The composite careers of social media content creators: Labour, precarity and identity

This chapter presents an investigation of how small content creators (also known as micro-influencers) navigate the complexities and nested precarities of the influencer industry by combining multiple activities, roles, or jobs across various fields or sectors in what I call “composite careers”. In so doing, small content creators build occupational trajectories that blend traditional employment with freelance work, entrepreneurship, or other forms of work, allowing them to leverage their diverse skill sets and merge online and offline endeavours. After contextualising the research within the existing literature on the platformisation of cultural production, cross-platform labour, and neoliberal subjectivities, the chapter presents the results of a qualitative investigation based on interviews with micro-influencers. The findings describe three categories of content creators, each embodying a particular composite career: (a) the full-time content creator; (b) the multitasker; and (c) the passionate second-shifter. The analysis offers insights into the strategies used by content creators to navigate the influencer industry, and a nuanced understanding of broader issues of labour, precarity and identity in the context of the platformisation of cultural production.