The Self-Branding Practices of Celebrities on Instagram
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Graduate School of Humanities Media Studies: Television and Cross-Media Culture MASTER’S THESIS The Self-Branding Practices of Celebrities on Instagram An Extensive look at the Instagram accounts of Kim Kardashian, Beyoncé Knowles, and Cristiano Ronaldo Student number: 11310138 Word count: 18,814 Supervisor: Dr. Jaap Kooijman | Second reader: Dr. Jan Teurlings Abstract This thesis aimed to outline the self-branding practices of Kim Kardashian, Beyoncé Knowles, and Cristiano Ronaldo. It proposed how traditional frameworks of self-presentation from Dyer’s concept of the star image, Goffman’s ‘impression management’, Turners notions of the ‘real self’, and Halonen- Knight and Hurmerinta’s meaning transfer models in celebrity endorsements could provide a starting point for the range of self-presentation strategies they adopt. A textual and functional analyses of a sample of Instagram posts were carried out and these posts suggested the types of self-presentation practices used by celebrities. Nevertheless, it was outlined how the use of these theoretical frameworks on the contemporary platform of Instagram causes tensions. Moreover, these posts indicated what features and tools of Instagram were used and what facets of their appearances were most prominent for the particular self-presentation they wanted to convey. The conclusions drawn from the analysis of these posts are that the traditional frameworks of self-presentation need to be adjusted in order to fit in with the modern-day usage patterns of Instagram. Secondly, they reveal that the self-branding practices always need to prioritise and condition to the expectations of their Instagram followers before fulfilling their own branding goals. Furthermore, the analytics demonstrated that the posts with an increased access into a celebrity's personal life were the most remarkable. Yet, follow up studies could investigate the self-branding practices of less famous celebrities as well to understand whether these patterns of expectations and the self-branding practices are only relevant for world-famous celebrities like Kim Beyoncé and Cristiano 2 Table of Contents Introduction ................................ ................................ ................................ ................................ ........... 4! 1. Self-presentation on Instagram ................................ ................................ ................................ ..... 10! 1.1 Celebrities conditioning for fans ................................ ................................ ................................ 10! 1.2 Celebrities fulfilling their own purposes ................................ ................................ .................... 12! 1.3 Star Images and Impression Management: Appealing to fans ................................ ................... 13! 1.4 The Institutional and Impulsive: The extraordinary and ordinary lifestyles .............................. 15! 1.5 Celebrity Endorsements and Advertisements ................................ ................................ ............. 16! 1.6 The self-presentation as a reflection of a celebrity’s goal ................................ .......................... 17! 2. The star-image on Instagram ................................ ................................ ................................ ......... 19! 2.1 The public within public: ‘candid’ and ‘professional’ photographs ................................ .......... 20! 2.2 The private within public: the ‘intimate’ and the ‘post-private’ ................................ ................ 21! 2.3 Questions of authenticity and the implications of the public and private overlap ..................... 22! 2.4 Conditioning ‘star images’ for followers: Goffman’s ‘Impression Management’ ..................... 24! 2.5 Conditioning star images for purposes: Maintaining ‘openness’ ................................ ............... 28! 3. The Institutional and Impulsive representations on Instagram ................................ ................. 30! 3.1 The institutionalized representations: The extraordinary celebrity status ................................ .. 31! 3.2 The impulsive representations: The ordinary celebrity status ................................ .................... 33! 3.3 Implications of the shift between the institutional and impulsive representations ..................... 34! 3.4 Celebrities conditioning for patterns of consumption: Goffman’s ‘Role Distance’ (1961) ....... 35! 3.5 Conditioning the ‘institutional and ‘impulsive’ for their own purposes ................................ .... 37! 4. The Star Commodity ................................ ................................ ................................ ...................... 40! 4.1 The endorsements and advertised Instagram posts of the celebrities ................................ ......... 41! 4.2 Questions of performative intimacy and the implications of marketing ................................ .... 42! 4.3 Celebrities and Instagram users conditioning for the celebrity through labour ......................... 46! 4.4 The elements to prioritise in a double form of branding ................................ ............................ 49! Conclusion ................................ ................................ ................................ ................................ ........... 50! Bibliography ................................ ................................ ................................ ................................ ........ 53! Appendices ................................ ................................ ................................ ................................ ........... 57! 3 Introduction ‘It is a talent to have a brand that’s really successful off of getting people to like you, for you’ - Kim Kardashian (Whitaker, Bill. Interview, 21 October 2016) The concept of the ‘celebrity’ has been framed as a historical process (Braudy 1986 in Marwick and Boyd, Celebrity Practice 140) and thus it used to mean something differently in the past than it does now. Historically celebrities were particularly visible through the medium of television and the types of celebrity stories that were broadcasted were those audiences found ‘worthy of intensive appreciation’ (Newman and Levine 142). The television mediated the perception of these celebrities as well as the communication of their lives, however because of its transformative process, there are new mediums that have redefined the concept of the celebrity in todays’ media saturated landscape. This refers to the advent of the web and the enhanced interaction with screens that generate individually customized feeds of images (Carah and Shaul 72). On these screens, being a celebrity is not just about their intrinsic personal characteristics or external labels but also about their ‘organic and ever-changing performative practices’ reinforced through the circulation of images on these media devices. This represents the logic of self-branding – a strategy or a new language for self-empowerment whereby celebrities cultivate a name and image of the self that can be manipulated […] for their own purposes and well-being (Davis, 41). Self-branding is similar to product branding, because it becomes a powerful tool through which the celebrities sell themselves in order to stand out from the competition (Davis 47). They do this by getting in touch with the “selling parts” of their personality, crafting them into a relentlessly focused persona, and enhancing their profile and their visibility through marketing so that, like a product they become ultimate objects of desire (Davis 47-8). As people react to situations based on context rather than fixed psychological traits (Meyrowitz in Marwick and Boyd , Context Collapse 116), these performative practices in self-branding are particularly crucial for the identity that the celebrities wish to communicate with their fans. Moreover, since traditional settings for in-person celebrity-fan interactions have become less popular and the highly mediated digitized-image culture take over, fans expect the images of celebrities to integrate the elements of performed intimacy, authenticity, and the ‘consumable persona’ that allow the viewer to see the real person behind the ‘celebrity’ (Marwick and Boyd, Celebrity Practice 149). However, what can be defined as a ‘consumable persona’? What forms of self-presentation are perceived as the most intimate and authentic? And why have the ‘intimate’ and ‘authentic’ images become such a crucial component of a celebrity’s performative practices? These are the questions this thesis strives to answer by analyzing a number of their self-presentation strategies on social media. For this, traditional theories of self-presentation are productive starting points to understand the way celebrities present themselves to the many fans they have. Furthermore, celebrity practices are shaped to conform with the platform and perceptions of what a consumable persona is, is indirectly informed by the platform and the users present on it. This shaping and conditioning of a celebrity’s self- 4 presentations with forms of consumption on social media a central characteristic of self-branding, in which the self and market fuse together (Davis 46) and allow the celebrity to transform their ordinary self-presentation practices into market-worthy performances. The social media application ‘Instagram’ which was launched in 2010 has become one of the most significant sites in which celebrities position