Reading on Influencer industry

What to read if you want to understand the influencer industry as a form of media

Here are some pointers to what to read, if you want to dive deeper into the growing body of research into the emerging industry of influencers. Influencer industry Abidin et al (2020) may seem like a new phenomenon in the media sphere, but it can be viewed as a continuation of the research traditions of networked publics (boyd 2010, Baym & boyd 2012), and internet as a public sphere (Papacharissi 2002).

Crystal Abidin, an ethnographer of internet cultures, has explored internet celebrity (2018), influencers’ practises including visibility labour (2016).

Platform studies (Plantin et al 2016, Plantin & Punathambekar 2018) were preceded by the concepts of the network society (Castells 1996) and information society (Castells and Himanen 2002).

Social media scholar Sophie Bishop, who also was special advisor to the UK parliamentary committee report on Influencer culture (2022) has written of the strategic management of algorithmic visibility (2019), influencer management tools (2021) and algorithmic lore (2020).

Social media and society scholar Brooke Erin Duffy introduced the concept of aspirational labour in 2017. Co-author of Platforms and cultural production (2021) with Thomas Poell & David Nieborg, Duffy co-edited the special issue of Social Media & Society on platform practices in the cultural industries (Duffy et al 2019) and has continued exploring the precarity of cultural work on platforms (Duffy et al 2021).

These are just some of the scholars who have written extensively on influencer industry related topics. Follow this space for more suggested reading in the future.

Image: danah boyd photographed after her lecture at SXSW 2012. Also in the picture: Robert Safian (middle) and Baratunde Thruston (right).