#FashioningIdentity and #PerformingAuthenticity: Communicative, Relational, and Affective Labor in the Digital Frontier of Fashion and Lifestyle Blogging

<p>Fashion and lifestyle blogs serves as a new cultural space, where bloggers are viewed as<em> influencers</em> and set cultural, societal standards of an ideal womanhood. Female bloggers' various forms of labor - specifically, communicative, relational, and affective - establish a blogger's role in social and economic life and reiterate the significance of consumerism as a hallmark of femininity. Fashion and lifestyle bloggers are typically women, whose labor sustains the fashion and lifestyle blogging ecosystem. This occurs through consistent, branded communication; cultivating connections and relationships with followers and fellow bloggers; and transference of affect across digital divides, in real time, through platforms such as Instagram. These processes perpetuate the cycle of consumption through a framework of fulfilling one's duty as both a woman and a citizen.</p> <p>This project examines fashion and lifestyle blogs and their authors through performance-based interviewing and thematic narrative analysis in order to turn a critical eye to blog websites and social media platforms. The dissertation unpacks the cultural scripts and communicative performances that emerge within (im)material blog spaces and the ways in which bloggers enact particular subjectivities in Web 2.0 culture; the labor performances of bloggers; and the implication of blog and social media imagery on blog followers. Constant connectivity and access to digital space encourages consistent subject performances bound to neoliberal, capitalist culture, turning blog and social media spaces into powerful, communicative, Web 2.0 structures.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Year dc:date.available

2018

Author dc:creator

• Neumann, Jessica L.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Kate Willink, Ph.D.
• Christina Foust
• Joshua Hanan
• Nicholas Cutforth

• Affective labor
• Blog
• Communicative labor
• Fashion and lifestyle
• Relational labor
• Communication
• Social Media

Statement dc:rights

• <p>Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.</p>

Language dc:language

en

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/1469

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.du.edu:etd-2469