Manufacturing Authenticity: The Rise of Indonesian Micro-Celebrities on Instagram

Abstract

This paper interrogates the way in which Instagram, as one of the most famous micro-blogging participatory online media in the world, creates the production, consumption and articulation of the so-called micro-celebrity. The concept of micro-celebrity has been expanded to unearth the phenomenon of someone who has gained massive online popularity and followers based on their online-persona. Despite its burgeoning prominence, there is a lacuna of research addressing the emergence of micro-celebrities in Indonesia and the way in which Instagram facilitates such trajectories. This paper focuses on Instagram and how this platform helps to build celebrity online persona by examining what and how discourses have been embodied and reproduced by local (Indonesia) micro-celebrities. Using multimodal discourse analysis, this paper concludes that both discourses of authenticity and ordinariness are mostly prevailing in both Dian Pelangi and Arief Muhammad’s Instagram accounts. Dian Pelangi and Arief Muhammad’s rise to fame through online platform such as Instagram confirmed the digital myth that the Internet is the place of meritocracy where everyone can thrive without acknowledging the structural inequality toward those who lack in access or knowledge in achieving the same level of success.