Article Convergence: The International Journal of Research into Social media celebrity and the New Media Technologies 2019, Vol. 25(3) 534–553 institutionalization of YouTube ª The Author(s) 2018 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1354856517750368 Mingyi Hou 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 celeb- rification 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: [email protected] 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 representa- tion, 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 tech- niques, 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 ‘micro- celebrity’ as a set of self-representational techniques that borrow from mass media celebrity culture (Gamson, 2011; Garcı´a-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 ‘micro- celebrity’ 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 dis- ciplined, 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. 536 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; Garcı´a-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, Garcı´a-Rapp (2017) explores how dif- ferent 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 tra- ditional 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;