“I Do What I Do to Drive Change”: The Social-Symbolic Work of Sustainable Fashion Influencers

Abstract

This paper aims to study how sustainable fashion influencers (SFIs) conduct social-symbolic work in their efforts to purposefully transform their followers’ fashion consumption patterns. We conducted a netnographic study of the Finnish SFI scene, including observations of the SFIs’ social media content and complementary in-depth interviews with a subset of SFIs. We identified three types of social-symbolic work conducted by the SFIs: identity work (narrating, reflecting and balancing), community work (tightening, expanding and magnetizing) and practice work (shaping meanings, competences, and materials). Most of the SFIs studied were micro-influencers in Finland. The paper contributes to research on sustainable fashion by highlighting the role of SFIs as drivers of institutional and cultural change, the role of social media in this pursuit, and the way sustainable fashion consumption is interlinked with digital life.