From Fat Cats to Cool Cats? Ceos and Micro-Celebrity Practices on Twitter

MEDIA@LSE MSc Dissertation Series

Compiled by Bart Cammaerts, Nick Anstead and Ruth Garland

From fat cats to cool cats? CEOs and micro-celebrity practices on Twitter

Julia Regina Austmann, MSc in Media and Communications

Other dissertations of the series are available online here: http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/mediaWorkingPapers/ ElectronicMScDissertationSeries.aspx

Dissertation submitted to the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, August 2014, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the MSc in Media, Communication and Development. Supervised by Dr Olivier Driessens.

The Author can be contacted at: [email protected]

Published by Media@LSE, London School of Economics and Political Science ("LSE"), Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE. The LSE is a School of the University of London. It is a Charity and is incorporated in England as a company limited by guarantee under the Companies Act (Reg number 70527).

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From fat cats to cool cats? CEOs and micro-celebrity practices on Twitter

Julia Regina Austmann

ABSTRACT

This study examines the performances of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) on the microblogging website Twitter utilizing the theoretical framework of micro-celebrity. Specifically, it explores to what extent, if any, Social CEOs (i.e. CEOs who engage on Social Media) perform micro-celebrity in order to meet the informality and accessibility demands on CEOs after the cultural turn to Soft Capitalism. A qualitative content analysis of the 44 most significant Social CEOs’ profiles was conducted in order to uncover to what extent, if any, CEOs on Twitter apply micro-celebrity strategies such as strategic disclosure of their public private persona, public acknowledgment of ordinary followers or employees and interpersonal social interaction. The results reveal that while micro-celebrity is a practice that can be performed on a continuum, Social CEOs generally remain on the lower end. With few exceptions, Social CEOs typically retain parasocial interaction patterns symptomatic of the broadcast era; they predominantly interact with people on an equivalent hierarchical level and focus on their professional rather than on their public private persona. Hence, Social CEOs on Twitter do not promote accessibility and informality to a large extent but rather maintain their status of a distant corporate superhero.

INTRODUCTION

In May 2012 Francesca’s Holdings, a U.S. women’s clothing retailer, dismissed its Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Gene Morphis after he had repeatedly leaked undisclosed company financials through his personal Twitter account. As Morphis presence on Social Network Sites (SNS) was not part of the official communication strategy of the company then, Francesca’s Holding only discovered the digital misbehaviour of its CFO when significant damage was already done to the company’s reputation in the conservative financial community (Schectman and Murphy, 2012). Gene Morphis’ story is one cautionary tale about the traps and pitfalls that a personal SNS presence holds for a company’s leading executive: SNS use can be fatal, as an imprudent comment quickly becomes viral, posing unpredictable

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