Volpe, C. (2025). Posting what you know and caring for the niche: How micro-influencers survive platform culture demands. Università degli Studi di Verona, 16, 671–671. https://doi.org/10.13136/isr.v16i16s.975
Summary
Volpe investigates how Italian micro-influencers (2,000–100,000 followers) represent and perform second-hand fashion content on Instagram and TikTok, asking whether these practices reflect genuine ethical commitment and community care or strategic self-branding under platform pressure. Through digital ethnography and interviews, the paper argues that the two are not opposed: care and self-branding are intertwined survival strategies within an attention economy marked by dual precarity — unstable labour markets and demanding platform infrastructures. Second-hand fashion emerges less as an ideological choice than as a familiar, low-cost niche that lets creators sustain the constant production that algorithms reward, while performing narratives of sustainability, expertise, and trustworthy curation.
Key Contributions
- Extends theories of visibility, aspirational, and reputational labour by showing how a specific niche (second-hand fashion) serves as both symbolic and logistical resource.
- Reframes care-oriented content not as inauthentic performative activism but as a socially coded survival strategy within platform capitalism.
- Empirically grounds how platformised consumption intersects with sustainability discourse and performative ethics in the Italian context.
- Distinguishes micro-influencers from mainstream influencers, foregrounding their fragile ecosystem and informal routes to professionalisation.
- Provides cross-platform ethnographic insight into how content niches are co-constructed by algorithmic affordances and user practices.
Methods
Qualitative cross-platform design combining digital ethnography (30 micro-influencers observed October 2022–October 2023 via non-intrusive observation, screenshots, screen recordings, and analytical memos) with 15 remote semi-structured interviews (~1 hour each), recruited through snowball sampling. Volpe applies Caliandro’s “follow the user” principle to navigate the post-API research environment, then uses inductive thematic coding regrouped into four broader dynamics.
Findings
- Familiarity with second-hand fashion offers an intuitive, low-cost entry point that reduces cognitive and emotional production costs.
- Platform demands for constant posting and algorithmic optimisation produce affective and logistical strain, including reported burnout and mental fatigue.
- Creators rhetorically frame their work as service, community-building, and sustainability advocacy, positioning themselves as trustworthy curators rather than commercial influencers.
- Under structural precarity, they use platform visibility as reputational capital to access freelance work, collaborations, or career transitions (e.g., social media management, consulting).
- Most participants do not identify as influencers, treating platform activity as a portfolio and stepping stone toward “real” jobs.
- The sample is overwhelmingly female, reflecting gendered patterns in both second-hand fashion and micro-influencing.
Connections
This essay’s account of care performed as reputational labour under algorithmic pressure resonates with Baym’s long-standing work on relational and communicative labour in platformed cultures Baym2026-tr and with Marwick’s analyses of self-presentation and visibility Marwick2026-ss. Its emphasis on how platform infrastructures shape ostensibly authentic or ethical practice also connects to broader critiques of platform power and datafication such as Helmond2026-ll and Bechmann2026-dr.
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