Bringing Bourdieu to a Content Farm: Social Media Production Fields and the Cultural Economy of Attention

IF 5.5 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Social Media + Society Pub Date : 2023-07-01 DOI:10.1177/20563051231193027

A. Mears

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Attention is a valuable and scarce resource in the online “attention economy.” But not all attention is equally valuable. This article advances a relational theory of the value of attention by situating social media content production as a field. I draw from an ethnography of a “content farm” and interviews with 60 creators who make highly-paid but low-status entertainment videos designed to go viral on Facebook, as well as on SnapChat, TikTok, and YouTube. I propose an inverse relationship between status and reach: higher reach may pose risks to a creator’s status and reputation. Furthermore, in pursuit of the highest possible reach, viral creators construct situational authenticity, rather than personal authenticity, and they relate to their audiences antagonistically, in contrast to existing studies of influencers. How creators seek attention, from whom, and with what conversion strategies, I argue, depends upon their location in a cultural field because online audiences exist in a hierarchy of perceived social worth.

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将布迪厄带到内容农场：社交媒体生产领域和关注的文化经济

在网络“注意力经济”中，注意力是一种宝贵而稀缺的资源。但并不是所有的注意力都有同样的价值。本文将社交媒体内容生产作为一个领域，提出了关注价值的关系理论。我从一个“内容农场”的民族志和对60名创作者的采访中得出结论，这些创作者制作了高薪但地位低下的娱乐视频，旨在在Facebook、SnapChat、TikTok和YouTube上疯传。我提出了地位和影响力之间的反比关系：更高的影响力可能会对创作者的地位和声誉造成风险。此外，为了追求尽可能高的影响力，病毒创作者构建了情境真实性，而不是个人真实性，与现有的影响者研究相比，他们与受众的关系是对立的。我认为，创作者如何寻求关注，从谁那里寻求关注，以及用什么转换策略，取决于他们在文化领域的位置，因为在线观众存在于感知社会价值的层次中。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Social Media + Society COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

9.20

自引率

3.80%

发文量

111

审稿时长

12 weeks

期刊介绍： Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. We publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, and we endorse mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The editorial vision of Social Media + Society draws inspiration from research on social media to outline a field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies evolve. We foster the open access of sharing of research on the social properties of media, as they manifest themselves through the uses people make of networked platforms past and present, digital and non. The journal presents a collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to this field of study.