Social Media, Tech & Politics with Sne Prasad Alam Sne Prasad Alam

I have a very, very interesting topic to talk about which is building a social Media following. Now this usually sounds like a very, you know how to type situation where it's like do this, do that, do that but that's not what I'm going to go into. In fact, I'm going to focus on the perspective of the importance of going past vanity metrics, which basically is a term that describes only looking at likes and comments and shares basically numbers that we see on social Media all the time that we usually compare each other to each other, and beyond that, basically the usual superficial ways in which we measure success on social media. And then I'll also further add a little bit more on this topic by talking about authenticity labor online, which is a very interesting concept of basically how we portray authenticity in a performative way, in a lot of ways. As that is what is successful and what we crave online, even though everyone well, you can't say everyone, but a lot of people do it in a very performative way or it is planned. Authenticity. You can think of girls for example models on Instagram who pose cellulite or their stomach roles to show authenticity whether or not it's good or bad which obviously I think it's great to show real bodies. It is a very planned, quote unquote authenticity by them. This will be basically backed by two research papers, one by Richard Rogers in Otherwise Engaged Social Media From Vanity Metrics to Critical Analytics and The Labor of Visual Authenticity on Social Media exploring Procedures and Audiences Perceptions on Instagram by Phoebe Maris, Sandra Bandraka and Fulker Hanushka. I probably butcher those names but they were great papers and definitely add a lot of value to this topic. I myself also am a social media intern, marketing intern at a Dutch startup that is producing the world's first solar car. So I have the added perspective of working in branding and social media from a company's perspective which is usually a bit overlooked when it comes to topics of social media and brand building, follower building.