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Paper short abstract:

For “family influencers”, pregnancy, childbirth and children create increased opportunities for reach, collaborations and financial gain through strategic intimacy. The paper analyses the various dilemmas and debates concerning the role of children within influencer life worlds.

Paper long abstract:

It is a common notion that digitalization has enabled girls and women to harness a range of digital media tools to enact and represent themselves as culture makers. As boundaries between online and offline have become harder to discern, so have the boundaries between private and public lives. An effect is the emergence of “influencer life worlds”, as, in particular, young women transform their private life narratives and self-representations into digital businesses. Another effect is the normalization of the digital sharing practice “sharenting”, parents publishing images of their children online. This paper focus on the intersection of these two phenomena.

Amongst the capital that influencers sell are credibility, authenticity and intimacy. Pregnancy, childbirth and children create increased opportunities for reach, collaborations and financial gain through strategic intimacy. The increasing popularity of posting ultrasound images of unborn fetuses, and livestreaming childbirth, are examples of a strategic intimacy. A growing branch of influencers are family influencers, where children, through parents sharing images and information about them, unwittingly become “co-producers” of digital content. A consequence is influencers being exposed to strong public criticism – “mom-shaming” – and even reported to the social services. In the recent year, making money from sharing pictures of children through marketing collaborations, “influencer marketing”, has been heavily criticized, leading many influencers not to disclose information about their children or show their faces in their digital content anymore. The paper analyses the various dilemmas and debates regarding the role of children within influencer life worlds.