The linguistics of self-branding and micro-celebrity in Twitter: The role of hashtags

Ruth Page

doi:10.1177/1750481312437441

Abstract

Twitter is a linguistic marketplace (Bourdieu, 1977) in which the processes of self-branding and micro-celebrity (Marwick, 2010) depend on visibility as a means of increasing social and economic gain. Hashtags are a potent resource within this system for promoting the visibility of a Twitter update (and, by implication, the update’s author). This study analyses the frequency, types and grammatical context of hashtags which occurred in a dataset of approximately 92,000 tweets, taken from 100 publically available Twitter accounts, comparing the discourse styles of corporations, celebrity practitioners and ‘ordinary’ Twitter members. The results suggest that practices of self-branding and micro-celebrity operate on a continuum which reflects and reinforces the social and economic hierarchies which exist in offline contexts. Despite claims that hashtags are ‘conversational’, this study suggests that participatory culture in Twitter is not evenly distributed, and that the discourse of celebrity practitioners and corporations exhibits the synthetic personalization (Fairclough, 1989) typical of mainstream media forms of broadcast talk.

Highlights

Biographical note Dr Ruth Page is a Lecturer in English Language at the University of Leicester
Forms of self branding exist on a continuum, and are adapted with lower frequency by ‘ordinary’ Twitter members who use hashtags to make their professional identity searchable by using hashtags which categorise their posts, but promote their identity as affiliated within a wider professional field
The promotional practices of self branding via hashtags are offset by the interactions typical of micro-celebrity

Summary

Introduction

Biographical note Dr Ruth Page is a Lecturer in English Language at the University of Leicester. This study is a first step in this direction and compares the frequency and discursive contexts in which hashtags are used by members who might self-brand in a more or less explicit fashion: selected groups of corporate accounts, celebrity practitioners and ‘ordinary’ Twitter members.

Results

Conclusion