Commercial sharenting on InstagramHow parents build social capital and monetize baby accounts. Sharenting comercial en Instagram:Como los padres construyen capital social y monetizan cuentas para sus hijos

Abstract

Emerging research shows that baby accounts created for profit on social media are gaining popularity globally. Little is known about how ordinary parents build social capital to monetize these accounts. This work critically examines the practices and affordances used to build social capital for baby accounts and the implications in a two-part study. The first part introduces the first taxonomy of sharenting hashtags in scholarly literature and presents a longitudinal study with social capital data collected in two different waves. In the second part, an in-depth ethnographic study of a purposive sample of baby accounts illustrates how practices are operationalized for brand collaborations. Content analysis was conducted on profile information, content, and viewer interactions. External tools tracked follower/following growth patterns and audience interactions. The hashtag study uncovers that parents pay intermediaries to participate in schemes to build social capital artificially for baby accounts through an array of practices. These include follow loops to grow followers; engagement pods to increase the number of content likes; and sending content to aggregator accounts and brand representative or baby model contests to increase visibility. The desired outcome of these practices is not the creation of real social capital (i.e., organically generated) for these accounts, but artificial social media capital where follower counts, and engagement indicators are boosted through reciprocity practices to obtain brand collaborations and improve compensation. Parents often turn their children into brand intermediaries known as baby brand reps that promote children-related products in exchange for discounts. Retailers use these amateur accounts that cannot charge as influencers because they lack the social capital to use as leverage. Although retailers frame brand repping as a steppingstone for children to become influencers, in reality, parents become captive buyers obliged to purchase items that children promote. The larger implications of this study is that accounts that build social capital organically by adopting influencer best practices and nurturing emotional connections with followers can achieve influencer status, while accounts that artificially increase social capital are unlikely to become influencers due to an overtly promotional short-term approach. This study reveals a circuit of commercial interests surrounding baby accounts where parents, retailers and intermediaries employ strategies not studied previously in academic research. Baby brand rep accounts present a more extreme form of monetized sharenting than previously reported where profit is prioritized. Parents that employ practices to boost social capital artificially exponentially increase exposure of their childrens privacy to the eyes of strangers with remote possibilities of fulfilling influencer aspirations.