Social media’s broadcastability has transformed status into attention-seeking and visibility.

Evidence

I chose to investigate status in the tech scene so that I could analyze inequality from a perspective that incorporated more than any singular point of view, such as class, race, gender, or sexuality. As I delved into modern conceptions of status, I found that social media’s broadcasting ability has transformed social status, encouraging people to prioritize attention and visibility. Social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube teach users strategies and practices to achieve “micro-celebrity”; these strategies combine the entrepreneurialism fetishized by techies and businesspeople with marketing and advertising techniques drawn from commercials and celebrity culture. Social media has brought the attention economy into the everyday lives and relationships of millions of people worldwide, and popular ized attention-getting techniques like self-branding and lifestreaming. To provide an example of just how far this has gone, I recently conducted a study with Nicole Ellison that found that people who maintain Facebook pages memorializing deceased individuals brag about the number of “Likes” they have received. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 30

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines micro-celebrity as combining entrepreneurialism with marketing and celebrity-culture techniques, mediated through social media.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing the Ellison study on memorial Facebook pages and ‘Likes’ bragging as a striking empirical example.
• XREF: connects to: Social media’s design rewards visibility and self-promotion with social status. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 39; Social media turned attention capture into mutual self-display at unprecedented scale — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1062; Fame shifted from costly earned status to broadcast and reality-driven attention (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Social media’s design rewards visibility and self-promotion with social status. #corroborates (0.95) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 39
• Social media turned attention capture into mutual self-display at unprecedented scale #expands (0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1062
• Social media metrics convert audience size into a comparable measure of personal status #expands (0.80) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 245
• Fame shifted from costly earned status to broadcast and reality-driven attention #expands (0.75)
• Attention and status-seeking motivate people to endure micro-celebrity’s costs #expands (0.72) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 409