The emotional statement: profile photo and self-branding in the art world Online publication date: Tue, 21-Jul-2020
by Yujia Zhang; Maurice Benayoun
International Journal of Arts and Technology (IJART), Vol. 12, No. 2, 2020
Abstract: Along with the growing usage of the internet and social media, everyone has a new opportunity to construct a new identity - online identity. As one of the most significant channels of self-presence, profile photo contains more than facial features. It is rather the emotional statement. The art world is selected as the main object under inspection, as an ecosystem with distinctive subgroups. By studying the emotional structure of profile photos, we discover that artists show less happiness in the way of their online identity construction. We use the idea of self-branding to illustrate the phenomenon, as 'coolness' is a significant value for an artist. In a word, this paper has testified three hypotheses: 1) different emotional statements are for diverse career ecosystems; 2) for subgroups, emotional statements are customised to their target audiences; 3) artists pay more attention to 'self-construction' than 'pleasing the audience', and this could affect their degree of happiness.
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Arts and Technology (IJART):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:
Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.
If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com
Our Blog 
Follow us on Twitter 
Visit us on Facebook