

capital on the Internet. Furthermore, Capital automates the entire social factory and the whole of

society becomes a wired workplace. And therefore, social media users are part of the social

factory that work for free in their spare time by fulfilling social and communicative needs.

Through social media, our consumerist satisfactions are captured and fed back into the

production cycle as a component of the manufacturing process, regulating supply and furnishing

innovative content. Maurizio Lazzarato described this sort of productive communication as

immaterial labor, work that seeks to involve that workers personality and subjectivity within

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the production of value (Lazzarato, 1996, p. 136). He also adds that this is labor that produces

the informational and cultural content of the commodity (p. 133). Thus, the capacity to perform

creative labor is naturally inherent to sociality, a fact on which social media has capitalized. As a

result, our presence in social media doesnt reflect some pre-existing self; rather the colonization

of promotional culture in our online social networks. This is one of Wernicks defining features

in promotional culture as he contends promotion turns to the signifying practices and material

by which the individual subject has come to be enveloped (Wernick, 2000). Subsequently, this

is what Paolo Virno referred to as communicative competence as individuals voluntarily create

content (Virno, 2003, p. 65). Immaterial labor is the pure commodification of human activity.

Moreover, Virno claims post-Fordisms great breakthrough is in how it placed language in the

workplace and made linguistic ingenuity exploitable, it also means that work is no longer

contained to the workplace or to working hours but instead takes place anywhere we happen on

something to share. Labor and non-labor, Virno writes, develop an identical form of

productivity, based on the exercise of generic human faculties: language, memory, sociability,

ethical and aesthetic inclinations, the capacity for abstraction and learning (Virno, 2003, p.

103). In other words, communication, consumption and sociality serve simultaneously as work

and non-work, while substituting freely for one another. Social media supply the infrastructure

for the free exchange. And as a result, our social networks have become brand networks.

Social media has become a vehicle for self-branding, these microcelebrities have begun to

situate the maintenance of their online brand as a job, which brings about new ways to think

about work and labor. The logic of social media and the presence of feedback mean that others

using the same rubric to judge brands view ones online presence: evaluation, ranking, and

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judgment. Thus, social media network sites serve as complex, technologically mediated venues

for the brand of the self.

Conclusion

In the broader context of new media, the neoliberal turn has led to deregulation and

privatization, internalization and conglomeration. The combined effect of these factors has been

to create fertile ground for the commercial exploitation of technological development that have

amplified and in some cases altered quite drastically the ways we communicate and think of

ourselves - as members of communities and of society but now, increasingly, as individuals.

Wernick identified how the spread of market values into every aspect of life results in a

promotional culture that transforms all forms of communication. Wernicks concept of

promotionalism still resonates with us today and is a dominant contemporary cultural condition.

It raises questions not only about the nature of the society we inhabit, but also about individual

actions, agency and autonomy. Promotional culture is intricately linked to celebrity culture, as

humans become commodities to be branded and consumed. In this context, the self as brand

emerges.

Social media platforms like Instagram allow individuals to have the opportunity to present

oneself to the public and to receive attention. The example of Alexis illustrates the individual as

commodity signs and her large following base and likes on her photos as consumerism. Thus, the

Internet becomes a privileged site of the self. It implements freedom of self-representative

choices as a mode of control; our identities are a work in progress archived in the site, which

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ensures that more of our social energy is invested in self-presentation there selling objectified

fragments of ourselves as though we are consumer goods.

Furthermore, Instagram serves as a distribution centre for immaterial labor, and supplies a

scoreboard by which we can track our performance in new media through the number of

followers, comments and likes on an Instagram post. Thus, due to the thrust of new media, the

global trend creates new social networks and activities, redefines political, cultural, economic,

geographical, and other boundaries of human society, expands and stretches social relations,

intensifies, and accelerates social exchanges, and involves both the micro-structures of

personhood and macro-structures of community.

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