[Air-L] UK Influencer Parliamentary Inquiry

[Sophie H Bishop]

Hello all,

I was the Specialist Advisor for the UK Parliamentary Influencer Inquiry in
the UK which meant I worked with the Department of Digital, Media,
Communication and Sport to support them in collecting evidence and putting
together a report on themes related to influencer culture. The idea is that
the issue is holistically reviewed, and recommendations are made to the
Government for policy change. I have to add disclaimer that I only *advised
*and the report etc was ultimately written by the Committee. I'm not
speaking on behalf of the inquiry - I just wanted to draw attention to the
report for those interested.

Some great people gave evidence from this list including Dr Crystal Abidin,
Dr Robyn Caplan, Dr Ysabel Gerrard and more! Evidence sessions were
transcribed and can be found here
<https://committees.parliament.uk/work/1126/influencer-culture/publications/oral-evidence/>
(the
platform one - with reps from Meta, Instagram, TikTok & Twitter - is
interesting).

The inquiry most looked at influencer labour (working conditions, pay gaps,
representation), experiences of harassment, children working as influencers
(you can see from the report that the current regulation has a lot of gaps
in it around this), and advertorial labelling. The report can be found here
<https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/22107/documents/164150/default/>
- a useful shorthand on the report for use in teaching (or for anyone who
wants cliff notes) can be found here
<https://ukparliament.shorthandstories.com/influencer-culture-DCMS-report/>.

Today the Government responded to the Inquiry's recommendations - there's
some interesting stuff in there (also some predictable stuff about
influencers being self employed and therefore not being entitled to labour
protections). The response is here
<https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/28742/documents/173531/default/>in
case anyone is interested. Changes will be made to the ways influencers are
monitored for ad labelling, possible changes to child influencer employment
regulation, the potential development of a code of conduct for influencer
contracts.

I thought people may be interested in this inquiry for research or
teaching. Feel free to get in touch.

Best wishes,
Sophie
-- 
Dr Sophie Bishop (she/her)
Lecturer in Cultural and Creative Industries

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