Meso-celebrities, fashion and the media: How digital influencers struggle for visibility

This article analyses the Italian field of fashion blogging in relation to the theme of celebrity, which is directly linked to the media visibility of bloggers. Relying on the concept of blogging as a social field in which many agents struggle for the symbolic dominance of space, the notions of micro-celebrity and celebrity are discussed. An intermediate category – that of meso-celebrity – is coined to identify a central portion of the field which comprises a few hundred bloggers characterized by a professional approach to blogging, by a structured relationship with the media and companies, and a visibility at national level. The meso-celebrities are described as occupying a position far from both the few celebrities in the field and the thousands of microcelebrities who live in the shadows of the web. Wendy Griswold’s cultural diamond is used to conclude that bloggers relate to diverse fields of cultural production at the same time (the fashion media, of which blogging is a sub-field; fashion production; the field of celebrity). Fashion bloggers work to promote themselves as commodities in those fields, with a level of success that depends on the amount of celebrity capital that they are able to accumulate. The social world created in and around the fashion blogging field is described as being permeated by a celebrity culture which is symbolically led by a small number of internationally renowned bloggers but is driven by the meso-celebrities. Meso-celebrity is finally described as a result of the gradual reciprocal adaptation between old and new fashion media, with the latter able to alter the practices of the former.