Instagram as a market-building device on social media

distinct intimacy as a central variable along fitness influencers

Abstract

Social networks are building new social relationships and with them new ways of buying and selling products and ideas. The phenomenon of influencers – people who earned celebrity status within the Instagram app – began to move an online market from their photo posts, by combining their intimacy with corporate sponsorship, displaying brands and advertisements within their personal profiles. This research seeks to identify new forms of market within social networks in Brazil, using Instagram as an object of analysis and having fitness influencers as an empirical approach. We want to identify the variables that help make this application successful as a market mover on social networks, through influencers. The results indicate, in dialogue with the bibliography, the role of intimacy in the manufacture of this market. However, advancing a little more in the bibliography, we map the type of intimacy that is sold, through the study of the biography of 4 important influencers in Brazil, in addition to concretely mapping the contracts and values ​​operated by these agents. Our theoretical inspiration comes from the economic sociology of markets and the concepts of Pierre Bourdieu.