Vassar College Digital Window @ Vassar Senior Capstone Projects 2021 Verified: Surfacing the Relationship Between Social Media Influencers and Emotional Capital Hattie Goodwin Vassar College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalwindow.vassar.edu/senior_capstone Recommended Citation Goodwin, Hattie, "Verified: Surfacing the Relationship Between Social Media Influencers and Emotional Capital" (2021). Senior Capstone Projects. 1101. https://digitalwindow.vassar.edu/senior_capstone/1101 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Window @ Vassar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Senior Capstone Projects by an authorized administrator of Digital Window @ Vassar. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Vassar College VERIFIED: SURFACING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS AND EMOTIONAL CAPITAL A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Bachelor of Arts in Sociology by Hattie Goodwin Thesis Advisor: Abigail Coplin, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Science, Technology and Society May 2021 VERIFIED: SURFACING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS AND EMOTIONAL CAPITAL Hattie Goodwin Department of Sociology Vassar College May 2021 Abstract Motivated by my own complicated and confusing relationship with social media, this thesis seeks to track and surface the dynamics of social media fame through case studies of certain “influencers”. Drawing on scholarship about capital and social performance, this work intends to deconstruct the narrative of social media as a democractic marketplace to share and consume content. Using data from six main case study subjects along with research regarding the structural mechanisms for celebrity production in the context of social media, I construct an understanding of social media celebrity as being intimately connected to the flow of capital, especially “emotional capital” (Cottingham, 2016).