Stars in social media: new light through old windows?

Abstract

We review the economics of superstars, originally developed for stars in traditional media, and discuss whether they are applicable for the (allegedly) novel phenomenon of stars in social media (influencer, micro-celebrities). Moreover, we analyse potentially new factors for creating social media superstardom that may be special to the nature of social media. Our overall result is that the economics of superstars, like the role of talent, market concentration effects, MacDonald-style and Adler-style effects, remain applicable and relevant for social media stars. In line with this assessment, we find that several (allegedly) new star factors in social media, like user-generated content, prosumption, disappearance of gatekeepers and authenticity, turn out to be only partly applicable or just slightly different to traditional concepts. However, algorithm management and upload strategies represent novel success factors relevant for social media superstardom that are not captured by traditional superstar theories.

The economics of social media (super-)stars: an empirical investigation of stardom and success on YouTube

“…In traditional media, powerful gatekeepers (like editors, producers, etc.) decide on release strategies and publication of contents and the stars cannot completely control their output frequency (Gaenssle & Budzinski, 2020). By contrast, SMS self-reliantly upload content on their channels and decide to upload strategies.…”

“…Artists, actors, writers, and many more did not have the power to decide whether (and when) to publish their content. This has changed in social media, where content providers themselves decide their supply frequency (Gaenssle & Budzinski, 2020). In the course of time, some content providers become so successful that they reach a level of income previously only attainable by traditional superstars.…”

“…The talent-dimension of SMS varies widely across different categories and with respective requirements. 2 Due to the self-made characteristics of social media stars, who create their own content, generate, and manage their own audience (Gaenssle & Budzinski, 2020), it seems suitable to refer to them as stars rather than celebrities.…”

“…constantly create and upload new content and build their own success. We refer to this as audience building and maintenance, since SMS are independent of traditional mediators and gatekeepers (Gaenssle & Budzinski, 2020;Gräve, 2017) and, hence, have direct audience access and freedom to decide on supply frequency. This begs the following research questions: 1) Can SMS influence their audience success by distinctive upload strategies?…”

Data analytics of social media publicity to enhance household waste management

“…There is a paucity of literature on measuring social media publicity systematically in household waste management. Generally, the popularity of a subscription account on social media could be reflected by user engagement ( Aldous et al., 2019 ), such as views ( Jiang et al., 2019 ), likes ( Ksiazek et al., 2016 ), user-to-user interaction ( Hu et al., 2017 ) and user comments ( Gaenssle and Budzinski, 2020 ). Previous observations indicated that the popularity of a social media post regarding household waste management was related to its publishing time ( Ma and Chen, 2017 ), published title and topics ( Jing and Wei, 2016 ) in attracting the user attention.…”