Free to Be Bound: Labor Relations and Labor Process of Social Media Influencers

Abstract

The rapid growth of social media has attracted an increasing number of user-producers who put effort into creating content and accumulating followers to become social media influencers. Influencers could trade their creativity, content, and popularity for monetary rewards from advertisers by producing and posting commercial content on their social media accounts. More and more employees choose to establish their social media accounts in their leisure time and generate fans via constant content production. It seems social media laborers have more flexibility in working hours and more ownership of their work, while they are facing a different form of capital control compared with traditional laborers. Through implying case study method analyzing a typical employee-turned-influencer labor process and labor relations with platforms and advertisers, this research unveils that platforms have prolonged exploitation periods and conducted invisible control of social media laborers through technology and algorithm, and social media laborers are facing dual exploitation from both platform capitalists and advertiser capitalists.