The visible that does not transform: simulated activism, digital aesthetics, and symbolic power in brand culture

Eduardo Romero Cano and Karla Duarte Crespo

SAP Netnography, 2025

Abstract: This paper critically analyzes brand activism in digital culture, using the lingerie brand Savage X Fenty, founded by Barbadian singer Robyn Rihanna Fenty, as a case study. The text studies the social inclusion promoted by this and other brands and how visibility does not necessarily imply structural transformation, but rather favors an aesthetic and symbolic strategy within digital capitalism. Through concepts such as simulacrum, aestheticization, aesthetic citizenship, and symbolic consumption, it examines how difference is represented in a spectacular way, but with its disruptive potential deactivated. The text draws on the theories of Baudrillard, Han, Butler, Zafra, Canclini, and Reguillo to show the impact of digital platforms, their algorithms, and transmedia narratives on the configuration of subjectivities, desires, and forms of effective participation. The paper warns that the visibility of diverse bodies, far from questioning the status quo, can reinforce power structures by turning difference into a commodity. In this case, brand activism is shown to be a form of symbolic management of dissent, where politics becomes spectacle. The authors propose rethinking digital communication not only as a channel of representation, but as a space for symbolic contestation with high transformative potential.

Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cwf:netart:net2025104

DOI: 10.62486/net2025104

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