Heterotopian selfies : How social media destabilizes brand assemblages

Purpose Digital technologies are changing the ways in which the meanings and identity of both consumers and brands are constructed. This research extends knowledge of how consumer-made "selfie" images shared in social media might contribute to the destabilization of brands as assemblages. Design/methodology/approach Insights are drawn from a critical visual content analysis of three popular champagne brand accounts and consumer-made selfies featuring these brands in Instagram. Findings Our study shows how brands and branded selves intersect through ‘heterotopian selfie practices'. Accentuated by the rise of attention economy and ‘consumer microcelebrity', we argue that these proliferating selfie images can destabilise spatial, temporal, symbolic, and material properties of brand assemblages. Practical implications Implications include a consideration of how selfie practices engender new challenges for brand design and brand management. Originality/value Our study illustrates how a brand assemblage approach can guide investigations of brands at multiple scales of analysis. In particular, we extend knowledge of visual brand-related user-generated content in terms of how consumers express, visualise and share selfies and how the heterotopian quality of this sharing consequently shapes brand assemblages.