The Long Tail and Celebrity Culture
Fellow BCM112 students,
If you’re anything like me, you’ve struggled to grasp the concepts presented in this module.
Despite the ‘Content Flow Stack’ now appearing in my nightmares, I feel like I (finally) now have an adequate understanding of ‘Algorithmic Control‘, and I’m confident that this blog post will help you learn something too.
In contrast to previous modules which examined the flow of content from a user perspective, ‘Algorithmic Control‘ assesses the flow of information from an industry standpoint, looking at how the systems work from a technical point of view.
In week 10, we were asked to consider the connection between content control and the control of cultural development. In this blog post, I will analyse the cultural implications of the ‘Long Tail’ theory and the shift in celebrity culture that has occurred.
The Long Tail
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The ‘Long Tail’ (depicted above) is a term popularised by Chris Anderson that statistically examines the dynamics of content abundance as we’ve shifted from legacy media to emergent media (internet paradigm).
- Physical media environments have limits on their content capacity and accessibility. For example, Sanity and the movie theatre.
- Digital places have basically no limitations on content and when it can be accessed. For example, Spotify and Netflix.
Among its many other implications, the abundance and the algorithmic control of content that exists within digital places has resulted in a major cultural shift.
Cultural Shift
The theoretically infinite database that is the internet has caused a significant shift in culture in contrast to the previous model.
We have moved from hit-driven culture to niche-driven culture:
- Then: Small amount of massively popular things. For example, a few very well-known Hollywood celebrities in the 90s
- Now: Large amount of mildly popular things. For example, an abundance of genre-specific online influencers
Micro-celebrities
The term micro-celebrity (or micro-influencer) has only come to exist as a result of the shift from hit-driven culture to niche-driven culture. In general terms, a micro-influencer is someone who has accrued a following/influence within a specific community/genre of the internet. In other words, they are famous within their niche. In comparison to the wider internet, they are incredibly small, but to their online community, they are big celebrities.
An example of a micro-influencer is ‘cleanstagrammer‘ Sophie Hinchliffe (@mrshinchhome).
Sophie’s Instagram account features cleaning tips as part of the ‘Cleanstagram’ genre, and has accrued over 4.5 million followers within this niche online community.
When comparing Sophie to popular celebrities from the 90s, such as Mariah Carey, this cultural shift is evident.
DA Idea – #BorderColliesofInstagram
Expanding on the idea of niche genres, the phenomenon ‘Dogs of Instagram‘ and the many furry ‘micro-influencers’ that have arisen illustrate the cultural shift away from hit-driven celebrity culture.
“The algorithms that govern these social sites and apps are seemingly well aware of our endless desire for cat and dog pics. The most popular petfluencers have as many as, or even more than, 1 million followers on Instagram. Dogs generally do better metrics-wise than cats on Instagram. The ultimate petfluencer on that platform seems to be Pomeranian Spitz @jiffprom — the pooch has more than 10 million followers.
For reference, supermodel Naomi Campbell has 10.6 million followers. The majority of these petfluencers though are smaller-scale “micro-fluencers,” and they tend to command the attention of between 1,000 and 100,000 followers.”
CMS Wire
This DA idea involves creating an Instagram account on behalf of my own border collie, Billie, under the niche genre ‘Dogs of Instagram’, and the even niche-er sub-genre ‘Border Collies of Instagram’.
THE IDEA
CONTEXTUAL RESEARCH
The hashtag ‘#BorderColliesofInstagram‘ led me to a range of accounts similar to this idea for a project.
Most notably:
PROTOTYPING
