The ‘real deal’: strategic authenticity, politics and social media

Georgia Gaden, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Communication and Culture,

University of Calgary, georgiagaden@gmail.com

Dr. Delia Dumitrica, Instructor, Department of Communication and Culture, University

of Calgary, dddumitr@ucalgary.ca

Abstract

Keywords: authenticity, social media, politics, instrumental communication.

In this paper we explore what the notion of ‘authenticity’ stands for in contemporary

discourses about social media. In particular, we question whether some of the

discourses around authenticity on social media share the same ethical commitment to a

democratic recognition of and engagement with the Other that early modern

philosophical accounts argued for.

Introduction

In recent years, authenticity has become a buzzword as marketing professionals have

become excited by the alleged power of social media to reveal, in their own words, “who

you really are” (Cooke, 2013). What does being authentic mean in this context? What is

the role that social media play in enabling an authentic self to be performed and

recognized by others as a desirable value? If we are to listen to the recent plethora of

expert advice, authenticity is about being yourself: “One of the first steps to being

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authentic in your social media communication is to find, establish and maintain

your voice” (Stefanescu, 2013). Even scholars advise politicians to “demonstrate their

authenticity” by updating their social media profiles with biographical information,

“show their informal (non-political) side by sharing information about their hobbies and

interests” and “avoid the perception of insincerity” (Grow and Ward, 2013, n.p.). Being

yourself on social media entails writing in an outspoken manner, using an informal

(‘personal’) voice, and providing personal information, thus giving the impression that

you are honest about what you stand for. It may well appear that authenticity is about

both knowing and revealing who you are—an imagined essence defining your identity;

the ‘real’ you. Yet, there is more to this story: ‘maintaining the authentic voice’ is the

recommended strategy to becoming popular on social media and ‘having a following’.

The ‘real’ self and ‘authentic voice’ must be sustained over time in order to preserve

success.

Discussions of authenticity are not new, but the way in which ‘authenticity’ is

understood has shifted throughout time (e.g. Taylor, 1991). In its early form,

authenticity represented an ethic for leading our lives in a way that connects us, as

individuals, to the community. Authenticity was to be the guarantor of equality and

fairness. In this paper, we seek to explore the distance between this understanding of

authenticity as an ethical principle and our contemporary vision of a social media-

enabled authenticity as a strategy for success in the modern world. When it comes to

social media, the meaning of authenticity has become enmeshed with political and

market structures. We question the implications of this discursive articulation, by

speculating about its ethical implications. The paper starts with a brief overview of the

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historical conceptualization of authenticity as an ethical system for leading a virtuous

and, more importantly, an engaged life in the context of a democratic polis. We move on

to recent discussions of authenticity in the context of social media. First, we look at how

‘authenticity’ makes its way into discussions of blogging (and particularly political

blogging), only to become reimagined and entrenched as a strategy for creating and

retaining both a loyal readership and commercial success. Second, we shift to examining

how ‘authenticity’ is articulated in the relation to social networking sites (SNS) such as

Facebook and Twitter. As these sites are increasingly taken up by politicians, we witness

a similar process of recommending ‘authenticity’ as a strategy for the successful

presentation of the self online In our concluding discussion we describe this as a rise of

‘strategic authenticity’: the transformation of ‘authenticity’ into a strategy for becoming

successful. When comparing ‘strategic authenticity’ to earlier understandings of this

concept, we find the former lacking as an ethic for leading a good life. ‘ Strategic

authenticity’ reinforces a consumerist attitude, where the individual presents herself on

social media in order to be ‘consumed’ by others.

Authenticity: a historical overview

The rise of authenticity as a core ethical principle of modern life is usually traced back to

Romanticism and Existentialism (Berman 1970; Heter 2006; Taylor 1991). At the heart

of these movements was a “persistent and intense concern with being oneself” (Berman

1970, p. xv). In that context, the emergence of ‘authenticity’ as a category for

understanding one’s presence in the world was part of an intellectual shift re-defining

the individual and her relation to the polis. Thinkers like Montesquieu and Rousseau

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were concerned with imagining a new form of engagement with the world, where

authenticity becomes the basis for an ethic of leading a virtuous life (Berman 1970).

Authenticity meant knowing yourself, being true to yourself, and having the opportunity

to do so. This new political ethic centered on authenticity sought to reconcile freedom,

happiness and the ideal of a democratic polis. Importantly (and a little ironically in light

of our argument here), the imperative of being ‘authentic’ (i.e. being true to your true

nature by refusing to buy into the constraints of social conventions) could only be

fulfilled “through political activity and involvement” (Berman 1970, p. 216). Berman

further referred to this as ‘the politics of authenticity’: the freedom to be whomever you

want could only be accomplished in a polis based on equality and freedom for all.

An authentic life thus required a democratic arrangement, where equality and freedom

for all would be safeguarded by the civic participation of all members of the polis. This

means that the emphasis on individual happiness and fulfilment does not end up

fostering a hedonistic, atomized society, where each individual pursues her own

pleasures and desires in complete disregard of others. An ‘authentic life’ is intrinsically

connected to having the opportunity to discover who you are and having the opportunity

to live the life you want. In other words, living authentically depends on others

recognizing your right to do so, allowing you to be yourself. This also implies an

acceptance of the rights of others to live authentically. Thus, as Heter argues,

authenticity becomes a moral principles underlying the democratic polis, where “respect

for others is as important for authenticity as awareness and responsibility are” (2006, p.

84). In this tradition, authenticity meant recognizing the interdependence between

‘being for myself’ and ‘being for others’ (Heter 2006, pp. 24-25).

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In a sense, then, ‘authenticity’ was less about the discovery of the self and more about

the social conditions under which this becomes possible. Here, politics becomes the

arena where different actors compete over positioning their agendas as conducive to

living an authentic life. For Berman, this marks the beginning of merging the political

and the personal: “whoever you are, or want to be, you may not be interested in politics,

but politics is interested in you” (1970, p. 325). In these discussions, the notion of’

authenticity’ brings together the (selfish) concern with the self and the concern for

others (as a both a precondition and a consequence of the concerns with the self). Thus

married to each other, these concerns become envisaged as the prime movers of

democratic politics.

Authenticity in the Information Age: Blogging

Coined by Jorn Barger in 1997, the term ‘weblog’ described texts which often were,

literally, ‘logs of the web’. Their creators compiled lists of links to sites of interest online,

sometimes with a little commentary, with their most recent update appearing first. It

wasn’t really until free, easy-to-use blogging software became available at the turn of the

century that large numbers of bloggers without HTML coding skills took up the format

for their own purposes. Topic-based blogs and personal journal style blogs proliferated.

Early blogging aficionado Rebecca Blood saw authenticity as a hallmark of ‘good’

blogging. In her own blog, Rebecca’s Pocket, she describes the importance of the work of

these early bloggers: “Their sarcasm and fearless commentary reminds us to question

the vested interests of our sources of information and the expertise of individual

reporters as they file news stories about subjects they may not fully understand” (Blood,

2000, n.p., emphasis ours). A good blogger, she continued, “speaks in an individual

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voice of an individual vision” (ibid.). Blood contrasts this ‘good blogger’ to commercial

media, described as “a high-stakes world of carefully orchestrated messages designed to

distract and manipulate” (ibid) in contrast, readers can clearly discern a blogger’s

biases, ultimately making them a more predictable source. In her guide to the practice

of blogging (the first such full-length guide), Blood takes up the discussion again: “A

blogs’ quality…” she writes, “…is ultimately based on the authenticity of its voice…the

weblogger may not be respectful or even nice about the sites and stories he links, but

readers can be sure he is not speaking to placate an important advertiser” (2002, p. 15)”

Authenticity, the hallmark of a ‘good’ blog, here becomes understood as speaking in

your ‘own voice’ and is clearly defined in opposition to the commercial, strategically

planned productions of commercial media. Many of the early observations of blogging

and new media culture (e.g. Kitzmann, 2003; Herring et al., 2004, Mortenson & Walker,

2002) locate what is particular to these texts and practices within three discursive areas,

which we sketch here. Personal-ity, connectivity, and immediacy and regularity are all

often discussed as central to the character of new media, what makes texts like blogs

‘new’. Here, we suggest that these characteristics are also tied to discourses of

authenticity around social media.

Personal-ity

The availability of user-friendly software such as BlogSpot, Moveable Type, and

Wordpress was accompanied by a rapid popularization of the personal diary blog (Siles,

2011). Such blogs provided personal information, recording the details of everyday life

in a casual, conversational tone. Even “the scantiest of blog narratives”, McNeill notes in

her assessment of blogging, “incorporates ‘trademark’ diary features…the diary

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component…seems essential to the Weblog” (2003, p. 29). Andreas Kitzmann (2003)

also connects blogging diary writing with traditional, offline, ‘written’ diaries, pointing

to authenticity as a feature of these blogs. Diaries, both on- and offline, can act as an

“avatar, literally standing in place for the writer” (Kitzmann, 2003, 54). Authenticity

becomes understood as a realism produced in these texts through the provision of

detailed, mundane and personal content.

At the time, this emphasis on the ‘real self’ was very much articulated against other

practices of online identity constructions such as MOOs and virtual communities, where

“simulation is assumed and expected” (Kitzmann, 2003, 61). In contrast, the diary

blogosphere valued the ‘authentic’ presentation of the self as a symbol of genuine

communication, as well as a means for community participation (e.g. Miller and

Shepherd, 2004; Mortenson and Walker, 2002). As Kitzmann explains, “one thus

belongs to the community by writing from the heart and the home – these corporeal and

cultural places where authenticity and reality are believed to reside” (2003, 55). As a

result of being personal – as well as having a clearly defined personality – authenticity

comes to be understood as the freedom to represent yourself openly in a semi-public,

online arena. It brings together the writer and the reader, who is given a “voyeuristic

thrill … a sensation of having entered another’s personal, private world” (Kitzmann,

2003, 55). This private world is not only the ‘real thing’, but also ‘realistically’ achieved

in the blogs through the provision of personal details; reality, as Kitzmann observes,

becomes fetishized and “proclaimed as a kind of value” (2003, 60).

Connectivity

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Links are another crucial characteristic of blogs, leading to the creation of networks (an

often lauded integral feature of web 2.0. (e.g. O’Reilly, 2005). McNeill points out that

links, and the connectivity they simultaneously build and signify, are also contexts for

the production of authenticity: “By following the links, readers can in a sense share the

diarist’s experiences, see as he or she does, rather than relying on the diarist’s textual

descriptions, and thus these links foster a greater sense of intimacy between writer and

audience. They also, arguably, add to the reader’s sense of the diary’s “authenticity,”

because the narrative is anchored in “actual” places and people that members of the

audience may also recognize, making them feel part of the narrative, as “insiders” who

are part of the community the diarist addresses” (2003, p. 33). The presence of links to

other bloggers or other type of content is often seen as part and parcel of the

representation of the ‘personal’ self: “a blog is also characterized by its reflection of a

personal style, and this style may be reflected in either the writing or the selection of

links passed along to readers” (Downes, 2004, p?). The hyperlinks make the ‘real self’

available, as a series of preferences and symbolic connections that are meant to give

readers a deeper understanding of who the blogger truly is.

Immediacy and Regularity

Last, but not least, blogs were understood as ‘immediate’ – or potentially immediate –

forms of communication. The ‘authentic’ self of the blogger can be made available at any

moment in time, as technically all one has to do is click ‘publish’ in order to make

herself/ himself ‘public’. As Kitzmann (2003, p. 60) explains, this makes blogs closer to

‘live’ communication; and it is precisely this ‘live’ quality of the communication of the

self that produces the feeling of authenticity.

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At the same time, blogs also have to be regularly updated. The Oxford English

Dictionary defined ‘weblog’ in the Oxford English Dictionary as: “A frequently updated

web site consisting of personal observations, excerpts from other sources, etc. , typically

run by a single person, and usually with hyperlinks to other sites; an online journal or

diary” (OED, 2011, in Richardson, Parry and Corner, p.75). The ‘authenticity’ of the

blogger is thus also constructed through regular updates on his or her intimate

perspective. This view of the ‘real self’ enabled by immediate and regular updates has to

be understood against an emerging reconceptualization of traditional media as

producing ‘delayed’ and ‘edited’ texts. Unlike such communication forms, the

‘authenticity’ of blogging appears as a result of the possibility to present your own self to

the world on an ongoing basis, or ‘as it unfolds’.

Authenticity in political blogging

As the genres and technological platforms of blogging gradually stabilized, journalists

and political commentators were among the first to appropriate them as means of

reaching out to their audiences (e.g. Graves, 2007; Miller and Shepherd, 2009; Siles,

2011). Bloggers writing about politics earned recognition in the mainstream media with

early heavy-hitters such as Charles Johnson (Little Green Footballs), Markos Moulitsas

(Daily Kos), and Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) appearing as talking heads on

mainstream news shows, being published in print, and professionalizing their practices.

In spite of being numerically inferior to personal-journal blogs in the early 2000s, such

‘public affairs’ bloggers were certainly more influential (Miller and Shepherd, 2009). In

2005-6, a Pew Internet study on blogging reported that while personal life was the

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number one topic of blogs, politics and government emerged as the second most

popular topic (albeit consisting of only 11% of the surveyed bloggers) (cited in Miller and

Shepherd, 2009).

The 2004 U.S. presidential campaigns not only raised the profile of political bloggers,

but also brought the use of blogs by politicians to the forefront, linking these means of

communication to political ends (e.g. Farrell and Drezner, 2008; Miller and Shepherd,

2009; Trent et al., 2011). In their discussion of the influence of bloggers on politics,

Farrell and Drezner (2008) conclude that as politicians incorporate blogs into their

campaign strategies, “we also expect blogs will lose some of their disruptive impact… by

the same token, we predict political blogs will become increasingly pervasive tool

through which politicians and others will seek to influence political debate” (2008, p.

29).

The marriage of blogs and electoral campaigns raises important questions about the

blogs’ alleged ability to mirror the ‘real, authentic’ self. In many ways, politicians’ blogs

become a means of extending the politician’s reach, strategically attracting voters in

ways often understood as ‘unmediated’ (as opposed to relying on traditional media to

attract supporters). This strategic aspect of using blogs needs to be understood in

relation to the early excitement over the possibility that blogs could close the ‘distance’

between politicians and citizens (for a critical discussion of this excitement, see Coleman

and Wright, 2008; Francoli and Ward, 2008). The excitement often stemmed from the

perceived immediacy of blogs where the politician-blogger and the reader can be seen as

engaged in a direct (i.e., ‘unmediated’, as discussed above) dialogue with each other

(through blog posts and comments, for instance). This gives the politician-blogger a

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chance to “present an appearance of listening to comments from the public and to

change their messages accordingly” (Coleman and Wright, 2008, p. 2).

Such excitement is echoed in the comments of this UK politician, an early user of blogs.

Blogging, she argued, was a form of “thinking and writing that appealed – that I did not

really approach… from the point of view of the campaign- or with any degree of

consciousness about it being read. It was more therapy for me and it helped me form my

own views on issues as I mulled over and analysed my time and my thoughts” (quoted in

Ferguson and Griffiths, 2006, p. 367). The blog, she adds, is a mirror of her point of

view: “If it isn’t personal – then what’s the point?” (ibid, p. 370). In this case, the

practice of blogging is cast as an avenue for self-reflexivity, for making explicit those

very elements that come to form a politician’s personality, her choices and decisions. As

another politician in the same study points out, blogging is about having “one’s voice

heard” (ibid, p. 368).

However appealing this vision of politicians-bloggers may be, it is important to

remember that politicians adopt new communication technologies for strategic reasons.

In their study of politicians’ blogs in UK and Canada, Francoli and Ward (2008) found

that in several instances, these blogs are in fact run on the politician’s behalf; the

‘personality’ or ‘personalization’ aspect is largely missing in such cases. “For some,

blogging represents a continuation of their old media strategies, but in a newer and

more convenient format… For others, blogs have a more personal cathartic benefit…

However, many political blogs look like the traditional soapbox and megaphone used in

town square meetings – where most people ignore the speaker and walk on by, a few

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people stop, and some shout abuse but few actually listen or debate” (Francoli and

Ward, 2008, p. 37).

The marriage between ‘authenticity’ and politics is, of course, not new. On the one hand,

democratic politics has been marred by disengagement, skepticism and growing social

inequalities. While some advocate the need to make politics more attractive (e.g.

Coleman 2007), others note that politics has always entailed a focus on the ‘real’ self of

leaders (Langer, 2011). The question of the leader’s character has always been an

important element in citizens’ decision to support a politician or not; good leadership is

understood as a consequence of good character (Langer, 2011). Langer (2011) notes that

contemporary politics is characterized by two related trends: presidentialisation of

power (concentration of power in the hands of leaders) and personality politics

(increased attention to details of personal lives of politicians). Knowing which TV shows

our leaders indulge in, where they go out for dinner and what car they drive has become

a staple of media coverage as politicians attract similar attention to celebrities in sports

or entertainment.

On their side, politicians adapt to the logic of the dominant medium of communication

in order to reach large numbers of voters. Blogs and, as discussed next, SNS build on the

older promise that television made: that it will reveal the ‘true’ character of politicians,

by giving us an ‘unmediated’ glimpse into their private lives. It is worth remembering

that back in its heyday, television was dubbed the “delivery system for intimacy” (Hart

quoted in Parry-Giles and Parry-Giles, 2002, p. 24). It is thus less surprising that the

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very features with which early blogging aficionados endowed these forms of

communication go back to the very promise of ‘direct’ access to the ‘real self’.

While political blogging continues to exist, public attention is now focused on the

Twitter feeds and Facebook posts of politicians. Next we draw attention to how

discussions of the ‘authenticity’ of politicians using social media have both quickly

emerged and are accompanied by a similar shift from presenting the ‘real’ self to

thinking about the ‘presentation of the real self’ in strategic terms.

Social media: the new sites of political authenticity

Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential election campaigns made social media the

‘prodigy’ medium that journalists, pundits and, perhaps to a lesser extent, citizens at

large come to associate with a successful, honest and engaged electoral candidate. Social

media, we are often told, allow us to communicate with each other, thus becoming both

more intimately tied together and more knowledgeable of each other and of the world.

For instance, Facebook’s (2013) slogan is “connect with friends and the world around

you”, Twitter (2013) entices us to “find out what’s happening, right now, with the people

and organizations you care about”, while Instagram positions itself as a “fast, beautiful

and fun way to share your life with friends and family” (Instagram, 2013). Even the

dubious collective label – social media – alludes to the alleged core purpose of these

technologies: communication aimed at creating and strengthening social bond, usually

by making yourself known to others. The assumption behind the imperative “share and

connect” is that sharing personal details leads to tighter social ties, as well as intimate

and relevant knowledge of significant others (friends, family, or organizations we care

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about) and of the world (John, 2012). The impetus of “share and connect” becomes an

expectation and a norm in such online environments, not unlike the early practices of

blogging, further entrenching personality, connectivity, and immediacy as central values

of SNS.

The promise that the ‘real self’ will be somehow guaranteed by the mere fact of using

SNS is particularly interesting in the context of the articulation of ‘authenticity’ and

‘politics’. Two years after Obama sold young voters and political commentators on the

effectiveness of using SNS as electoral tools, a Canadian politician’s use of Facebook and

Twitter was widely discussed for its ‘authenticity’. In the 2010 municipal elections in

Calgary, Naheed Nenshi’s victory was heralded by many, including Nenshi himself, as an

example of the ‘authentic’ politician-citizen interaction. Social media, Nenshi declared,

allowed him to directly respond to and engage citizens. Invoking the themes of

connectivity and immediacy that we have already encountered in the case of blogs,

Nenshi explained: “I regularly answer people’s questions and further the conversation”

(Braid,2010, n.p.). Nenshi had launched his candidacy on Twitter, explaining that such

communication platforms allowed him to be connected to citizens in an ‘unmediated’

way: “if someone posts on my Facebook fan page, I can respond to it” (Gignac, 2010,

n.p.).

Over and over again, the politician and his campaign staff emphasized that the mayor-

to-be was the only one accessing his own Facebook and Twitter accounts: “The only

person who had the password to Nenshi’s Twitter account was Nenshi. There was no

second account set up for the campaign. Everybody was real. Every person that worked

for the Nenshi campaign had their own Twitter account, which allowed us to have

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authentic communications across the medium” (Davy, 2010, n.p.). Authenticity in this

context meant that Nenshi was the only one communicating under Nenshi’s name on

social media; citizens could be certain that they were talking to the politician himself

and not a public relations staff member.

Yet, authenticity seems to mean a bit more than just connecting directly to the politician

and receiving an answer from him or her in real time. After all, as The Telecom Blog

noted, “follow a politician on Twitter and you’ll get a boring litany of carefully prepared

statements and bland talking points” (Richardson, 2010, n.p.). For Judith Timson of the

Toronto Star, the quest for authenticity in political life has to do precisely with this

feeling of being fed up with “they hype and the canned political messaging” (2013). Just

like in the early days of blogging, authenticity stands in opposition to strategically

crafted messages aimed at manipulating or persuading consumers or, in this case,

voters. On social media, being authentic means getting personal and having personality;

both of which come to signify ‘being real’ as opposed to putting up a façade or playing a

(public) role. One blogger commenting on the 2010 Calgary campaign argued that “the

message that Twitter can put out for someone is: here I am, this is actually me writing

this, I am honest, this is how I think, you can ask me things, I know what I’m talking

about, anyone can test me and access me, you will see who I am through how I choose to

respond or not respond” (Pashak, 2010, n.p.). Authenticity in politics is not simply

about the politician revealing the ‘real self’ to persuade voters that s/he is “someone

voters want to have a beer with”, but rather about “a leader who comes across as

authentically in his or her own skin, not spouting platitudes, panaceas, but one whose

words and actions, in a very cynical age, people can believe” (Timson, 2013). Social

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media appears as the lie detector of the day: “You can’t be a phony and get away with it.

You’ll reek of it on YouTube” (Timson, 2013).

Yet, at the same time, this act of making the ‘self’ available to others cannot be divorced

from “what Jodi Dean (2002) calls the ‘ideology of publicity’, in which we value

whatever grabs the public’s attention” (Marwick and boyd, 2011, p. 119). Ironically, the

more Nenshi, his campaigners and the media discussed his social media-enabled

authenticity, the more the latter appeared as the ‘right’ electoral strategy. Authenticity

emerges as the best way of winning votes, and campaigners start explaining how it can

be achieved. Nenshi’s success becomes understood as the results of building “an

authentic brand of conversing with people via multiple mediums” (Fekete, 2010, n.p.). A

blog post on Mashable explains how political campaigns can use social media: by

sharing the politician’s “beliefs and goals” and by “directly responding to followers”

(Fitzpatrick, 2011, n.p.). But this is also old news: authenticity in social media is not very

different from practices such as canvassing or tabloid coverage of the private lives of

political leaders (Langer, 2011). What is worth noting is that with the change in the

medium, the latter becomes a guarantor of politicians’ intentions. Social media becomes

the ‘test’ that politicians must learn to pass in order to gather votes.

Discussion: Strategic authenticity

Throughout this paper, we have showed how the notions of ‘authenticity’ and ‘social

media’ become temporarily articulated with each other (Hall and Grossberg, 1986).

Articulation stands here for the idea that meaning does not simply emerge out of the

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words we use, but rather stems from the particular organization of words and ideas into

a narrative that is part of a wider ideology. In this section, we seek to explore the

narrative constructed by the articulation of ‘social media’ and ‘authenticity’, and think

about it in relation to to early philosophical conceptualizations of ‘authenticity’ as a core

ethical principle of modernity. For these philosophers, authenticity entailed an ethos of

democratic participation which implied recognition of the Other (i.e, the realization of

the necessity of recognizing, respecting and making room for difference from yourself).

Notwithstanding the postmodernist critique of ‘authenticity’, we ask to what extent the

conceptualization of authenticity in the relation to blogging and social media is –or

rather, is not-- consistent with this philosophical tradition. What are the underlying

values and worldviews that today’s notion of authenticity through social media

recommends?

In a brief essay on bullshit, philosopher Harry Frankfurt (2005) suggests that Western

democracies are confronted with a major epistemological problem. On the one hand,

there is an increased expectation that we generally have to offer opinions on things we

do not really know anything about; as responsible citizens, we have to have opinions

about our polis. But we also live in a time of skepticism; epistemologically, the

possibility of really ‘knowing’ the world and the possibility of identity as an ‘inner

essence’ have been under great challenge. As a result, argues Frankfurt, we are no longer

looking for the ‘truth’, but merely for ‘sincerity’: “Rather than seeking primarily to arrive

at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns toward trying to

provide honest representations of himself” (p. 65). For many early practitioners,

blogging represented a credible and valuable practice of conveying the ‘real self’ in a

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sincere manner. In this context, authenticity meant that the blogger was speaking on her

own behalf and not as a representative of an institution (such as traditional news

organizations) or of commercial interests. To use Frankfurt’s argument, the speaker

provided ‘honest representations of the self’, where ‘honesty’ stemmed from the

speaker’s willingness to share her personal life and her personality as part of an ongoing

and immediate process of communication.

As authenticity becomes taken up in discussions around ‘good blogging’, the practice of

blogging itself promises to guarantee the authenticity of the speaker. The authentic

blogger is ‘recognized’ by Others, who start to follow her and include her in networks

created by blogrolls. Perceived ‘authenticity’ thus becomes valuable, as it promotes

credibility and likeability leading to increased visibility/ popularity of the blogger. As

this publicity becomes a form of success (reputational or financial), authenticity

becomes a recommended strategy for the presentation of the self that results in a loyal

audience and an increased visibility (through links, likes, shares, or re-tweets) in the

public arena.

How does this ‘strategic authenticity’ compare to the earlier understandings of

‘authenticity’ as an ethic of living in a democratic polis? For existentialist philosophers,

authenticity represented the prime mover of the recognition – and tolerance – of

difference: to live authentically implied to recognize the right of the Other to be

different. Authenticity thus required that the Self and the Other establish a relationship

between them that will eventually result in co-operation, cohabitation and mutual

respect. This particular relationship with the Other, we argue, becomes lost in the

articulations of ‘authenticity’ and ‘social media’ discussed here.

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It is not the case that the Other is no longer present. Quite on the contrary! The relation

with the Other becomes one of consumption: the Self is offered, through practices of

blogging or of social media use, for the consumption of the Other. The Other, by linking,

liking, sharing, posting or re-tweeting, validates the ‘authenticity’ of the Self, its worth

and validity. The act of being consumed by Others entails the recognition and validation

of the ‘authentic’ Self in the public-private space created by social media (Papacharissi

2010). On the other hand, the Other is also present in the ‘imagined audience’ for whom

the social media user shares herself online. As Ervin Goffman (1959) long remarked, this

is part and parcel of any social relations: we present ourselves to the imagined Other. In

the presentation of the ‘authentic’ self on social media however, the emphasis on

authenticity hides away the role of the relation Self/Imagined Other in the actual

construction of the Self. In other words, the ‘authentic’ self appears to be a process of

witty narration of an inner personality made available for subsequent consumption by

the audience.

The assumption of this inner personality is, of course, highly problematic, as it

essentializes the Self. More importantly, the Self is essentialized as a commodity to be

consumed by the Other; this also opens up a particular subject position for the Other,

who is to be understood as a ‘consumer’ and thus to be ‘satisfied’ in his consumption

process, rather than known, understood, or respected. This approach to the Self and

Other is rooted in an instrumental logic: the ‘authentic’ self becomes a strategy for

ensuring a loyal base of followers. The ‘genuine’ connection to the Other is one driven by

a quick sale to co-opt the Other., and the driving force of this relationship is not the

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recognition and working out of difference, but rather consumption and strategic use of

the Other for the promotion of the Self.

Author bio

Dr. Delia Dumitrica is an instructor in Communication and Culture at the University of Calgary. Her
research focuses on discursive constructions of digital media.

Georgia Gaden Jones is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication and Culture at the
University of Calgary. She is interested in the relationship between the self and social media use.

20
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