Framing work on social media: how influencers manage impressions through video

Abstract

This article examines how the emerging profession of influencers uses video communications on social media to shape audiences’ perceptions of their commercial activities. Managing impressions of these activities is crucial, as they may be perceived as inauthentic and call into question the professionals’ self-branding efforts. Taking an interpretive, qualitative approach and drawing on Goffman’s Frame Analysis, we investigate how influencers use videos on social media to engage in framing practices that alter how their work is perceived by followers or shift the focus of their attention away from it. We also analyse the active role of audiences in these framing practices and how this is influenced by the technology of video. This study contributes to the growing literature on technological and connective professionalism as well as on impression management in virtual environments, by identifying the framing of work activities as a form of impression management behaviour. It also extends the affordance-based perspective on social media impression management, as well as the theorization of technology’s agentic properties in the constitution of professions, by identifying two novel affordances. The first is the cinematic affordance of video, which allow influencers to use filmmaking techniques to organize and shape the meaning of their work. The second are the protective and disruptive affordances of followers, which influence these impression strategies.