Online Personal Branding in the Middle East and North America: A Comparison of Social Capital Accumulation and Community
Individuals are becoming reflexively aware and actively constructing their identities as they rely less on traditional sources such as socioeconomic status in a postmodern society (Hearn 2008; Wee and Brooke 2010). The ease and accessibility of improving
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personality presented on personal web pages is as valid as drawing on individual identity from a tangible part of someone’s life (Vazire and Gosling 2004), thus making personal web pages and online self-presentation a rich site for study. Personal branding not only draws from the human brand and social media consumption literature, but also from existing research on reflexivity. The literature on sociology indicates two mainstream views of reflexivity. The first one is selfreflexivity with proponents such as Anthony Giddens (1991) and Ulrich Beck (1992), who support extended reflexivity due to the social and communication technology changes that allow identities to be built. The second view is Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’, in which individuals are not the masters of their complete identity (Bourdieu 1977). More recent theorists have attempted to hybridize the two due to changing social structures and institutions (Adams 2006). The literature indicates that reflexivity in identity increases with postmodernity, and as such, this study looks at two different cultures, one that could be classified as modern, and the other as postmodern, to allow for a comparison. CONTEXT In order to compare personal branding efforts in both a postmodern and modern society, this study compares North American personal branders who represent postmodern society (Firat and Venkatesh 1996), and modern personal branders, defined by the lower emphasis on individuality, which is evident in Middle Eastern culture. The Middle Eastern culture in this study is limited to the Arab Gulf States, such as United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. Specifically, we look at personal brands that display characteristics of a mob community (Kozinets, Hemetsberger, and Schau 2008), in which a community forms around an influential person. As such, the subject of this study is bloggers who present themselves as experts on a particular consumption activity online (i.e. make-up, beauty, healthy, photography), and have a community following. None of the selected bloggers are paid advocates or representatives of a specific brand, but rather show favoritism towards certain brands, with varying community response. The bloggers were identified from initial telephone interviews with experts in the fields of make up, health and beauty. The identified bloggers are the most prominent ones that are selected by a majority of the experts. We weeded out bloggers from the selection that were paid brand representatives, such as Michelle Phan, who became a representative of Lancôme. So far it is clear in the literature that bloggers are capable of creating a community following surrounding a particular consumption activity, and also brand themselves through that consumption activity. Additionally, through the community they gain social capital. However, the process of gaining social capital is not clear in the literature, and neither are the differences evident between different regions that have strong social media presence. METHODOLOGY The authors conducted retrospective N
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