Micro-celebrity, charity, democracy? Decoding the Logic of Udorse
Here's my newest paper proposal for the Association of Internet Researchers Conference (this October in Sweden!)
This paper is part of a larger (and awesome) panel I’ve proposed with the title, “Brand Me Online: Sustaining Personal Identity through Strategies of the Corporate.”
PROPOSED PAPER:
Micro-celebrity, charity, democracy? Decoding the Logic of Udorse
Theresa M. Senft, Senior Lecturer Media Studies, University of East London, UK
In early October of 2009, I received a piece of email from Geoffrey Lewis, the co-founder and CEO of a new startup company in New York City called Udorse (www.udorse.com). Lewis, a former brand manager at Proctor & Gamble, thought I would be interested in his company’s philosophy and corporate mission. “We are building a social game around democratizing endorsement deals for the mid-long tail of people living a micro-celebrity lifestyle,” he wrote.
Curious as to what that might mean, I logged on to Udorse, and watched as all my Facebook pictures (as well as those shared by friends) were extracted to the site. I was then encouraged to tag my uploaded images with brands I wanted to endorse: clicking anywhere on a photo, I could note the jacket bought at Armani; the hair fluffed with Loreal; the book purchased from Amazon. After filling in a short form (to see if the brands I specified were partnered with Udorse), there was nothing more for me to do but wait for my friends to click on my images, hopefully interacting with the brands in a way that made Udorse’s partners happy. At this point I would receive a micropayment from the participating brand as thanks. All monies-which I could keep for myself, but were also encouraged to donate to affiliated charities like Amnesty International-were routed through my PayPal account.
This paper represents an attempt to consider what users lose and gain (personally, financially, politically) by participating in Udorse, a Web company not alone in their earnest belief that one might simultaneously use social media for playing games, furthering democracy, and redistributing wealth along the ‘long tail’ of Web 2.0 consumption. I am particularly interested in the ways in which Udorse seamlessly moves from discourses of monetization to those of advocacy and/or charity, as in the statement (taken from a company press release), “Udorse encourages people to use its services to support a cause, an indie artist or the friend that wants to be the next Diane von Furstenberg.”
Methodologically, my approach to this project is four-fold. First, I examine the impact on heavy social media users recent business titles like Brand Me; Me 2.0; and World Famous. Next, I look to ethnographic work on micro-celebrity (Senft: 2008, boyd: 2009) to understand why a heavy social media user might consider his/her online presence as an endorsement mechanism. I then employ theories of ‘immaterial labor’ (Sholz: 2008; Terranova 2000) to ask questions regarding base, superstructure, work and compensation within Udorse’s economic model. Combining recent work on talk show television and the ‘emotional public sphere’ (Lunt and Spenner: 2005) with recent political analyses of celebrity charity affiliations (Littler: 2008; Magubane: 2008), I deconstruct Udorse’s logic of democracy via micro-celebrity charity endorsement. Throughout, I detail my personal experiences in three realms: as a user of the system, as someone engaged in conversations with the company’s management, and as a social critic leery of (but not entirely opposed to) Udorse’s neo-liberalist logic of democracy through endorsement.
Works Cited in this Proposal
boyd, d., 2009. Taken out of context: American teen sociality in networked publics. Ph.D. dissertation, available online at http://www.danah.org/papers/TakenOutOfContext.pdf (viewed 25 February 2010)
Hardt, M. & Negri, A., 2005. Multitude, Penguin Books.
Lunt, P. & Stenner, P., 2005. The Jerry Springer Show as an emotional public sphere. Media Culture Society, 27(1), 59-81.
Magubane, Z., 2008. The (Product) Red Man’s Burden: Charity, Celebrity, and the Contradictions of Coevalness. The Journal of Pan African Studies, 2(6), 102-1.
Scholz, T., 2008. Market ideology and the myths of Web 2.0. First Monday, 13(3).
Senft, T.M., 2008. Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in the Age of Social Networks. Peter Lang.
Terranova, T., 2000. Producing culture for the digital economy. Social Text, 63(18), 33-58.
PROPOSED PAPER:
Micro-celebrity, charity, democracy? Decoding the Logic of Udorse
Theresa M. Senft, Senior Lecturer Media Studies, University of East London, UK
In early October of 2009, I received a piece of email from Geoffrey Lewis, the co-founder and CEO of a new startup company in New York City called Udorse (www.udorse.com). Lewis, a former brand manager at Proctor & Gamble, thought I would be interested in his company’s philosophy and corporate mission. “We are building a social game around democratizing endorsement deals for the mid-long tail of people living a micro-celebrity lifestyle,” he wrote.
Curious as to what that might mean, I logged on to Udorse, and watched as all my Facebook pictures (as well as those shared by friends) were extracted to the site. I was then encouraged to tag my uploaded images with brands I wanted to endorse: clicking anywhere on a photo, I could note the jacket bought at Armani; the hair fluffed with Loreal; the book purchased from Amazon. After filling in a short form (to see if the brands I specified were partnered with Udorse), there was nothing more for me to do but wait for my friends to click on my images, hopefully interacting with the brands in a way that made Udorse’s partners happy. At this point I would receive a micropayment from the participating brand as thanks. All monies-which I could keep for myself, but were also encouraged to donate to affiliated charities like Amnesty International-were routed through my PayPal account.
This paper represents an attempt to consider what users lose and gain (personally, financially, politically) by participating in Udorse, a Web company not alone in their earnest belief that one might simultaneously use social media for playing games, furthering democracy, and redistributing wealth along the ‘long tail’ of Web 2.0 consumption. I am particularly interested in the ways in which Udorse seamlessly moves from discourses of monetization to those of advocacy and/or charity, as in the statement (taken from a company press release), “Udorse encourages people to use its services to support a cause, an indie artist or the friend that wants to be the next Diane von Furstenberg.”
Methodologically, my approach to this project is four-fold. First, I examine the impact on heavy social media users recent business titles like Brand Me; Me 2.0; and World Famous. Next, I look to ethnographic work on micro-celebrity (Senft: 2008, boyd: 2009) to understand why a heavy social media user might consider his/her online presence as an endorsement mechanism. I then employ theories of ‘immaterial labor’ (Sholz: 2008; Terranova 2000) to ask questions regarding base, superstructure, work and compensation within Udorse’s economic model. Combining recent work on talk show television and the ‘emotional public sphere’ (Lunt and Spenner: 2005) with recent political analyses of celebrity charity affiliations (Littler: 2008; Magubane: 2008), I deconstruct Udorse’s logic of democracy via micro-celebrity charity endorsement. Throughout, I detail my personal experiences in three realms: as a user of the system, as someone engaged in conversations with the company’s management, and as a social critic leery of (but not entirely opposed to) Udorse’s neo-liberalist logic of democracy through endorsement.
Works Cited in this Proposal
boyd, d., 2009. Taken out of context: American teen sociality in networked publics. Ph.D. dissertation, available online at http://www.danah.org/papers/TakenOutOfContext.pdf (viewed 25 February 2010)
Hardt, M. & Negri, A., 2005. Multitude, Penguin Books.
Lunt, P. & Stenner, P., 2005. The Jerry Springer Show as an emotional public sphere. Media Culture Society, 27(1), 59-81.
Magubane, Z., 2008. The (Product) Red Man’s Burden: Charity, Celebrity, and the Contradictions of Coevalness. The Journal of Pan African Studies, 2(6), 102-1.
Scholz, T., 2008. Market ideology and the myths of Web 2.0. First Monday, 13(3).
Senft, T.M., 2008. Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in the Age of Social Networks. Peter Lang.
Terranova, T., 2000. Producing culture for the digital economy. Social Text, 63(18), 33-58.