Week 8 – Creative Labour – “Influence” as a currency in the new creative industry

The expanding definition of “creative work” and the growth of social media have given rise to a whole new sector of the creative industry – an “influencer market” whose main currency is “influence”. In this blog post, I want to explore a niche in the “influencer market” – “instagram models”.

The term “instagram model” brings up nearly 139k search results on Instagram, and is used to refer to mostly women who have a huge following on  social media who uses her influence online to get sponsorships and “free stuff” (see Urban Dictionary definition below).

In 2016, Vice Magazine wrote a story exploring What It’s Actually Like to Be an Instagram Model. The story follows the “careers” of a young instagram model who actually saw her social media platform as a creative end. Making a career out of instagram following, isn’t like any other traditional career. Models are supposed to work for free – and tag each other to gain reach, followers, and ultimately, influence. The more followers someone has, the more likely he or she will gain brand deals, sponsorships, and ultimately – a contract with a modeling agency.

Making a living as an Instagram model is similar to the expectations of other creative types – “[The creative class] are being expected to test our the water of working life without welfare or with substantially reduced welfare.” (McRobbie, 58). In the Vice article, that means accepting whatever brand deals that come to them – “a lot of promoting detox teas” (Spinks, 2018) – and even bartending or some other service jobs on the side. Labour precarity, as de Peuter discussed, is something that comes with the job.

Since most of them don’t work with a modeling agency, have a manager or a regular paycheck from their modeling “job”, the world of Instagram modeling trade with something different, something that they view is the bread and butter of the social media world – “influence”. As Spinks mentions in her article, many times Instagram models and photographers don’t get paid with money, but they will tag each other to gain more following, and that following can be used as leverage to negotiate brand deals and get attention from modeling agencies.

Instagram models also establish traits that de Peuter argues is inherent in “the precog” – “self-driven, passionate commitment to work; willingness to work for nothing, perpetual and personally financed reskilling habituation to material insecurity, obsessive networking, bold enterprising behavior…” (de Peuter, 420).

There’s also the risk of romanticizing this career – what McRobbie calls “a euphoria of imagined success, relatively untainted by a reality of impediments and obstacles in the creative labour market” (McRobbie, 4). Influencers working in this industry look at the likes of the Kardashians-Jenner, who have used their fame and influence to make millions.

Just last year, Kylie Jenner – the youngest of the Kardashian-Jenner family – was honored as the world’s youngest self-made billionaire by Forbes (Abad-Santos, 2018). Jenner currently has 151 million followers on Instagram and made her first billion dollars with her 7-person cosmetics company Kylie Cosmetics.

 

Forbes’ decisions have since received harsh criticism on social media, because the magazine did not acknowledge the incredible headstart that Jenner had before making her fortune.

Kylie Jenner may be an extreme case of sucess – she started out in a rich, famous family and leveraged that to gain fame and fortune, but her case may represent some common traits of the “instagram models” creative sector: middle-class (McRobbie, 7), mobile (McRobbie, 6) and generally good-looking people who can afford to follow this as a career and wait until if and when their creative labour bring about fame and money.

References: 

Abad-Santos, A. (2018). The controversy over “Kylie Jenner, self-made billionaire,” explained. [online] Vox.com. Available at: https://www.vox.com/2018/7/13/17568328/kylie-jenner-billionaire-forbes-backlash [Accessed 17 Nov. 2019].

de Peuter, G. (2011). Creative Economy and Labor Precarity. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 35(4), pp.417-425.

Florida, R. (2002). The Rise of the Creative Class. The Washington Monthly.

McRobbie, A. (2016). Be creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Spinks, R. (2016). What It’s Actually Like to Be an Instagram Model. [online] Vice. Available at: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4w5xwp/what-instagram-models-actually-do [Accessed 17 Nov. 2019].

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