The Discourse of Self-Promotion and Authenticity in Social Networking Sites: Personal Branding and Microcelebrity

Abstract

This is a theoretical proposal about two new groups of communicative practices developed by social networking sites users. This kind of practices shares the self-promotional discourse and the commodification of identity: microcelebrity and self-branding. Concretely, this paper connects different branding philosophies with the way that many users are carrying out their own strategies to compete in order to gain attention and engage their personal audiences. In this way, some features from the personality branding are observed in the practices of microcelebrity, where the main value is being able to communicate a message of authenticity and closeness about their identity performance. On the contrary, between users who manage their social profiles as a personal brand, it is observed a kind of communication more focused on their professional attributes, offering clear similarities with the “branding-product” philosophy (Fernández Gómez, 2013). These approaches to the self-promotion exercise are contextualised in different cultural inheritances. In this sense, microcelebrity practices can be analysed as a direct derivation from celebrity culture, related to the meta-process of celebritization (Driessens, 2013). This practice is connected with a kind of communication that tries to be perceived as more genuine than mass-media messages. In the self-branding case, the concept was formulated from the marketing point of view and the entrepreneurial culture. The idea of a self that is conceived as a company has originated some communicative forms which are excessively focused in expressing some professional attributes that could result in the creation of redundant information and “depersonalization” in the individual self-presentation.