Abstract
Internet celebrity has become a phenomenon of great interest for scholars in the last few years. This is partly due to its impact in contemporary media ecosystems, and its influence in political, social, cultural, and commercial behaviors around the world. Meanwhile, some segments of the population continue to be marginalized by sociotechnical configurations that perpetuate structures of dominance in the digital sphere and on social media platforms. This is the case of immigrants, who often face diverse digital, symbolic, and physical borders that neglect their voice and agency. Thus, the present study aims to explore the creative practices of immigrant tiktokers who have achieved a significant following on this platform. Using a case study approach, we explore four immigrant creator profiles with a following of 17,000 to 500,000 through in-depth interviews and a multimodal content analysis of 252 of their videos to delve into their platformed practices on TikTok. The participants are Latin American immigrant creators living in the US and Spain, identified as part of a larger study on the uses of TikTok by Latinx immigrants in these two countries exploring 53 immigrant creator profiles with more than 10,000 followers. Their practices related to algorithmic (in)visibility, and their unfolding identities including their digital, creative, political, activist, cultural, and national personas are noteworthy, and suggest unique pathways to reclaim agency through social media influence and construct multi-dimensional microcelebrity identities beyond migratory status.
Highlights
Internet research has traditionally focused on micro‐ celebrity phenomena anchored in the Global North, which have shaped and framed our understanding of the modes of popularity that are native to online contexts
The present study attempts to bridge this gap by highlighting the role of Latinx immigrants in Spain and the US who have reached a significant following on TikTok, to assess the ways in which they achieve a position of influence and negotiate their own identities within the algorithmicvisibility enabled by the platform
The multilayered profiles and creative practices of these tiktokers reflect complex and diverse identities and online personas that exist among Latin American immi‐ grants in both countries
Summary
Internet research has traditionally focused on micro‐ celebrity phenomena anchored in the Global North, which have shaped and framed our understanding of the modes of popularity that are native to online contexts. The digital practices of immi‐ grants have traditionally been studied in terms of their unique integration and adaptation needs (Alencar, 2020), as well as their self‐representations and archiving prac‐ tices (Leurs, 2017), emphasizing their unique vulnerabil‐ ities to datafication and categorization by private and state actors within their receiving societies (Witteborn, 2021) Their agency and uniqueness as influencers within their own communities and beyond has been largely overlooked by research in media and migration. We move to describe the research process with a focus on the appropriateness of the narrative case study approach to delve into the vast diversity among Latinx immigrant tiktokers This enables us to delve into the main objective of our study which is to explore how their creative practices and life experiences shape their microcelebrity identities and strategies for algo‐ rithmic (in)visibility. The results provide insights about their multidimensional online personas, including their platformed strategies to present controversial political content, their creative approaches to moderation, and the ways in which their content models the “correct” ways to be an immigrant and take action in their own unique microcelebrity styles
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