Abstract Influencers are highly visible tastemakers who professionally publish content on social media platforms. In their work, influencers are tasked with reconciling their contradictory positioning—they are both promoters of consumption, and marshals of “authentic” sociality and community. Influencers thus organize their social world in ways that enable them to justify moving between two contradictory poles of commerciality and authenticity. In this article, we argue that these navigations necessitate “influencer imaginaries.” This concept was drawn from, first, in-depth interviews with 35 Chilean social media influencers, and second, from participant observation with advertising agencies who hire them. The influencer “imaginary” sheds light on how individuals experience and justify the commodification of the self and forms of knowledge as subject to valuation in markets when they communicate their brands. Thus, the imaginary was shown to emerge from three intertwined narratives: to resolve information asymmetries in markets; differentiate influencers from celebrities and advertisers as average people; and negotiate self-definition with regard to agencies, audiences, and themselves.

中文翻译：

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在商业性与真实性之间：平台经济中社交媒体影响者的想象

摘要 影响者是高度可见的时尚引领者，他们在社交媒体平台上专业发布内容。在他们的工作中，影响者的任务是调和他们相互矛盾的定位——他们既是消费的推动者，也是“真实”社交和社区的管理者。因此，影响者组织他们的社会世界的方式使他们能够证明在商业性和真实性这两个矛盾的极端之间移动是合理的。在本文中，我们认为这些导航需要“影响者的想象”。这个概念首先来自对 35 位智利社交媒体影响者的深入采访，其次来自与雇用他们的广告公司的参与观察。影响者的“想象”揭示了个人在传播品牌时如何体验和证明自我和知识形式的商品化是受市场估值的影响。因此，想象出现在三个相互交织的叙述中：解决市场中的信息不对称；将影响者与名人和广告商区别为普通人；并就代理机构、受众和他们自己的自我定义进行谈判。