Frenemies and cashtags: Social friending and hashtag lifecycle among social media microcelebrities

Commercial lifestyle bloggers are among the most influential social media microcelebrities in Singapore, being predominantly self-taught young women who weave advertorials and advertisements into personal blog entries and social media posts. In essence, they are selling an aspirational middle-class lifestyle to their readers, seemingly attainable through the goods and services marketed. The bloggers depend and trade on ‘social currency’, that is, their virtual world reputation and rank in the industry. One measure of reputation is the number of ‘Likes’, ‘Follows’, ‘ReTweets’, ‘Favourites’, ‘Friends’ and ‘Readers’ a blogger can effectively garner on various social media platforms. Taking a grounded theory approach, this paper focuses on the bloggers’ individual construction and circulation of this form of social capital. Specifically, the paper discusses the bloggers’ socializing techniques and the lifecycle of hashtag use as business strategies.

Abidin, C. (2015) “Frenemies and cashtags: Social friending and hashtag lifecycle among social media microcelebrities” The Swedish School of Library and Information Science (SSLIS), University of Borås, Borås. Mar 30, 2015.

Abidin, C. (2014) “Frenemies and cashtags: Social friending and hashtag lifecycle among social media microcelebrities” Identity Research Network (IRN) Workshop, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. Dec 3, 2014.