Affordances-Based Brand Relations: An Inquire on Memetic Brands on Instagram

Abstract

In this article, we argue that, in an era of platformization of culture, social media users tend to relate with brands through modalities that are more informed by platforms’ affordances (i.e., by the technical architecture of and participatory cultures thriving on social media platforms), rather than shared systems of values and meanings promulgated within brand communities or influencers’ fandoms. Our argument grounds on an analysis of 757,776 Instagram posts related to six global brands, through which we show how users create branded content by following and reproducing a memetic logic. Drawing on our empirical results and Limor Shifman’s theory of Internet memes, we introduce the notion of memetic brands. Memetic brands are collections of branded social media posts, which derive from a standard branded template that repeats from user to user with small compositional changes at every iteration and on top of which users attach expressions of their vernacular creativity. In the process, memetic brands vehiculate a hypersignification, that is, an implicit discourse on fluid and situational consumption. Through the concepts of affordances-based brand relations and memetic brands, the article contributes (from a theoretical and methodological point of view) to the emerging literature on platformization of culture.

Defining affordances in social media research: A literature review

“…Affordances of social media in education and learning (18 articles) exert both positive (Andersson et al, 2021;Stewart, 2015;Vezzoli et al, 2017) and negative influences (Day and Lloyd, (Weber and Haseki, 2019) and the use of social media for interactions within organisations (Mansour et al, 2013;Treem, 2015). Research shows the significant potential of social media for user engagement (15 articles) both for business and personal brands (Caliandro and Anselmi, 2021;Dolan et al, 2016;Wang et al, 2021). Papers in the identity category (10 articles) concern the formation of identities on social media, often through visibility affordance (Askay, 2014;Cirucci, 2015;Seidel et al, 2016).…”

“…Affordances are contextual. Specifically in relation to technology, Caliandro and Anselmi (2021) conclude that affordances 'consist in a set of contextual constraints and props that shape the usage of technology' (p. 3). From this point of view, the actor component of affordances is relevant as the use of technology is further constrained by the properties of an actor, for example, cultural norms.…”

An integrative review on online ethnography methods: differentiating theoretical bases, potentialities and limitations

“…This is a method that has started to be increasingly used in the area of communication and consumer behavior, mainly by Professor Alessandro Caliandro and his co-authors. Caliandro and Anselmi (2021), for example, used the post-API ethnography to investigate the logic of memes on Instagram from the creation of content by users. Recently, Massimo Airoldi presented a new advance to this method by presenting in his book the idea of a sociology of algorithms that could be better understood through Bourdieu's concept of habitus (Airoldi, 2022).…”

When Brands Become Stans: Netflix, Originals, and Enacting a Fannish Persona on Instagram

“…Instagram’s large user base allows for recognizable visual trends to emerge in images posted to the platform, which results in certain image styles becoming visual templates (Leaver et al 2020). Similarly, through their posting practices, brands on Instagram may develop their own “visual brand vernacular” (Caliandro and Anselmi 2021, 10) by posting content with a consistent style. Research shows that brands’ visual vernacular is often mimicked, intentionally or otherwise, by individuals in their own posts on Instagram (Caliandro and Anselmi 2021).…”

“…Similarly, through their posting practices, brands on Instagram may develop their own “visual brand vernacular” (Caliandro and Anselmi 2021, 10) by posting content with a consistent style. Research shows that brands’ visual vernacular is often mimicked, intentionally or otherwise, by individuals in their own posts on Instagram (Caliandro and Anselmi 2021). This suggests that while everyday users are known to imitate celebrity practices on Instagram (Marwick 2015), branded content may also inform the posting practices of individuals.…”