A labor of love: Italian LGBTQ+ parent-influencers between self-branding and advocacy work

The present contribution focuses on LGBTQIA+ parents in the Italian context, where traditional gender stereotypes are still predominant and LGBTQIA+ rights fall well-below EU standards (ILGA-Europe 2024). Digital ethnography of ten Instagram profiles of Italian LGBTQIA+ parent-influencers will provide insight into how digital platforms empower or hinder queer families in Italy, on the one hand by offering additional spaces for kinship and education, and, on the other, by embodying the logics of platform capitalism. On digital platforms like Instagram, whose attention economy is supported by business models based on engagement (Banet-Weiser et al. 2020), influencers seek visibility through self-branding practices and performances of authenticity (Marwick 2013). This is accentuated when creators monetize their online activity, with the result of producing neo-liberal subjects through performativity (Scharff 2024). Additionally, since platform logics encourage attention (whether positive or negative), authenticity and visibility make especially queer creators (Homant and Sender 2019) vulnerable to “networked antagonism” (Duffy et al. 2024). As a result, LGBTQIA+ parent-influencers might feel inclined to anchor gay cultures to domesticity and consumption, potentially leading to their depoliticization. In an effort to see their own identities and families accepted and deflect networked antagonism, LGBTQIA+ parent-influencers might portray family and parenthood only in light of what is socially acceptable, with limited potential to challenge the established status quo. This conflict adds to the already existing pressure lived by parent-influencers to negotiate between embodying idealized versions of parenthood and representing one’s authentic self (D’Amelio 2024). Dialoguing with literature on LGBTQIA+ influencers (Abidin 2019; Lovelock 2017; Raun and Christensen-Strynø 2022), the contribution will focus both on their role as ambassadors of queer issues and on neoliberal models of authenticity and self-branding (e.g. ‘homonormativity,’ Duggan 2002). Through ongoing digital ethnography (Pink et al. 2016) of ten accounts of LGBTQIA+ parent-influencers, the contribution will highlight the influencers’ own narratives regarding their families, accounting for self-representations of motherhood and fatherhood. By turning its attention to self-representation mechanisms and with the aid of ethnographic analysis, the contribution values individuals’ agency in defining themselves and critically analyzes advantages and contradictions arising from influencer culture and platform labor. Preliminary results unveil expectations for LGBTQIA+ parent-influencers to be civil rights advocates and foreground additional challenges that such subjectivities face when they become influencers. Not only are they expected to wrestle with the contradictions of platform capitalism, negotiating between idealized versions of parenthood and one’s authentic self, but they are also subjected to higher standards than their non-marginalized counterparts in terms of informative content, suggesting interesting implications in terms of digital labor and pressure to become an activist for civil rights.