FOR A POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INFLUENCER SUBJECTIVITY: digital child influencers and the desire for performance
This dissertation analyzes the production of the influencer subjectivity from a political economy perspective. The object of study is the child influencer and his followers; their practices and presence on digital social networks. Our hypothesis is that the child influencers has become, along with the emergence of social media, the mascot in charge of performing a set of social practices that have as an effect (and at the same time a stimulus) the internalization of an economic reason prescribed by the need of accelerating the circulation of capital. Therefore, we will locate the role of the digital child influencer and their followers in the cycle of capital accumulation and contextualize digital work from a perspective of reproductive labor theory. We will revisit the history of advertising, the legacy of war propaganda and the intensification of the psychological character in digital marketing research strategies. Finally, we will analyze the co-dependent relationship between influencing and following and its capacity to produce a desire of performance which is functional for the generalization of a neoliberal rationality.