Cotter, K. (2019). Playing the visibility game: How digital influencers and algorithms negotiate influence on Instagram. New Media & Society, 21, 895–913. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818815684
Summary
This Master’s dissertation investigates whether digital platforms alter the work relations and practices of independent professional tattoo artists, focusing specifically on their use of Instagram. Working from a neo-materialist, less anthropocentric lens, it treats Instagram itself as an agent whose material tools and algorithmic performativity “make-do” and reshape tattooing work. Combining an autoethnography of the author’s own tattoo practice with a survey of 590 tattoo artists, the dissertation argues that Instagram use generates dependence and transforms the social profile of workers, their workspaces, procedures, and unpaid work hours — potentially turning tattoo artists into influencers and products. Its central metaphor is that Instagram “tattoos the tattoo artists,” inscribing platform logics onto an analog, pre-digital craft.
Key Contributions
- Proposes an addition to typologies of platformized work: a category of freelance professionals who use social networks not designed for work (tattoo artists, confectioners, psychologists, hairdressers, influencers) as de facto work platforms.
- Extends the concept of platformization of labor beyond app-based couriers and drivers (“uberization”) to self-employed creative professionals on social media.
- Provides an empirical case study — autoethnography plus a 590-respondent survey — documenting how Instagram materially shapes a pre-digital craft profession.
- Offers a methodological template for neo-materialist studies of how platforms affect specific professional fields among independent workers.
Methods
The study adopts a neo-materialist approach to social studies of communication (Lemos; Alldred & Fox; Coole & Frost), treating the platform as a non-human agent with its own capacity to “make-do.” It combines (1) a descriptive analysis of Instagram’s visible tools, features, interface, and algorithmic performativity based on official documentation; (2) an autoethnography of the author’s own professional tattoo account and practice over a defined period; and (3) an online survey of 590 tattoo artists. Survey data and autoethnographic findings are triangulated.
Findings
- Instagram use generates dependence among tattoo artists and alters their social profile, workspace, activities, procedures, and unpaid hours.
- Artists reconfigure physical workspaces to be “Instagrammable” — standardized photographic backgrounds, decoration, dedicated image-capture areas — to strengthen a visual identity.
- The tattooing procedure itself is modified by smartphone integration (documenting steps, techniques to arouse curiosity, partially concealing tattoos with gifs).
- Platform use adds unpaid labor (portfolio curation, client communication, learning the platform) that is often not perceived as work because it blends with leisure.
- Most survey perceptions matched the autoethnography; unexpected results pointed to surveillance, the transformation of artists into influencers and products, and symptoms of precarization.
- Professional success depends on the degree to which artists adapt to Instagram’s algorithmic functioning and feed it content.
Connections
The core argument — that artists must “play the platform’s game,” adapting to algorithmic logic to gain visibility — resonates directly with work on how users perceive and strategically respond to opaque algorithms, as in Bucher2017-qh on the “algorithmic imaginary.” Its account of influencer-like self-presentation and unpaid content labor connects to studies of influencer economies and platform labor such as Petre2019-zh and Cabbuag2024-me, while its concern with authenticity and self-branding on Instagram speaks to Farci2017-2a88c00e. The dissertation extends these threads to a pre-digital craft profession rather than natively digital creators.