Date of Award

2017

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Communication Studies

Department

Communication Studies

First Advisor

Norbert Mundorf

Abstract

Social media and social networking sites (SNS) allow more individuals the ability to communicate through a mass medium in a way that was once reserved for major businesses and celebrities primarily by TV and radio. As businesses begin to enter the world of social media, using the internet as a marketing platform to communicate their brands, along with individuals, using various sites to promote themselves professionally in the job market, the lines between business and personal are becoming increasingly blurred. Social media has become a selling platform; a platform of self-promotion as much as a means for connection. This business and personal blur is most noticeable to the working professional actor. Actors’ bodies and minds are their product; their personality is their brand. Because of this, actors are more conscious of their being, identity, and the way they present themselves to this online and offline world. Using previous research in impression management, marketing tactics, social media uses research, along with online observation of actors’ social media pages, this thesis seeks to explore social media sites as they are primarily used for self-promotion. I anticipate that the results of this research will find that, in the computer mediated marketing age, social media is the marketing tool paving the way for the increase of the personal brand.

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