Rethinking Influencer Culture as Digital Labour: The Political Economy of Platform Capitalism and De-Influencing

This chapter examines influencer culture through the analytical framework of platform capitalism and digital labour, with a particular focus on the structural conditions that give rise to de-influencing practices. While influencers are often represented as autonomous, creative, and entrepreneurial actors, the chapter argues that such representations obscure the underlying labour processes shaped by data extraction, algorithmic visibility, affective engagement, and continuous self-optimization. By situating influencer activity within platform-based accumulation regimes, the study conceptualises influencer labour as a precarious yet productive form of digital work embedded in systems of algorithmic management and metric-driven evaluation. The analysis demonstrates that platforms do not merely mediate interactions but actively organise labour, regulate visibility, and capture value through data-driven infrastructures. The chapter further explores how gendered labour practices, global inequalities, and precarisation processes shape influencer economies, revealing that access to visibility, income stability, and critical positioning is unevenly distributed. In this context, practices of refusal—such as discouraging consumption—cannot be understood as equally accessible or risk-free strategies. Ultimately, the chapter argues that de-influencing should not be interpreted as an external rejection of influencer culture, but as an internal friction emerging from the structural tensions of platform capitalism, where labour, visibility, and value production are continuously negotiated and contested.