Negotiating the Influencer Imaginary: How Everyday Professionals Construct Legitimacy on Social Media

Abstract

This article examines how professionals in diverse fields create content on social media as part of their efforts to establish professional legitimacy. Existing scholarship has primarily focused on influencers and creators whose work relies financially on digital content production. Instead, we analyze the experiences of what we call everyday professionals: individuals who pursue full-time occupations while selectively adopting elements of the influencer “toolbox” to complement their practices. Drawing on 20 interviews conducted in Costa Rica, we show that performing legitimacy in the contemporary media environment requires professionals to increasingly grapple with the “influencer imaginary,” a framework that organizes ideas of subjectivity around notions of authenticity and commerciality. Our findings reveal that everyday professionals negotiate this imaginary in three interrelated ways: by engaging with the influencer identity itself, by reflecting on the motivations behind creating content, and by confronting the increased labor required for content production. This study highlights the normative weight of influencer culture across professional domains by extending the influencer imaginary beyond issues of subjectivity to encompass motivations and labor. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for understanding current transformations of professional legitimacy.