ABSTRACT
The work of social media influencers like YouTubers, TikTokers, and Instagrammers has been explored as a form of digital labour performed on social media platforms. However, little attention has been paid to how this type of labour is valued in a specific market: the market of digital branding. This market is formed by the interaction and commercial exchanges between actors and digital platforms through which influencers’ working practices produce and assign value. Drawing on actor-network theory and ideas of market performativity, the work of social media influencers can be interpreted as an assemblage resulting from discourses, practices, and devices, as a valuable form of cultural production. Social media is not the only technological device through which their labour becomes valuable. A key device in this process is the ‘media kit’, a portfolio where influencers describe their services and strategies to connect audiences’ tastes with brands and products. Based on interviews with 35 Chilean influencers in the field of fashion and textual analysis of 10 media kits, this chapter argues that influencers represent an ideal type of consumer that offers cultural and technical expertise to produce and circulate branded content across digital platforms. The ‘media kit’ functions as a performative agency of digital labour, framing and producing a specific type of digital worker, through a set of classifications and categorisations about consumption, consumers, and digital content creation in the social media economy.
