Monetizing the mommy: mommy blogs and the audience commodity

Hunter, Andrea

doi:10.1080/1369118x.2016.1187642

Cited by 44 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…While Chen links this to ideal mother prototypes, I argue that the mommy terminology (instead of mother, for example) works also as a convenient, ready-to-employ device of light-hearted dismissal of these texts as anything to be seriously taken or analyzed. Part of this may well link to the commercialization of these spaces as Hunter (2016) in her recent study argues, but there is a broader debate to be had about the words we use to refer to women's/mothers' textual practices on social media. Rogers (2015) offers "maternal essayists" as a new category of mothers writing online.…”

Section: The Social Media Practices Of Mothersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speaking About Birth: Visible and Silenced Narratives in Online Discussions of Childbirth

Das

2017

Social Media + Society

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In this article, I present an analysis of 1930 posts from 12 discussion threads from an online parenting forum, drawing upon a broader project on the mediation of childbirth. I present three themes in analysis: the multi-pronged functions of writing birth narratives, the discursive and perceived silencing of difficult stories, and the overt individualization and self-management evident in women's accounts. I locate these as outcomes of the individualization of maternity in contemporary society and pendulum swings in cultural and policy-level conceptualizations of how births "should be." I argue for greater attention to be paid to the mediation of parenting and networked maternal subjectivities.

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Section: The Social Media Practices Of Mothersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speaking About Birth: Visible and Silenced Narratives in Online Discussions of Childbirth

Das

2017

Social Media + Society

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“…In an effort to monetize one’s Instagram account, influencers have to work on building an audience appealing to advertisers (Hunter, 2016). To do so, they invest in developing a vision of who they want their audience to be.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given the networked UGC nature of Instagram, it is unsurprising that influencers conceptualize their relationship to their followers as a personal one, bound by norms of reciprocity and care. Yet, as they work toward a more established influencer status, the construction of their imagined audience becomes increasingly guided by the commodification of their following (Hunter, 2016). Thus, participants in our study talked about closely monitoring their follower-related metrics.…”

Section: Imagining the Audiencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, as soon as influencers write about commercial products, followers can perceive it as a loss of authenticity, accusing the influencer of selling themselves out and of writing for the money rather than for the community (Hunter, 2016; Kozinets et al, 2010). As a result, influencers seek to proactively balance the perceived expectations of their followers with those of the advertisers they work with.…”

Section: Social Media Influencersmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Selling brands while staying “Authentic”: The professionalization of Instagram influencers

2020

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While Instagram influencers may have started out as ordinary people documenting their everyday life through a stream of photographs, they are increasingly emerging as an intermediary between advertisers and consumers. This study examines the professionalization of Instagram influencers, combining data from 11 interviews with travel influencers with a visual and textual content analysis of their 12 most recent Instagram posts ( N = 132). We show how the increasing professionalization of the influencer steers their relationship with their audience, the advertisers they work with, and the platform Instagram. We argue that, for the Instagram influencer to be perceived as successful, they need to negotiate a tension: they need to appear authentic, yet also approach their followers in a strategic way to remain appealing to advertisers. Although Instagram influencers are seen as more trustworthy than traditional forms of advertising, this tension ultimately leads to a standardization of the content shared by influencers.

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“…On the contrary, the (economic and visibility) success gained through the audience is a tool to affirm one's non-mainstream voice in the fashion media landscape. Seen as such, curvy influencers are not very different to other categories such as mommy bloggers (Lopez, 2009;Hunter, 2016) who started their activity with no commercial aims and were able to create a sense of community, and subsequently adopted a model of blogging for profit criticised by the first-wave users. Unlike them, however, plus-size bloggers operate in a domain, that of fashion, where the commercial component is a key element of the game.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Commodifying the followers or challenging the mainstream? The two-sided potential of curvy fashion bloggers

Pedroni

Pofi²

2018

(OBS*)

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Digital influencers and fashion blogging are the subject of a growing interest as a pattern of both production and consumption of digital culture. This essay examines the process of co-evolution of digital influencers and audiences by taking into consideration the work of female curvy fashion bloggers. It is argued that, although plus-size social media influencers may play a counter-hegemonic role by conveying alternative narratives regarding body and beauty, many curvy blogs are not significantly different to "standard" female outfit blogs, in which an audience is commodified as a source of material income and symbolic capital. Digital influencers, therefore, work as examples of co-opted audiences able to enhance further processes of co-option. The article also studies the social media influencers' relationships with their audiences, focusing attention on the manner through which the blogger produces, develops and maintains this relationship. Cultural studies and political economy perspectives on public are discussed to contextualize the analysis of curvy blogs, as fashion studies have so far shown a limited interest in audience as an issue. The qualitative empirical material of the essay, made of 15 semi-structured interviews with female curvy bloggers and the content analysis of 40 curvy blogs, is analysed according to a grounded theory framework. Three main theoretical dimensions are discussed: the blogger's career, success and professionalization, their faceted role in the process of audience shaping and the (reframed) narratives of beauty and body they spread. Drawing on a typology of curvy bloggers, the antinomy between "commodifying the audience" and "challenging the mainstream" is presented as a misleading way of interpreting the phenomenon, as the commercialisation of attention and the engagement of followers work as powerful and connected poles of a continuum.

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Monetizing the mommy: mommy blogs and the audience commodity

Cited by 44 publications

References 12 publications

Speaking About Birth: Visible and Silenced Narratives in Online Discussions of Childbirth

Speaking About Birth: Visible and Silenced Narratives in Online Discussions of Childbirth

Selling brands while staying “Authentic”: The professionalization of Instagram influencers

Commodifying the followers or challenging the mainstream? The two-sided potential of curvy fashion bloggers

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