“GETTING PAID TO TAKE CARE FOR THE ONES YOU LOVE”: SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCING AS A MEANS FOR PAID SOCIAL REPRODUCTION LABOR

Abstract

Numerous studies have shown digital platforms commodify social reproduction labor. How social media platforms and the influencers’ activities intersect with the field of social reproduction has received scant academic attention. This study explores platform capitalism's expansion to the domestic sphere in the semi-peripheral socio-economic context. Fifty semi-structured interviews with influencers, their business partners, and other stakeholders in Slovenia were conducted. Results show that social media influencing intersects with the social reproduction sphere in two different ways, depending on whether the household is time- or money-poor. Time-poor households employ influencing to find an optimal temporal equilibrium between influencer activities and household responsibilities. Money-poor households employ influencing as a side hustle besides regular employment to have one household expense less. These two groups converge as they all create content "on the go" while completing social reproduction tasks. Influencing is peering into the cracks between work and leisure, creating a novel dimension of time: monetized leisure. Under the traditional 8-8-8 rule (work, leisure, sleep), only 8 hours were paid. With influencing activities on social media, leisure gets monetized, resulting in more hours of work and passive income. Our study shows that influencing activities on social media in Slovenia are less about getting paid to do what you love, as demonstrated by Duffy (2017) and more about getting paid to care for those you love. The study contributes to the varieties of platform capitalism and to the de-westernization of platform and creator studies.