Book Review: Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age, by Alice E. Marwick

Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age. Alice E. Marwick. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. 368 pp. $27.50 hbk.If you are among the one billion active Facebook users today, check out your latest status update before you proceed with this review. Was it a food-related post? Was it a narrative (or a rant) about how your day went? Was it a selfie?Alice E. Marwick, an assistant professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University, would predict that your last status to quite likely be a self-promo- tion entry. As a more accessible version of her PhD dissertation, Status Update was conceived when Marwick moved to San Francisco after the first year of her PhD pro- gram to study how techies in Silicon Valley use social media to boost their status, so to speak. This book is a work of ethnography that reveals gossips, startup culture, and narcissistic behaviors that Marwick observed in technology enthusiasts through the "tech scene" functions she attended.From a cultural standpoint, Marwick argues that social media, or Web 2.0, function less as a democratization instrument that revolutionizes human liberation, but rather an insidious platform that is built on a strict social hierarchy. Borrowing from Michel Foucault, she contends that social media constitute "technologies of subjectivity" that turn users into marketers and "micro-celebrities" who engage themselves tirelessly in self-promotion and status-building activities. This phenomenon encourages users to govern themselves into becoming superficial "good corporate citizens," which Marwick suggests is so valued by technology entrepreneurs. Basically, not only has Web 2.0 failed to provide a "cultural revolution," it further reinforces power and inequality-a reality no different from any American corporate culture.In exploring the cultural history of Web 2.0, Marwick examines social media as a discourse and ideology that are firmly embedded in a radical reworking of Silicon Valley beliefs and incorporation of West Coast countercultural rhetoric. She describes Web 2.0 as "a set of applications and general philosophy of information and technol- ogy"; it is more so a belief system than a technical development. She further describes what constitutes "high status" and how ethos in Web 2.0 is built. The midsection of this book dissects what Marwick has identified as status-building strategies: micro- celebrity, self-branding, and lifestreaming.Celebrity is, as Marwick emphasizes, a practice rather than a condition. Micro- celebrity is a concept, a way of thinking, in which the subject views him or herself as a persona presented to an audience or a "fan base," in which popularity is "maintained through ongoing fan management." Self-branding is a tactic in which one thinks of oneself as a brand-a "safe-for-work self"-and strategically constructs an "edited" identity that represents the user in an ideal image. In the lifestreaming chapter, Marwick explores the digital, communal culture: those social media fanatics who use programs to track and publicize the minutiae of everyday life-from music to fitness to book reviews to sexual encounter reports.Throughout her book, Marwick exhibits a discontentment toward a deep male bias that is entrenched in Web 2.0 technology and entrepreneurship. …