[Air-L] Influencer Creep, Online Book Talk with Sophie Bishop

Rafael Do Nascimento Grohmann rafael.grohmann at utoronto.ca
Mon Nov 24 05:46:57 PST 2025


Hi AoIR

DigiLabour<https://www.instagram.com/digilabour/> <https://www.instagram.com/digilabour/> and Creative Labour & Critical Futures (CLCF)<https://creativelabourcriticalfutures.ca/> invite you to an online book talk with Sophie Bishop (University of Leeds) on Influencer Creep: How Optimization, Authenticity, and Self-Branding Transform Creative Culture, published by University of California Press.

This will take place tomorrow 11am ET, on the DigiLabour YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu7GwNQ3WqE

After the talk, there will be a conversation with Arturo Arriagada<https://pure.uai.cl/en/persons/arturo-arriagada/>(Universidad Adolfo Ibanez) and Jul Parke<https://creativelabourcriticalfutures.ca/people/julia-parke/> <https://creativelabourcriticalfutures.ca/people/julia-parke/> (University of Toronto). The activity will be moderated by Rafael Grohmann<https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/acm/rafael-grohmann> <https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/acm/rafael-grohmann> (University of Toronto).

About the book
A look at how the rise of influencer culture has changed creative work. A sculptor works while wearing a GoPro camera to capture Instagram content. A painter decides whether to make pieces that she won't be able to share on Instagram, after her account was blocked for sharing "sexualized" content. An artist finds that her portraits of light-skinned women get an algorithmic boost over those featuring dark-skinned models. These creative workers are now using the content-generation skills and promotional strategies pioneered by influencers to compete for visibility online. Influencer Creep explores what happens when creative workers must go beyond their work to build a comprehensive online presence. Creator studies expert Sophie Bishop delineates how the tactics of professional influencers affect the ways creative workers navigate social media platforms. They must optimize their content to win the favor of opaque algorithms they do not control. They must engage in relentless self-branding, creating a compelling, consistent, and platform-ready image. And that image, in spite of being carefully manufactured, must be perceived as authentic. Taking seriously the motivations that drive more and more people into the contest for online visibility, Influencer Creep documents a creative workforce nervously conforming to the monopoly power of social media platforms—and occasionally resisting it.

See you there!

Rafael




--

dr. Rafael Grohmann

Assistant Professor of Media Studies

Department of Arts, Culture and Media<https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/acm/rafael-grohmann>

Faculty of Information<https://ischool.utoronto.ca/profile/rafael-grohmann/>

University of Toronto

Leader, DigiLabour<https://digilabour.com.br/>
Research Associate, University of Oxford<https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/rafael-grohmann/>

Founding Editor, Platforms & Society<https://journals.sagepub.com/home/PNS>

Principal Investigator, Worker-Owned Intersectional Platforms (WOIP)<https://digilabour.com.br/worker-owned-intersectional-platforms-woip/>

Co-Lead, Creative Labour and Critical Futures (CLCF)<https://criticaldigitalmethods.ca/creative-labour-critical-futures/>

Researcher, AI Policy Observatory for the World of Work<https://www.essex.ac.uk/research-projects/ai-policy-observatory-for-the-world-of-work>

Faculty Affiliate, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society<https://srinstitute.utoronto.ca/>  <https://srinstitute.utoronto.ca/>


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