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A glamorous but highly stressful job: The role of social media-afforded status in micro-celebrity stress coping

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  • Hu, Anqi
  • Yuan, Ruizhi
  • Chen, Ruolan
  • Liu, Martin J.

Abstract

Social media has produced a new breed of celebrity—the micro-celebrity—who achieves excellence by promoting themself and engaging in audience communication. Based on social media affordance theory, our study explores how micro-celebrities cope with the stress caused by their status. Semi-structured interviews and observations are used as an interpretive paradigm with a comprehensive sample of 22 micro-celebrities and three managers and their presence in the live streaming industry in China. The findings show that: micro-celebrity status triggers role stress, and, in turn, role stress reinforces micro-celebrity status; and empty self and trans-parasocial interactions are two approaches that can be used to cope with role stress. The contribution made is threefold. Firstly, our study expands micro-celebrity literature by identifying the facets of their social media-afforded status in the context of live streaming in China. Secondly, our study contributes role theory by exploring three facets of micro-celebrity's role stress in live streaming in China. Thirdly, our study proposes that a micro-celebrity's stress, is a social phenomenon and its recognition helps our understanding of actively self- and socially-related coping approaches. We also provide managerial implications to better understand the micro-celebrity stress phenomenon and corresponding coping approaches.

Suggested Citation

  • Hu, Anqi & Yuan, Ruizhi & Chen, Ruolan & Liu, Martin J., 2024. "A glamorous but highly stressful job: The role of social media-afforded status in micro-celebrity stress coping," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 209(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:209:y:2024:i:c:s0040162524005894
    DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2024.123791
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