Why do they fit so well into the Post-Fordist narrative

We have witnessed a significant shift to the service sector in the Post-Fordist economy. Maybe some of these services were offered in Industrial or Barter economy too, but not monetized. One such service is that of social media influencers. We’ve had such influencers in the past/offline - barbers telling us about a new shampoo, discussions on politics with auto-wallah. People have been influencing the choices we make, whether we like it or not. Today, influencers target the social media space. Let’s explore how this service fits into Post-Fordist conditions.

Google defines Post-Fordism as the theory that modern industrial production should change from the large-scale mass-production methods pioneered by Henry Ford towards the use of small flexible manufacturing units.

Decentralized. Influencers are just regular people with a mundane life. They could be working for more than one company, which could be from any part of the world. They are not aware of the inner proceedings of the company - they just have contact with the PR department. This shows the globalized nature of such jobs. It is also evident that this job is at the periphery of the company and very unstable. Hence, influencers tend to have other sources of income.

Variety. You can either post a text or a visual, or simply send a personal message to users. The job is very flexible. The pay depends on the number of followers you have or other metrics of influence (say, clout score). A person with 1 lakh followers might demand Rs.5000 per tweet, while a meager Rs.100 would fetch you bulk tweets from 500 odd follower accounts. The job can either be to endorse something (product, politician, agenda), or it can be to hurl bulk abuses at other users. There is just so much variability in the job - the essence of the Post-Fordist economy.

Surveillance. The PR team of a company keeps a check on your activity, and whether you have met the deadlines. It is very easy to catch a mistake - you’ll be penalized if the tweet count is not met, or if the tweets did not receive enough engagement. Statistics of how the influencer has worked are easily available and can be used to recruit better people or improve current engagement levels.

Quality Circles. We often get influenced when we see someone getting influenced. This can be understood via the cascading behavior of humans. To leverage this, companies have started to promote conservations between influencers in social media space, wherein one of them pretends to get influenced by the other. A set of influencers assigned to a particular agenda would form a quality circle, thereby ensuring various hashtags are equally propelled forward.

Thus, social media is not just about likes, shares, and comments. You can make money too - all you need is a keyboard and some (dim)wit!