‘I Love My Job, but It’s a Job’: Social Media Content Creators and Labor Imaginaries

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the discourses of content creators on social media (YouTubers, streamers, Instagrammers, influencers) about their jobs to understand how they personify, connect with, and help build contemporary labor imaginaries. Various authors have pointed out how the world of work has undergone essential transformations that advance precariousness, casualization, and intermittence in the workplace. Creators in social media are examples of this new working world, in which flexibility and the search for personal fulfillment are extolled as a substitute for remuneration. This article intends to answer the following questions: How do digital content creators and traditional media depict their professional activity? How are these discourses related to contemporary labor imaginaries? A sample of forty videos posted between 2015 and 2022 in which eleven Spanish content creators explicitly talk about their work is qualitatively analyzed. Recurring patterns of meaning are identified through a thematic qualitative analysis. The analysis shows that although content creators initially talked about their work using enthusiastic speeches that underline their “passion for work,” there are more contradictory speeches in recent years. Creators speak openly about the cost of their jobs, characterized by intensification, confusion between personal and professional lives, and the emotional toll.