Black Influencers: Interrogating the Racialization and Commodification of Digital Labor

Abstract

This dissertation examines how Black influencers navigate the highly competitive commercial terrain of influencing. Situated within literature about the commodification of the Black feminine body, neoliberal discourses about individualized digital labor, and the racialization of discourses about Black labor and success, I argue that celebrity status flattens and makes palatable political projects easily consumed by digital audiences. In particular, brands and digital media companies appropriate woke culture at the expense of Black communities, influencers, and people by propping up economic solutions to racial strife and diversifying their public facing images. By offering individualized, market-based solutions, brands and media outlets obscure the systemic forces that plague Black influencers who are precariously positioned within a mode of digital labor that lacks a supportive infrastructure and exacerbates their vulnerabilities. Contextualized by the George Floyd protests of 2020, I further argue that Black influencers do not internalize neoliberal logics or pursue aspirational labor in the same way as their white counterparts due to the material vulnerabilities and systemic pressures explicitly shaping Black women’s experiences on visually oriented platforms such as Instagram and YouTube. Rather, Black influencers challenge traditional definitions of influencing, traversing the line between ‘conventional’ and political work by actively addressing the way systemic issues permeate the sphere of digital labor. Although Black influencers adopt a hustle and grind mentality indicative of neoliberal governmentality, they also work to reclaim their bodies, voices, and individuality against a space fraught with the politics of representation.