Kucharska, W.,

From Digital Culture & Society

Contents 1 Selfie and Personal Branding Phenomena in the Context of the Network Economy 1.1 Context 1.2 Overview 1.3 Strength and Weakness 1.4 Conclusion

[edit] Selfie and Personal Branding Phenomena in the Context of the Network Economy

Article Title:

Kucharska, W., & Confente, I. (2017). Selfie and Personal Branding Phenomena in the Context of the Network Economy. A Literature Review. Handel Wewnêtrzny, (6), 161–169.

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[edit] Context

Through social media platforms growing more prominent within today's society, people have begun to lean on creating and exchanging content to help promote themselves professionally and socially through self-marketing tactics. Through “innovation, relationship building, collaboration, and knowledge it is clear that social media and selfie-taking are key determinants of the competitive advantage in the network economy” (Kucharska, Confente, pg 161). One of the main worldwide phenomenons is the desire people have to take selfies to self-brand themselves online due to their determination to be seen to build their social network/brand.

[edit] Overview

Selfie and Personal Branding Phenomena in the Context of the Network Economy focus on understanding the role a selfie has on social media platforms. By posting a picture, it is viewed as an approach of building social capital for the social media user to collect at the end and convert it to a form of economic resources if possible. Through the combination of both the real and virtual worlds social media platforms provide, people have the ability to maximize their exposure globally. “Selfies shared on social media have become a phenomenon that supports the need of self-presentation of the self” (Kucharska, Confente, pg 163). With the features of being able to enhance photos and profiles, social media platforms have become the “ideal venue for self-presentation” through the potential it gives people to make themselves look more desirable. Through the examination how frequently and what people view more over social media regarding content-wise, it is explained that “frequent selfie viewing behaviour led to decreased self-esteem whereas a frequent groupie viewing behaviour led to increased self-esteem” (Kucharska, Confente, pg 163).

[edit] Strength and Weakness

This article coverages why people post selfies very successfully in regards to covering why, what, and how. Additionally, it also helps explain to readers how viewing selfies make people feel as content consumers which is a great insight to have. This article, unfortunately, doesn’t cover everything as much as it should. One of the big topics it has missed was how people actually benefit from selfie posting. It did highlight that people post to gain social capital, but it never gave an example of a legitimate benefit just a statement. Another significant aspect that this article failed to bring attention to was the actual social media platforms themselves. The article was unable to recognize which social media platform host the most selfies and why, and ow that particular social media platform plays a part in how, why, and when people actually post a selfie. This information is very imported due to it giving it more significant insight on real-life examples of what motivates people to take part in this global phenomenon and how social media platforms reinforce this behaviour patterns regarding increasing people to create content for them.

[edit] Conclusion

Overall this article does address an important topic regarding digital technology and society. Selfie taking has become a major part of how humans actually utilize digital technologies to benefit and help them socialize, and it is a topic that should be explored even further since it has become part of some peoples every day lives.

Vz15kg 18:27, 7 March 2019 (EST)