Influencers and Self-Employment

Timeline

November 2023-August 2024

About the project

Social media “influencers” have achieved success through self-made endeavors, like content creation and entrepreneurship. As influencers share their journey and personal experiences in self-directed work online, these narratives may inspire viewers to also pursue self-employed work, especially in an unstable job market. This project examines this phenomenon through the lens of entrepreneurial labor–the normalization and acceptance of risk for the freedom and autonomy associated and promised with independent work, typically in creative industries. We conducted interviews with creative aspirants–individuals who started or are hoping to start their own independent creative creative–to understand the role of influencers, and social media platforms more broadly, in their creative endeavors.

My role

I served as the Principle Investigator (PI) of this project and received support from undergraduate student, Matthew Prock, and my advisor, Julie Hui.

Publications

• Shanley Corvite, Matthew Prock, and Julie Hui. (2026). “In-Parallel with Someone Else”: Self-Employed Creative Careers Inspired by Social Media Influencers. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. [Conditionally accepted]