Given widespread labor market precarity, contemporary workers-especially those in the media and creative industriesare increasingly called upon to brand themselves. Academics, we contend, are experiencing a parallel pressure to engage in self-promotional practices, particularly as universities become progressively more market-driven. Academia.edu, a papersharing social network that has been informally dubbed "Facebook for academics," has grown rapidly by adopting many of the conventions of popular social media sites. This article argues that the astonishing uptake of Academia.edu both reflects and amplifies the self-branding imperatives that many academics experience. Drawing on Academia.edu's corporate history, design decisions, and marketing communications, we analyze two overlapping facets of Academia.edu: (1) the site's business model and (2) its social affordances. We contend that the company, like mainstream social networks, harnesses the content and immaterial labor of users under the guise of "sharing." In addition, the site's fixation on analytics reinforces a culture of incessant self-monitoring-one already encouraged by university policies to measure quantifiable impact. We conclude by identifying the stakes for academic life, when entrepreneurial and self-promotional demands brush up against the university's knowledge-making ideals.

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This study traces appeals to authenticity, over time, in the promotional material of leading social-networking sites (SNSs). Using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, the public-facing websites of major SNS platforms-beginning with Friendster in 2002-were sampled at six-month intervals, with promotional language and visuals examined for authenticity claims. The authors tracked these appeals, with attention to changes in promotional copy, through to July 2016, among the most popular social media services (as determined by English-language web presence and active monthly user figures or, when unavailable, reported network size). The study found that nearly all SNSs invoked authenticity-directly or through language like "real life" and "genuine"-in their promotional materials. What stood out was the profoundly reactive nature of these claims, with new services often defining themselves, openly or implicitly, against legacy services' inauthenticity. A recurring marketing strategy, in other words, has been to call out competitors' phoniness by substituting (and touting) some other, differently grounded mode of authenticity. Since the affordances of social sites, even those touting evanescence or anonymity, make them vulnerable to similar charges, the cycle gets replayed with numbing regularity.

American economics largely ignored the behavioral sciences movement in the decade after World War II. The social scientists who adopted the “behavioral sciences” moniker were self-consciously nomothetic, fond of mathematics and statistical analysis, and eager to stand close to the natural sciences. The same was true of leading postwar economists, and yet they alone opted out, with only a few exceptions. We explore this divide as it emerged in the early development of the Ford Foundation's Behavioral Sciences Program (BSP). We describe early efforts to incorporate economics into the BSP in a substantial manner, premised on the belief that economic analysis could be greatly strengthened by the behavioral science orientation, with its emphasis on rigorous empirical study of actual human behavior. Yet these efforts failed, in large part because economists, especially those commonly labeled “neoclassical,” were uninterested, skeptical, and even dismissive of what they took to be an immature and faddish initiative. Gaps in postwar prestige and clashing models of social science contributed to the Ford Foundation's decision to fund economics on a separate track from the other social sciences. In our account, the adoption of the “behavioral sciences” terminology in tandem with the movement's institutional anchoring at the Ford Foundation thus reflected and widened the split between economists and their counterparts in the other social sciences.

This study traces appeals to authenticity, over time, in the promotional material of leading social-networking sites (SNSs). Using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, the public-facing websites of major SNS platforms—beginning with Friendster in 2002—were sampled at six-month intervals, with promotional language and visuals examined for authenticity claims. The authors tracked these appeals, with attention to changes in promotional copy, through to July 2016, among the most popular social media services (as determined by English-language web presence and active monthly user figures or, when unavailable, reported network size). The study found that nearly all SNSs invoked authenticity—directly or through language like “real life” and “genuine”—in their promotional materials. What stood out was the profoundly reactive nature of these claims, with new services often defining themselves, openly or implicitly, against legacy services’ inauthenticity. A recurring marketing strategy, in other words, has been to call out competitors’ phoniness by substituting (and touting) some other, differently grounded mode of authenticity. Since the affordances of social sites, even those touting evanescence or anonymity, make them vulnerable to similar charges, the cycle gets replayed with numbing regularity.

Personal Influence's fifteen-page account of the development of mass communication research has had more influence on the field's historical self-understanding than anything published before or since. According to Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld's well-written, two-stage narrative, a loose and undisciplined body of prewar thought had concluded naively that media are powerful—a myth punctured by the rigorous studies of Lazarsfeld and others, which showed time and again that media impact is in fact limited. This “powerful-tolimited-effects” story line remains textbook boilerplate and literature review dogma fifty years later. This article traces the emergence of the Personal Influence synopsis, with special attention to (1) Lazarsfeld's audience-dependent framing of key media research findings and (2) the surprisingly prominent role of Edward Shils in supplying key elements of the narrative.

By analyzing the “mass idols” (Lowenthal, 1944) of contemporary media culture, this study contributes to our understanding of popular communication, branding, and social media self-presentation. Leo Lowenthal, in his well-known analysis of popular magazine biographies, identified a marked shift in mass-mediated exemplars of success: from self-made industrialists and politicians (idols of production) to screen stars and athletes (idols of consumption). Adapting his approach, we draw upon a qualitative analysis of magazine biographies (People and Time, n = 127) and social media bios (Instagram and Twitter, n = 200), supplemented by an inventory of television talk show guests (n = 462). Today's idols, we show, blend Lowenthal's predecessor types: they hail from the sphere of consumption, but get described –and describe themselves –in production terms. We term these new figures “idols of promotion,” and contend that their stories of self-made success –the celebrations of promotional pluck –are parables for making it in a precarious employment economy.

By analyzing the "mass idols" (Lowenthal, 1944) of contemporary media culture, this study contributes to our understanding of popular communication, branding, and social media self-presentation. Leo Lowenthal, in his well-known analysis of popular magazine biographies, identified a marked shift in mass-mediated exemplars of success: from selfmade industrialists and politicians ("Idols of Production") to screen stars and athletes ("Idols of Consumption"). Adapting his approach, we draw upon a qualitative analysis of magazine biographies (People and Time, n=127) and social media bios (Instagram and Twitter, n=200), supplemented by an inventory of television talk show guests (n=462). Today's idols, we show, blend Lowenthal's predecessor types: They hail from the sphere of consumption, but get described-and describe themselves-in production terms. We term these new figures "Idols of Promotion" and contend that their stories of self-made success-the celebrations of promotional pluck-are parables for making it in a precarious employment economy.