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The YouTube affordance of auto-generated textual closed captions (CC) is valued by the YouTube algorithm, and therefore spoken words in vlogs can be strategically used to optimize and orient videos and channels for search. In their blog, YouTube suggests that complicity with their desire for rich and accurate CC is rewarded with algorithmic visibility (YouTube, 2017a). CC metadata are therefore an example of the significant degree of pressure for vloggers (video bloggers) on YouTube to optimize their content down to minutia of self-presentations. In this chapter I analyze the practice of highly visible beauty vloggers to conceptualize vlogging practices that contribute to algorithmically readable CC text. I term this labor vlogging parlance. Vlogging parlance includes keyword stuffing, defined as inserting often-searched-for keywords into speech. It also encompasses the strategic verbal expressions, language choice, speech pace, enunciation, and minimization of background noise by vloggers. Vlogging parlance can be thought of as a microcelebrity (Senft, 2008) technique, deployed to attract attention and visibility in an information-saturated online “attention economy,” a system of value in which often “money now flows along with attention” (Goldhaber, 1997). The call to optimize speech ultimately places responsibility onto creators to ensure their videos can become visible, while assisting YouTube in developing search accuracy for their viewers. Furthermore, the Western-centric language affordances of CC, and the high valuation of English on the YouTube platform, are used as examples of how social media platforms can underserve differently abled and non-English speaking audiences.

Although the early conversations of microcelebrity centered on Anglo-centric theories and context despite the varied backgrounds and cultural context of microcelebrity, this compilation of chapters seeks to assess and reframe the applications and uptake of microcelebrity around the world. Each of the chapters in this anthology contribute to expand the theoretical concept and contextualize the history and cultural affairs of those who are famous online. The case studies provide examples of how a microcelebrity emerges to fame because of their exposure and interaction within a group of niche users, a specific online community, or a specific cultural and geographical context through the social networks that emerge online. Academic scholarship on microcelebrity has crossed methodologies, disciplines and platforms demonstrating the wide appeal as the influence of these figures are on the rise. As preparation for the reader, this chapter offers a brief history of current scholarship, with an emphasis on shifting knowledge production away from an Anglo and Global North perspective. The introduction chapter serves as a road map for the reader breaking down each of the three sections of the book – norms, labors, and activism. Lastly, the co-editors have outlined different ways to read the text group chapters according to reader interest.

Depending on whether one premises academic literature, press reports, or vernacular folklore, the origin stories of microcelebrity cultures can differ greatly. As academics, we are often inclined to deem as canon and factual the descriptions detailed in refereed academic publications, viewing them as scientific truths that take precedence over other forms of written records such as traditional press or popular media reports. But what happens if the origin stories of cultural phenomena are not logged in these traditionally privileged outlets that are often in the English language, and in a vocabulary not usually accessible to the general populace? What happens if the origin stories of cultural happenings remain within the domains of material or oral folklore without ever being logged as transmittable text? How do researchers go about reading theory, applying concepts, and interpreting their data while maintaining the critical lens of cultural relativism? In this chapter I contemplate the origin stories of my research on microcelebrity cultures between 2009 and 2018 both thematically and conceptually, by biographically recounting my methodological and theoretical trajectories in studying internet celebrities. As an act of radical transparency in displaying some of my most intimate fieldnotes – such as how I came upon particular schools of thought and theories – and as a reflexive mode of transcribing from material and oral culture the earliest beginnings of microcelebrity culture in Singapore as a participant observer, I hope this methodological biography will contribute toward rethinking the politics of our knowledge production as researchers.

In her introductory chapter, the author has two main objectives. First to offer an overview of changing approaches towards researching authenticity in digital spaces, which have, alternatively, emphasised issues of congruence, authorship, verification and vulnerability. Second, to provide an intensely personal reflection on the concept that ultimately asks us, as researchers, to question what we do when we try to perceive and interrogate the notion of ‘authenticity’.

This chapter reports on findings from a critical autoethnography (Anderson, 2006) about the strategies and experiences of male microcelebrities from Australia. The author Jonathan Mavroudis, himself identifies as a microcelebrity with a following of over 27,000 on Instagram at the time of writing. This position granted him insider access to this specific cohort and the microcelebrity world in general. The study comprised participant interviews, analyses of the author’s own experiences, and a survey of over 500 of his Instagram followers. The author draws from these data sources to introduce the concept of “fame labor.” Fame labor reconfigures the way visibility labors such as self-branding labor is understood. It offers a macro perspective that relates to nonmicrocelebrities as well as microcelebrities and illuminates potential wider implications of microcelebrity culture.

Around the mid-2000s, the first wave of young Thai women who attained fame organically on the internet emerged when their photos and profiles were widely shared by friends and fans in web communities and discussion forums. Comprising mainly of students, these women were known as “net idols” and celebrated primarily for their looks, as online conversations focused on their beauty, cosmetic and dressing skills, and overall pleasant appearance. Since then, some of these net idols have parlayed their online popularity into commercial exchanges and partnerships by advertising for clients, evolving into a commercial form of microcelebrity known as “influencers” (Abidin, 2016), while still others progressed into different forms of internet celebrity confined only to online fame as social capital without further tangible returns. In this chapter, we review the conceptual history of net idols and a subset of influencers known as “beauty bloggers” in Thailand, drawing on observations and content analyses of net idols’ Instagram posts, beauty bloggers’ Facebook posts, conversations from selected discussion boards, and popular sentiment about these internet celebrities in tabloids and online websites. Most of the content is originally in Thai and translated by the first author.

This chapter investigates the dynamics of teenage girls' musical.ly productions in relation to microcelebrity inspirations and (non)aspirations, and centrally details the mixed methodologies involved in the research process. The analysis focuses on the flow of the musical.ly app as evidenced through the walk-through method and young girls' engagements with the platform as solicited through personal observations and two small focus group discussions.