From Ordinary to Microcelebrity: typology of Iranian Instagram microcelebrities

New media such as Instagram have capabilities that allow people to become famous. Nowadays, Instagram users desire to be well-known in their favorite fields. However, not everyone has equal conditions to become famous, it is thus important to identify the mechanisms of microcelebrities -which is the subject of this article- in order to understand how they gain fame.Iranian Instagram-based microcelebrities practice in diverse genres such as lifestyle, fashion and beauty, food, education, health, travel, and so on. They create their own audiences, use particular mechanisms, generate and share content on their Instagram accounts, and influence their followers. Nevertheless, the impacts of microcelebrities are not restricted to Instagram, they also affect social relationships, lifestyle, body culture, education, and other aspects of everyday life in the real space of society.Considering these explanations, the aim of this paper is to present a typology of Iranian microcelebrities on Instagram, as well as scrutinize their mechanisms and represented themes in five genres including lifestyle, food, motivation, education, and beauty, and examine the consequences of their virtual practices. In the conceptual framework, some of the most important theories of celebrity studies were reviewed and discussed. These theories consider technological platforms and the democratic space of social media as a necessary but insufficient situation for becoming a microcelebrity. They also consider a set of micro and macro contexts to be involved in the creation of microcelebrities and their durability.This study focused on 236 Instagram posts and stories from 50 microcelebrities in various genres. The research method was netnography. In addition, the observational approach was adopted as part of this research. Samples were chosen by purposeful sampling. Moreover, the thematic analysis was used to analyses the data. Regarding the findings, 23 types of microcelebrities were recognized in popular genres and also 23 subthemes, 9 main themes, and 1 core theme were extracted from the fivefold genres. Life on screen, Instagram as a shop vitrine, interweaving of emotional bonds and profit, and unplanned activism, were the main represented themes among lifestyle bloggers. They relate the fame-driven, social, and economic capital with exhibitive intimacy.Food as a display was the central theme among food bloggers. By treating the follower as a customer and creating a media persona, they seek fame and income, and for realizing this goal, they attract followers with various tricks and strategies.Themes including the shortcut to success and individualism were represented by motivational bloggers. They promote neoliberal ideology in society by accentuating personal abilities regardless of the structural contexts with their one-dimensional attitude.Fast-foodization of education was extracted from educational bloggers. They provide simple and fast-yielding content for their followers by combining education, entertainment, and profit. They also cultivate the commoditization of education.And, Instagrammable beauty was a significant theme among beauty bloggers. They display the ideal body and reproduce standard body features.Last but not least, the core theme was McDonaldization of fame. According to observations microcelebrities mostly want to attract attention and gain symbolic capital by performing micro-celebrification mechanisms including exhibitive intimacy, authenticity, selective disclosure, self-branding, and life-streaming. These mechanisms are common and popular among microcelebrities whom they utilize to absorb followers and achieve fame.According to Gorge Ritzer’s McDonaldization theory (efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control), microcelebrities are prosumers, they consume content on social media and simultaneously they generate content independently by removing media intermediaries which signifies their efficiency. They also have a calculability characteristic with respect to their account visit reports. In other words, more followers bring them firm online status, validity, and further profit. In regard to predictability, the fame industry offers specific and similar practices that users should perform to become a microcelebrity. So, it is easy to replace one microcelebrity with another, since most of them look alike. For exerting the control feature, microcelebrities monitor and control the way content is posted on their Instagram accounts to promote their fame by increasing and maintaining their number of followers. In general, despite the different activities of microcelebrities, they mostly act the same, and the dominance of quantity over quality of fame is seen in their performance.Finally, the results of this research show that on Instagram, fame is available to users like fast food. In other words, Mcdonalized fame allows early access to fame regardless of gender, class, and other factors. As a result, people try to become famous and turn themselves into micro-celebrities by adopting similar and fast-yielding mechanisms.