Posting what you know and caring for the niche: How micro-influencers survive platform culture demands

Summary

Volpe examines how Italian micro-influencers (2,000–100,000 followers) produce second-hand fashion content on Instagram and TikTok, asking whether their visibly ethical and community-oriented practices reflect genuine commitment or strategic self-branding. Drawing on digital ethnography and interviews, the paper argues that this is a false dichotomy: care and branding are intertwined survival strategies under the dual precarity of 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 algorithmically required pace of production while performing narratives of expertise, sustainability, and care.

Key Contributions

• Reframes “performative ethics” in influencer content as socially coded survival strategy rather than inauthenticity.
• Extends visibility, aspirational, and reputational labour scholarship by showing how a specific niche operates as both symbolic and logistical resource.
• Empirically situates platformised sustainability discourse in the under-studied Italian context.
• Distinguishes micro-influencers as a fragile, professionally liminal category separate from mainstream influencers.
• Offers cross-platform (Instagram + TikTok) ethnographic insight into the co-construction of niches by algorithms and users.

Methods

Qualitative cross-platform design combining a year of digital ethnography (Oct 2022–Oct 2023) on 30 micro-influencers with 15 remote semi-structured interviews (~1 hour each), recruited via snowball sampling. Ethnographic material included non-intrusive observation, screenshots, screen recordings, and analytical memos, guided by Caliandro’s “follow the user” principle for post-API research. Data were coded inductively and regrouped into four broader dynamics.

Findings

• Second-hand fashion is chosen primarily because it is familiar and operationally efficient, lowering cognitive and emotional costs of constant content production.
• Algorithmic demands for consistency produce affective strain, including reported burnout and mental fatigue.
• Creators frame their work as service, curation, and sustainability advocacy, distinguishing themselves from “commercial” influencers.
• Platform visibility is treated as reputational capital convertible into freelance work, collaborations, or transitions into social media management and consulting.
• Most participants reject the “influencer” label, viewing their accounts as portfolios and stepping stones to “real” jobs.
• The sample is overwhelmingly female, reflecting gendered patterns in both second-hand fashion and micro-influencing.

Connections

No related papers have been registered under shared topics yet, so no wikilinks are warranted here. The paper sits at the intersection of platform studies, digital labour theory (Abidin, Duffy, Gandini, Arriagada), and platformised consumption (Caliandro et al.), and would connect naturally to future notes on visibility/aspirational labour, sustainable fashion discourse, and algorithmic precarity.

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