2022/04/06 by Liron Simatzkin-Ohana, Paul Frosh
paper · doi:10.1177/01634437221084107
This paper calls for renewed critical examination of the representational practices of commercial brands on social media, in particular their appropriation and adaptation of user-generated “amateur” or “vernacular” cultural styles. It proposes that this appropriation parallels processes of professionalization, influencer culture, and self-branding on social media. Focusing empirically on the official Instagram accounts of 12 leading fashion brands, we identify three distinctive patterns: (1) Regramming: sharing and crediting users’ photographs on the brands’ official feed; (2) Vernacular celebrity: posting the amateur-style photographs of a celebrity or model associated with the brand; (3) Brandfies: selfie-style images created by corporations where the brand appears to be a “self” performing its own representation. We argue that these appropriations position brands more fully as social beings, as tech-savvy cultural amateurs familiar with platform affordances, and as physically embodied selves. Self-branding is thus systematically complemented and brought to fulfilment by brand-“selfing.”