Everyone Stop What You’re Doing and BeReal: Live Networked Publics and Authenticity on BeReal

Abstract

This article critically analyzes the BeReal social media platform, considering how its infrastructure enables a new kind of networked public. I utilize the walkthrough method to examine how BeReal’s “environment of expected use” and vision aims to instill authenticity as a value and ideal for users. I also employ the concept of networked public as a framework to understand how BeReal organizes attention and action through networked technologies that create both a mediated space and collection of people. From this analysis of BeReal’s digital structure, I develop the concept of a live networked public to characterize BeReal’s ability to coordinate interpersonal and global connections to a specific temporality. Furthermore, I connect live networked public to a concept of authenticity in the app’s design by arguing that BeReal’s concept of “realness” is contingent on its unique affordances. Particular features not only support the core network public on the app, but guide behaviors to encourage a particular version of “sporadic” authenticity. This version is useful for BeReal’s branding as the “most authentic” platform in competition with other social media apps. This work combines scholarship on networked publics and affordances, with that on liveness—specifically online and group liveness. Given that BeReal’s skyrocketing popularity tapered off, this study also highlights the importance of analyzing newcomers to the social media ecosystem that promise and play with new ways of being and interacting online.