Screens, Streams, Scenes, Screams: Labouring sociality among social media microcelebrity

Commercial lifestyle bloggers are one form of microcelebrity who have the ability to command web traffic and negotiate the attention and intimacies of masses of readers. However, much of this labour is not usually visibilized on-screen. Instead, sociality and persona curation is navigated via affective work ‘behind the screens’ of intimacy management between influencer and technology; ‘behind the streams’ of impression management with their fandom; ‘behind the scenes’ of cooperation and competition among fellow bloggers; and ‘behind the screams’ of feeling management between bloggers and their backend actors. Using commercial ‘lifestyle’ bloggers in Singapore as a case study, this paper seeks to understand the affective work and persona curation involved in the internal processes and backend production of microcelebrity web sociality and influence.

Abidin, C. (2015) “Screens, Streams, Scenes, Screams: Labouring sociality among social media microcelebrity” The Gendered Politics of Production: Girls and Women as Media Producers, FemGenSex Research Network, Middlesex University, London. Jun 16, 2015.