Negotiating the influencer imaginary: how everyday professionals construct legitimacy on social media
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| Autorzy: | , |
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| Format: | artículo original |
| Data wydania: | 2026 |
| Opis: | This paper examines how professionals in diverse fields create content on social media aspart of their efforts to establish professional legitimacy. Existing scholarship has primarilyfocused on influencers and creators whose work relies financially on digital contentproduction. Instead, we analyze the experiences of what we call everyday professionals:individuals who pursue full-time occupations while selectively adopting elements of theinfluencer “toolbox” to complement their practice. Drawing on 20 interviews conducted inCosta Rica, we show that performing legitimacy in the contemporary media environmentrequires professionals to increasingly grapple with the “influencer imaginary,” a frameworkthat organizes ideas of subjectivity around notions of authenticity and commerciality. Ourfindings reveal that everyday professionals negotiate this imaginary in three interrelatedways: by engaging with the influencer identity itself, by reflecting on the motivations behindcreating content, and by confronting the increased labor required for content production. Thisstudy highlights the normative weight of influencer culture across professional domains byextending the influencer imaginary beyond issues of subjectivity to encompass motivationsand labor. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for understandingcurrent transformations of professional legitimacy. |
| Kraj: | Kérwá |
| Instytucja: | Universidad de Costa Rica |
| Repositorio: | Kérwá |
| Język: | Inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:kerwa.ucr.ac.cr:10669/104803 |
| Dostęp online: | https://journals.sagepub.com/home/sms https://hdl.handle.net/10669/104803 |
| Słowo kluczowe: | Everyday professionals Influencer imaginary Influencer culture Professional legitimacy Social media labor |