Commercial Sharenting on Instagram : How Parents Build Social Capital and Monetize Baby Accounts Sharenting
The evolution of digital technology and social media has fueled cultural and economic dynamics that have empowered more people than ever to aspire to influencer status to obtain the recognition and rewards associated with it. This aspiration is deeply rooted in the assumption that social media has d...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2024 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) |
| Repositorio: | Docta Complutense |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/94666 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/94666 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | 004.774.1(043.2) Redes sociales en línea Online social networks Internet (Informática) 1203.17 Informática |
| Sumario: | The evolution of digital technology and social media has fueled cultural and economic dynamics that have empowered more people than ever to aspire to influencer status to obtain the recognition and rewards associated with it. This aspiration is deeply rooted in the assumption that social media has democratized access to digital fame and profits for everyone (Driessens, 2012). In this context, emerging research shows that a growing number of parents across the world are turning sharenting (sharing content of their children on digital platforms) into a commercial endeavor (Kopecky et al., 2020; Leaver & Abidin, 2017; Lichtenstein et al., 2017) where children’s content is used as their ticket to digital fame and profits. Furthermore, baby accounts driven by monetization are quickly gaining popularity among ordinary parents, following in the footsteps of influencers who create accounts for their children as brand extensions (Abidin, 2017a; Archer, 2019a). However, unlike influencers who use their name recognition to attract business collaborations and their existing audiences to draw followers for their children’s accounts, ordinary parents must find ways to monetize their content and build social capital from the starting line. Social capital on social media is generated by creating a network of followers and boosting engagement indicators (Poecze & Strauss, 2020) and is considered key to obtaining brand collaborations. This work seeks to shed light on commercial forms of sharenting on Instagram. Not only is sharenting rampant on Instagram, but it is where people perceive commercial opportunities to be more accessible compared to other digital platforms. Little is known about how ordinary parents attract, grow, and engage audiences to build the kind of social capital to monetize baby accounts. To address this gap, the objective of this work is to examine and critically assess the implications of the technical affordances and practices used by ordinary parents to build social capital for their baby accounts to pursue social media fame and ultimately obtain monetary gain... |
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