The performance of authenticity online is a profoundly and inherently gendered issue which implicates women in particular and exclusive ways. We constantly define and measure –and reward—appearances of authenticity even as we know it is always a performance. Social media amplifies this tension, as it is often positioned as a kind of open space, where one can be “oneself,” while at the same time it is also structurally designed as constantly manipulable. This has particular relevance for young cis-gendered women who perform authenticity on social media, because normative hetero-femininity is always constructed in terms of its artifice, where femininity is defined as a necessary contrived performance, from make-up to bodies to behaviors. We see this dynamic with professional influencers on social media, where there is a fusion of performance and identification; their performances of self are, they state emphatically, authentic, where they “are themselves,” an identification supported by accompanying hashtags: #livingmybestlife, #loveyourself, #therealme, #nofilter. I argue that the affordances of social media platforms encourage “authenticity” as something both assiduously constructed and vehemently contested; fake Instagram accounts, doctored videos (deep fakes), bot accounts, branded influencers, and a plethora of apps, filters, and other tools to distort and create one’s image abound in this social media environment.

Bio:

Sarah Banet-Weiser is Professor of Media and Communications and Head of the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. Professor Banet-Weiser earned her PhD in Communication from the University of California, San Diego. Her research interests include gender in the media, identity, citizenship, and cultural politics, consumer culture and popular media, race and the media, and intersectional feminism.

Her research is deeply interdisciplinary, as is her scholarly editorial work. She was formerly the editor of the flagship journal of the American Studies Association, American Quarterly, and was the founding co-editor of the New York University Press book series, Critical Cultural Communication Studies. She is currently the current co-editor of the International Communication Association journal, Communication, Culture, Critique. Professor Banet-Weiser has been the recipient of international fellowships and visiting professorships at, among others, the Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme in Paris, France; the Gulbenkian Foundation and the University of Portugal in Lisbon, Portugal; Microsoft Research New England (the social media collective); and McGill University in Montreal (Media@McGill Scholar).

Professor Banet-Weiser is the recipient of scholarly and mentoring awards, including the International Communication Association’s Outstanding Book Award for Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture (2012); the Constance Rourke Prize for Best Article in American Quarterly, and the Mellon Graduate Student Mentoring Award. She is a Distinguished Faculty Fellow at the Center for Excellence in Teaching at the University of Southern California. She comes to LSE after 19 years in the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California, where she was Professor, Vice Dean and the Director of the School of Communication.

Expertise Details

gender; feminist theory; race and ethnicity; consumer culture; neoliberal capitalism; branding; popular culture; social media; youth culture