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Start Date
24-6-2022 12:00 AM
End Date
24-6-2022 12:00 AM
Abstract
This paper explores the emergence of influencer marketing and its entanglement with nation branding practices to argue that Instagram and the rise of travel influencers represents an important site at which to examine constructions of national identity, global subjectivity, and the consumer citizen. Contextualizing this phenomenon within the broader histories of consumerism and national identity construction, I draw on an archive of influencer-generated content—sponsored by airlines, luggage brands, travel companies, and nations themselves—to argue that the confluence of nation branding with influencer marketing constitutes an emerging site at which consumer citizens are constructed. While not all influencers or Instagram users are women, I argue that both the profession and the platform’s association with women and shopping have largely obscured the ways in which influencer marketing has been harnessed and leveraged by nation brands for political purposes. However, as scholars like Anne McClintock and Inderpal Grewal have illustrated, gender, race, and class have always intersected with constructions of national identity, national borders and boundaries, and processes of globalization (1995; 2005). This paper first historicizes these intersections before examining how influencer marketing has created the context in which gender, “global” subjectivities, and branding strategies have collided on Instagram, impacting how we imagine and construct forms of “cosmopolitanism” and “global” (consumer) citizenship. At stake are the broader processes through which territorial space is imagined, produced, and managed, as well as the ways in which subjectivities are produced and regulated through consumer citizenship.
Consumer Citizens, Instagram Nations: Travel Influencers, Branding Strategies, and Gender in Representations of the "Global" Nation
This paper explores the emergence of influencer marketing and its entanglement with nation branding practices to argue that Instagram and the rise of travel influencers represents an important site at which to examine constructions of national identity, global subjectivity, and the consumer citizen. Contextualizing this phenomenon within the broader histories of consumerism and national identity construction, I draw on an archive of influencer-generated content—sponsored by airlines, luggage brands, travel companies, and nations themselves—to argue that the confluence of nation branding with influencer marketing constitutes an emerging site at which consumer citizens are constructed. While not all influencers or Instagram users are women, I argue that both the profession and the platform’s association with women and shopping have largely obscured the ways in which influencer marketing has been harnessed and leveraged by nation brands for political purposes. However, as scholars like Anne McClintock and Inderpal Grewal have illustrated, gender, race, and class have always intersected with constructions of national identity, national borders and boundaries, and processes of globalization (1995; 2005). This paper first historicizes these intersections before examining how influencer marketing has created the context in which gender, “global” subjectivities, and branding strategies have collided on Instagram, impacting how we imagine and construct forms of “cosmopolitanism” and “global” (consumer) citizenship. At stake are the broader processes through which territorial space is imagined, produced, and managed, as well as the ways in which subjectivities are produced and regulated through consumer citizenship.
Bio
Sarah Edwards (she/her) is a dissertator in the Department of Communication Arts (Media and Cultural Studies) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work examines the collision of nation branding with the social media entertainment industry.