Participatory branding on social media: The affordances of live streaming for creative labor

Abstract

Creative workers in the social media industries face the imperative to brand themselves to audiences, corporate sponsors, and potential customers. This study complicates the role of self-branding on social media through the case of real-time creative labor on a social live streaming platform. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with live creators and viewers, this study suggests that the affordances of social live streaming platforms create a media and relational environment wherein personal branding practices are belabored by both creators and audiences. This phenomenon, which we term participatory branding, redistributes the labor of personal branding on social media and emphasizes the work of audiences in helping to shape the brand of a creative worker. We then advance a typology that maps the terrain of personal branding on social media as it relates to platform affordances, cross-platform promotion, and audience activity in content creation.