Road to micro-celebration: The role of mutation strategy of micro-celebrity in digital media

The process of how ordinary people evolve to be well-known by delivering varied digital media content (i.e. micro-celebrification) remains perplexing. This study examines the role of mutation strategy featuring: (1) mutation diversity (the degree of evenness of content distribution across mutated styles) and (2) mutation divergence (i.e. the degree of inhomogeneity among mutated content styles), in predicting the success of micro-celebrification for ordinary people with varying talent levels. The results of survival analysis of a talent competition streamed on a major digital media platform in China suggest that a more diverse mutation in media content yields a higher chance of micro-celebrity success among participants in the competition. Interestingly, less talented participants benefit more from increasing mutation diversity compared with highly talented peers. Moreover, higher mutation divergence in the emotion evoked by media content increases the chance of success in micro-celebrification, opposite to that in the content genre and creator trait.