Being a positive influence(r): Exploring affective pedagogies of wellbeing and positivity on Instagram

ABSTRACT

Influencers attract praise—and censure—for how they are perceived to influence followers. These discussions are strongly gendered: representations of mainstream influencers are highly feminised, and it is typically women and girls who are imagined as the targets—or victims—of influence. We suggest that the value influencers can offer is increasingly understood in affective and emotional terms and materialises in the form of mindset advice and modelling emotional management strategies. In this paper, we draw on theories of affective practice to examine “teachable moments” of positivity, optimism and resilience as influencers model and educate followers in emotion-laden styles and standpoints. Our analysis centres on data gathered in confidential interviews with eight established and aspiring Instagram influencers, who work in mainstream, lifestyle domains. We focus on the affective pedagogies influencers mobilise to show followers how to adopt culturally favoured emotional styles. Our analysis sheds light on the pedagogical work of influencing as gendered labour, its psychosocial utility and socio-political entanglements. To conclude, we reflect on how the patterns we identify index broader shifts in neoliberal wellness repertoires away from the management of time and towards the management of emotional energy.

KEYWORDS:

• Affect
• influencer
• Instagram
• positivity
• authenticity

Introduction

Instagram entices users with the chance to watch and to be seen, to influence and to follow, to teach, to learn and to feel. The platform’s sustained popularity is a testament to the value it offers those wishing to connect, improve, amuse or showcase themselves. Almost a decade ago, journalist Robinson Meyer (2015) described Instagram as a “place of gratitude” free from the negativity and nastiness of more polemical platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Since this time, Instagram’s reputation as a wholesome, happy and nice online space has been increasingly contested. While platform content is dynamic and wide-ranging and users increasingly modify and subvert prevailing affective norms (Eileen Mary Holowka 2018; Jennifer Sonne and Ingrid Erickson 2018), expressions of positivity, happiness, optimism, and gratitude remain familiar and entrenched on the platform.

Given this enmeshment with feminised emotional repertoires of niceness and positivity, it is unsurprising that Instagram continues to be most strongly associated with users identifying as women, who consistently report using the platform more regularly than those identifying as men (see e.g., Pew Research Center 2021). Additionally, the central features of Instagram, such as posting, editing and sharing photographic self-portraiture or “selfies,” are especially associated with women, girls and femininity (Sofia P Caldeira, Sofie Van Bauwel and Sander De Ridder 2021). Influencers, defined as everyday internet creators with substantial followings who use the platform for professional purposes (see Crystal Abidin 2015) are also feminised and “overwhelmingly” women (Brooke Erin Duffy and Emily Hund 2019, 4985).

Despite its reputation as a “nice” platform, making full use of Instagram’s communicative affordances, such as user self-photography and the visual documentation of day-to-day life, comes with the possibility of censure. Instagram-facilitated self-display may attract social disapproval and punishment, especially where this display is legible as a marker of vapidity, vanity, or attention-seeking (Crystal Abidin 2016). Picking up on this thread, pockets of academic research are linking Instagram usage (and the posting of selfies in particular) to narcissism (Christopher T Barry, Shari R Reiter, Alexandra C Anderson, Mackenzie L Schoessler and Chloe L Sidoti 2019; Eric B Weiser 2015). Popular media, too, have seized on the image of the narcissistic, selfie-taking Instagram user (almost always imagined as a girl or woman), paving the way for moral panic about the corrosive effects of social media, particularly on young people (Christie Barakat 2014; Gaby Hinsliff 2018).

Alongside these popular concerns, feminist scholars are increasingly wary of the dominant sensibilities suffusing the platform. A growing corpus of research in feminist media studies is illustrating how Instagram’s affordances as well as its prevailing visual regimes tend to shore up neoliberal wellness regimes and postfeminist agendas of health, beauty, and self-regulation. The platform may, for example, offer a site for unruly feminine bodies to be documented, disciplined and transformed—typically in line with narrow, normative expectations (Maria José Camacho-Miñano, Sarah MacIsaac and Emma Rich 2019; Jessica Maddox 2021; Cat Mahoney 2020; see Dinah A Tetteh 2021 for an alternative view). A second, related line of critique explores the play of culturally favoured affects across digital media and their relationship to idealised femininities. Entrepreneurial, neoliberal affects like positivity, resilience and upbeat emotionality are integral to mediated contemporary femininity and, as we note elsewhere, are “increasingly presented as the pathway to success and prosperity in Western professional and intimate life” (Octavia Calder-Dawe, Margaret Wetherell, Maree Martinussen and Alex Tant 2021, 552).

Such upbeat emotionality has purchase and attracts value only insofar as it appears “authentic” (Sarah Banet-Weiser 2012). While accusations of inauthenticity shape the practices of everyday Instagram users (Laura Grindstaff and Gabriella Torres Valencia 2021), these risks are amplified for women Influencers due to their heightened visibility, their gendered positioning in popular debates around feminine bodily display, fakery, objectification, and exploitation, and the entanglement of their livelihoods with the approbation of followers. As Duffy and Hund (2019, 4987) observe, the kinds of criticisms levelled at women Influencers online “seem evocative of longstanding fears that women will disguise their ‘authentic’ selves with tools of artifice and deception.” While navigating the pressures and tensions of influencing successfully can be highly lucrative, the professional work of intimate, positive and relatable self-representation can also be immensely stressful (Mari Lehto 2021).

Against this discursive backdrop, finding something authentic and useful to give appears to be central to successful contemporary influencing. One common response is to take up a position of a peer-to-peer teacher, model or coach: someone skilled and successful who is nonetheless accessible and willing to offer useful “lessons” to followers. In a context where, as L Adu Saraswati (2021, 173) observes, everything takes shape as “an opportunity, a positive emotion, and a cause for personal transformation,” this paper asks: what, precisely, is being taught? What affective and aesthetic investments are enacted and sustained?

In this paper, we ask how “teachable moments” of positivity, optimism and resilience take shape as influencers model and educate followers in desirable and beneficial emotional styles and standpoints. We work with the concept of affective pedagogy to examine influencers’ feeling work on Instagram. By affective pedagogy, we refer to the practices through which emotional or affective states are taught and modelled for others (see Steph Ainsworth and Huw Bell 2020). Our mobilisation of affective pedagogy rests on a practice-based approach to affective discursive phenomena as articulated in Margaret Wetherell’s (2012) work on “affective practice”. Like Instagram itself, affective practice is a terrain where personal routines and rhythms effloresce within and in relation to a broader sociocultural flow of shared meanings, values and atmospheres. Drawing from this theorisation, we approach affective pedagogy as a multi-layered social process, simultaneously embodied, personalised and customised to achieve particular contextual ends while also engaging broader sociocultural resources (such as positivity imperatives and neoliberal wellness regimes) that make particular affective “lessons” meaningful and persuasive.

Our analysis draws on confidential interviews with eight established and aspiring Instagram influencers, who work in mainstream, lifestyle domains. This analysis is complemented by a close reading of a public Instagram post made by high-profile influencer Kirsty Godso. Our analysis focuses on the affective pedagogies influencers mobilise to teach followers how to adopt a positive mindset, usually in pursuit of setting and achieving goals, such as attaining the “ideal” body, or the “good life.” We also investigate what we call “down day” posting, wherein influencers present personal struggles with negativity as teachable moments for followers. In doing so, we pick up on pressing disciplinary questions regarding affect, emotion and feeling in social media (Rosalind Gill and Akane Kanai 2019; Lehto 2021; Saraswati 2021; Kim Toffoletti and Holly Thorpe 2020). Our analysis also sheds light on the current value of positivity in the affective economy of Instagram, linking to broader shifts in neoliberal wellness repertoires away from the management of time (Melissa Gregg 2018) towards the management of emotional energy.

The research

Placing the project

This paper presents one line of work arising from a larger research project investigating positive thinking and positivity discourse in the lives of young women in Aotearoa (New Zealand), with a particular focus on Instagram as a site for positivity work. Aotearoa is significant as a location for this research, given the nation’s longstanding engagement with global flows of feminist, postfeminist, and neoliberal discourses. The first self-governing nation to grant women the right to vote, Aotearoa is also well known internationally for its early and rapid adoption of neoliberal policy reform (Jane Kelsey 1997). More recently, former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gained considerable international attention as an embodiment of modern, successful femininity and (post)feminism, particularly in relation to her pregnancy, maternity leave, and domestic arrangements while in office (Flora Galy-Badenas and Mélodine Sommier 2021). Intriguingly, Ardern came to power on a promise of “relentless positivity” (Danielle Pope 2017)—a phrase we have adopted as a shorthand for our wider research programme.

Data, participants and interviewing

The first stage of the Relentless Positivity project focussed specifically on three cohorts of self-identified women aged 18 to 35: service workers (including hospitality and caring professions), mothers with young children, and Instagram influencers. These three role-based cohorts were selected because of the distinctive emotional management demands faced by each. In this paper, we focus on extracts drawn from interactive interviews with eight Instagram influencers based in Aotearoa. We identified a range of established and aspiring influencers based on a search of public Instagram accounts as well as media reporting, and invited them to join the research, either via an email invitation or a direct message via Instagram. Our recruitment was purposive, as we sought out some diversity in participants’ age, follower numbers, ethnicity and area of influence/expertise.

Our sample of eight influencers included five cis women aged 21 to 29, and three cis women aged 30 to 35. Reflecting the white-dominated field of influencing (Helena Heizmann and Helena Liu 2020; Maddox 2021; Mahoney 2020), half of the influencers we spoke to identified as Pākehā/New Zealand European. A further two identified as Chinese/Chinese Kiwi, one as South African, and one chose not to state their ethnicity. Six participants were currently living in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), and two were located elsewhere in Aotearoa. Key areas of interest and expertise for this sample spanned the postfeminist “lifestyle” domain, including different combinations of fitness, fashion, make-up, food and nutrition, and entrepreneurship (for example, advice for women seeking to start their own clothing businesses). Follower numbers varied considerably across our sample of aspiring and established influencers, ranging from 1,500 to over 300,000 with most attracting audiences of between 5,000 and 15,000. As context, high-profile Aotearoa-based influencers and celebrities might have upwards of 50,000 followers (Emma Galtsov 2021); a following of 5,000 may start to attract interest from brands (Kelly Dennett 2021).

Interviews typically ran for between one and two hours and were conducted in locations that suited interviewees. Semi-structured interviews covered key domains of interest (understandings of positivity, positive thinking and emotional management; Instagram habits and posting practices) while also allowing conversation to move in line with interviewees’ talk. We use pseudonyms to maintain confidentiality. Interview data from these participants is talk-based: while the interviews included a walk-through component where influencers discussed their posting practices, we have not reproduced any of interviewees’ posts to protect confidentiality. Although we had secured ethics approval to reproduce non-identifying images, in practice we determined all images posted to a public Instagram account to be potentially identifying.

To illustrate and complement our analysis of influencers’ talk, we draw on a close reading of Instagram posting from popular international influencer Kirsty Godso (@kirstygodso). Godso has a following of over 250,000 and is a Aotearoa-born and US-based fitness trainer, model and influencer linked with international sports brand Nike (her profile lists her as an “Energy Dealer & Nike Master Trainer”). Her profile offers a useful visual complement to textual interview data, allowing us to show as well as tell, and making evident the connections between our local data and a wider set of influencing practices.

Analytic approach

In this article, we set out to understand how affective pedagogies of “positive” emotional management inflect the online activities of Instagram influencers. We focus on the kinds of affective lessons evident in interviewees’ talk and online posting. As outlined above, our analysis is guided by an affective practice approach (Wetherell 2012). Wetherell’s approach offers a strategy for analysing Instagram pedagogies as simultaneously affective and discursive: affective practice attends to the ways in which affected bodies, discourse and meaning-making are mobilised together. This approach also allows us to think across scales, considering how global emotional cultures (privileging entrepreneurial affects) and affective norms (such as authenticity) come to inflect more localised practice, resourcing identities, atmospheres, and everyday living. Our analysis begins with a broad introduction to influencers’ positive affective pedagogies. From here, we consider “down day” posting, exploring how past moments of difficulty can be mobilised as teachable moments.

Analysis

Influencing and affective pedagogies

The influencers we interviewed appeared very aware of the importance of creating the right kind of presence and atmosphere through their posts. The “right” presence in this context is one that aligns favourably with dominant sensibilities of the communities they are operating within. In a context where professional influencing risks characterisation as cynical, fake or exploitative, interviewees described a desire to be a good influence(r) and to have a demonstrably positive influence on their followers (in Sam’s terms, “not to be an arsehole”). Those with larger audiences emphasised the importance of imparting something of value to their followers in order to increase meaningful engagement with their content. In our analysis, the “something” being taught takes shape as an affective orientation to life: a winning, positive mindset that would benefit followers in various areas of their lives.

Role-modelling an optimistic mindset and transmitting positive energy to others was a leading element of several influencers’ pedagogical practices, both on and offline. As Lauren explained, “[W]hen you are an influencer, like you want to be able to spread positivity”. Hayley, an aspiring influencer, described her motivation “to influence people in a positive way … so not like specifically influence them to buy something, but just influence their mindset”. Jamie spoke similarly about her aims as an influencer:

[A]s you saw I put on my [Instagram] bio like try to spread my positive energy and stuff cause that’s just generally what I want to do.[…] I just think it’s, like we’ve got the power to make other people’s lives so much better and it’s just a really good platform and trying to help with that, you know? (Jamie)

Kate described herself as a “positive person,” explaining how she works to consciously transmit this through a kind of bodily discipline:

I’m very aware of my body language. So, that’s something I’m always quite open and I always stand up tall […] And I smile a lot. So, when I meet people I’m always smiling and try and keep, I’m a big believer in good energy

As well as a “responsibility” to “promote positive things” (Sam), influencers were acutely aware of avoiding messy or potentially triggering forms of emotional sharing that “nobody wants to see”:

Nobody wants to see that. Like you feel shitty, you want to make someone else real shitty too? […] I get affected by people really easily. So, if someone cries, I will cry, OK. And I’m like I don’t want to do that to someone if they happened to be like that too. You know, you want to come off engaging and positive and um, almost like nice to see on screen, like that. (Lauren)

Lauren’s comment also suggests something important about what is assembled within the right kind of Instagram post. Followers are drawn in when an affirmative emotional tone and informative messaging come together with images that are “nice to see.” The magnetism of this kind of pedagogical presence is a stark contrast with Lauren’s account of messy, uncontained emotionality that risks acting on followers in undesirable ways (“I don’t want to do that to someone”). Thus, the work of maintaining a disciplined body that is “nice to see” (according to prevailing beauty norms) interweaves with forms of emotional discipline and restraint. As Saraswati (2021, 46) has observed, it is through such processes of juxtaposition and interweaving that an Instagram post can rearticulate taxing forms of labour as “desirable and beautiful.”

Similar threads of argument weave through a vignette shared by Anna, an Instagram influencer with a longstanding involvement in the local industry. Thinking through the right way to post a bikini shot (which could be received as vain or demotivating to others), she explained:

Even if you’re going to post about how cute you look in a bikini, and great ‘cause you’ve worked hard on that body, … you have [to] still kind of like [explain]: “how did you work hard on that body?” “How did you get, you know, your thighs and stuff like that and what could people take back?” Or, confidence-wise, “like how did you get the bloody confidence to get into a bikini and post a photo?” Just something that you can give back rather than being like “oh, I love being in Raro[tonga] right now.”

In Anna’s account, we can see the pedagogical dimensions of influencing at work. The post she conjures up assembles different kinds of physical (great thighs and the “worked-on” body), material (a tropical island setting, the bikini), and affective ideals (confidence and grit). This creates a powerful affective atmosphere in which “Raro” (a location associated with affluent leisure) is knitted together with a disciplinary orientation to the feminine body and mindset. The framing of the post, however, puts less descriptive emphasis on “what” is in the image in favour of a far more upbeat emphasis on how to achieve it—a kind of affirmative pedagogical reframing of the prevailing aesthetic values of the influencers’ profiles, and of the platform more generally.

The pedagogical tone Anna takes up also helps to manage the tensions that hover around the edges of her talk. The desire to teach—or in Anna’s terms, to “give back” – disarms critics who might otherwise challenge such “highlight reel” posting as skiting, narcissistic, or damaging to others’ body confidence. In this way, the post is legitimated, and is able to circulate, because of its pedagogical framing; that is, its potential to teach others – or, perhaps more accurately, to create a pedagogical affective connection between viewer and producer. Anna’s repetition of the word how in this passage demonstrates the primacy of the pedagogy on offer, as well as its potential to invite followers into an affective atmosphere of positivity, confidence, and possibility.

Anna’s vignette exemplifies what we theorise here as an affective pedagogy of positivity. Positive affective pedagogies facilitate a process by which good feelings (for example, a subjective sensation of happiness, registered alongside somatic and neural changes) become “patterned together” (Wetherell 2012, 14) with influencer culture, lifestyles and aesthetics and with the affective register of what Saraswati (2021, 1) has termed the neoliberal self(ie): a self who is “appealing, inspiring, and entertaining.” Thus, positivity pedagogies present an attractive solution to some of the central risks and dilemmas of Instagram influencing. At the same time, they also offer a kind affective bridge connecting the “authentic,” relatable and messy femininities of everyday practice (Akane Kanai 2019) with the “horizon of the perfect” associated with ideal femininities (Angela McRobbie 2015) and the entrepreneurial forms of psychic and bodily labour that promises to connect the former to the latter.

In the passages below, both Anna and Nicky present this affective pedagogy as central to their influencing practice: a lesson they are uniquely positioned to convey, as well as a lesson that followers need to learn:

I want to empower women to live their best lives and to chase their dreams and not let anything or anyone get in the way of that. Um [I] talk about myself and my journey and then try and impact how they then want to tackle their own journey and just really show that nothing is out of reach and nothing is impossible and we all have the power of changing our own lives, you know? (Nicky)

[T]hat’s my goal now kind of just make it seem so obtainable because it is, it is. It’s hard work but it is obtainable and it doesn’t matter where you come from or what your background is […] [Y]ou can make something of yourself if you want to. (Anna)

As Nicky and Anna’s words hint, rewards embedded in the affective pedagogy of positivity take the form of, for example, the promise of achieving beauty, confidence and happiness; the career dividends of a positive mindset; and—as we explore in detail below—the ability to bounce back after a traumatic event.

Teaching positivity through “down day” posting

One striking way positivity pedagogies are enacted by influencers on Instagram is through tips for managing a “down day”: a period of time where negativity and distress prevail. The “down day” is an especially powerful genre of pedagogical posting because it gets a lot of complex affective work done. On one hand, selective disclosure of personal struggles and vulnerability can build a sense of authenticity and connection, in this case with followers (Abidin 2015; Brooke; Brooke Erin Duffy 2017). Influencers differentiate themselves from traditional celebrities by “rejecting the status elevation and distance that characterizes mainstream celebrities, emphasizing instead their ‘ordinariness’” (Loes Van Driel and Delia Dumitrica 2021, 4). YouTube influencer Bethany Mota (quoted in Brooke Brooke Erin Duffy and Elizabeth Wissinger 2017, 4659) acknowledges the strengthening effect that demonstrating struggle can have, stating: “Who wants to watch somebody who is always perfect? Be human. My fans expect it. I mess up all the time. Being imperfect is normal on YouTube.” Mistakes, vulnerability and acknowledging a “down day” affords influencers an opportunity to be—or at least, to appear—more “human” and help followers identify and empathise with them.

At the same time, influencers’ positive thinking pedagogy offers a solution to bad feelings. Positivity promises to transform painful situations into an opportunity for growth—with the flick of a cognitive switch. This extract from an interview with Nicky, a high-profile influencer, charts this process in action:

[P]reviously I would always focus on the negative and have a bit of a pity party and was quite you know, everything would defeat me […]my mindset was terrible.

[But then I realised] I can actually use my brain to turn that all around and to be like – ‘okay, that didn’t go my way, but what did I learn from it? What lessons did I learn and how can I then take that to change the next step of my day to make it a more positive one?’ (Nicky)

With the right mindset and the right tools, negative experiences—a bad interaction, a pulse of self-doubt or frustration—can thus be made into something positive. This “down day” lesson, with its appeal and its pitfalls, is the crux of positivity pedagogies. Down day posting enables a sanitising process. Difficult emotions and experiences can be acknowledged, but this is done in a way that maintains an upbeat and positive atmosphere. Struggles and troubles can be acknowledged (typically retrospectively) and can be repurposed into opportunities for learning and self-development.

Another striking down day teaching moment arose in our conversation with Lauren, an aspiring influencer, talking about an unprovoked assault:

So, [this woman] punched me in the face and I fell to the ground and was bleeding and all that stuff. I ended up with a black eye and dah, dah, dah. Most people would think, you know, I would have PTSD or something or at least some form or level of trauma after the event, yeah? […] I made it all positive. […] I was like, I am not going to hold a grudge, I am just going to call it an inconvenience and unlucky that I was the one to be punched that night. Um, I didn’t walk away with a broken nose, I wasn’t unconscious, I walked away pretty lucky –just a black eye, right? Um but I kind of put that on Instagram and I was like – hey guys, FYI, protect yourself. This is, you know, shit happens and you never know if someone is going to walk down the street and punch you in the face one day right. So, I put that on Instagram and then I was like, hey if anyone has got concealer tips then let me know how to cover all this up because Lord knows I need it. (Lauren)

In this account, the assault is made positive. There is no dwelling, resentment or hurt. The possibility of trauma is presented to us only to be neatly contained into a far more triumphant pedagogy, pulling together a trifecta of positivity, public safety advice, and concealer tips. Positivity pedagogies are a site where good feelings weave into a broader articulation of the good life where beauty reigns, trauma bounces rather than sticks, and anything can be “made […]positive.” Resonating with Mia Matsumiya’s sarcastic reposting of sexual harassment to Instagram (Saraswati 2021), Lauren’s positivity pedagogy affords her visibility as a powerful figure who, instead of being immobilised or silenced by pain, is “crafting entertaining comments about it on social media” (2). Thus, the transactional value of “down days” hinges on their potential to create pedagogical atmospheres that uplift, invite intimacy and sanitise troubling and “messy” (Lauren) experiences for an audience. While few followers would enjoy a “pity party” (Nicky), Lauren’s “down day” disclosure attracted considerable positive attention (Lauren described receiving an overwhelming number of “really nice” direct messages in response to this post).

In our data, the affective valence of “down day” posts seemed to depend on a particular temporality. A “down day” can be acknowledged, so long as it is located in the past and no longer threatens to impinge on the positivity of the present or future. The importance of timing is evident in the passage from Anna below, where she described a recent post she made:

[M]aybe eight weeks ago I posted on my story saying how you know I was just feeling down and you know and everyone has that just a down day and maybe you don’t know why and that’s fine and you know, that you will get out of it but you’re just feeling a bit down. So I post about that just saying like “it’s totally normal I’m okay with it but just so you guys know like I’m just going to work through this and come back in a couple of days” time.’ And I actually found that I didn’t get the response that I wanted from it.

[…]

[People] were sending me all these kind of uplifting quotes to kind of get me happy again and what-not and I just wanted to, I didn’t need that. I just needed to sit in it and have people be like “I’m here for you, I understand”, you know, and I didn’t have that, I had the “chin up get on with it”, you know? (Anna)

Anna’s account suggests that the value of “down day” posting hinges on its capacity to relegate difficult feelings tidily in the past. Although there is a clear pedagogical dimension to Anna’s talk (showing and normalising the “down day” in a manner reminiscent of health promotion messaging), her message failed to land with followers in the way she had anticipated. Rather than receiving the lesson she intended to transmit, the pedagogical relations were inverted as Anna was herself flooded with unwelcome “chin up” messaging and advice. This extract illustrates the complexities of positivity pedagogies for those who receive them. In Anna’s case, rather than making space for connection and authenticity, these responses from followers have, ironically, tightened the affective range of Anna’s own posting: “I’ve actually found that I haven’t posted anything like that since […] it made me feel like, oh okay next time I get on [Instagram] now I need to be really positive.” Where previous research has shown how social media posting has potential to normalise distress and to help influencers accumulate “a kind of capital” (Lehto 2021, 210; Saraswati 2021), our analysis demonstrates the affective complexities those posting must manage—and how specific the register of acceptable distress may be.

In developing our analysis of down days, we have been informed not only by interviews with influencers, but also by a broader engagement with posts made by successful lifestyle influencers who were not participants in our study. Here, too, we find the “down day” post to be a feature of many influencers’ feeds. As we have opted not to reproduce interviewees’ own “down day” posts to maintain confidentiality, we present below an analysis of one post from high-profile influencer Kirsty Godso. We selected this particular post from Godso’s feed based on its distinctive aesthetic which set the post apart from its neighbours and its relatively long written caption. We orient to this as an archetypal case: the post demonstrates the affective dynamics of the “down day” post as we are conceptualising it, and it occupies a position of heightened visibility due to Godso’s celebrity status. Unlike the influencers who participated in our research, New Zealand-born and US-based Godso has “made it”, achieving a truly international reach. (Indeed, Godso was mentioned explicitly as a role model by one of the influencers we interviewed.) In the post we have selected (See Figure 1), Godso orients to the possibility of a “down day” in general terms:

Figure 1. “I don’t know who needs to hear this today but go easy. […]”. (Kirsty Godso 2020).

Godso’s image caption text is typical in that it orients to positive mindset—the capacity to seize “new opportunities every day” – as the foundation for confidence and wellbeing. Also evident here is how the kinds of feeling positions that might be typical of a “down day” – those “repetitive internal conflicts” – are at once acknowledged and immediately shut down as a form of psychological indulgence (“are you indulging?”). While Godso—unlike those interviewees we spoke to—makes no explicit reference to personal struggle in this post, its aesthetic features (black and white, showing Godso fully reclined and still) hint at a possibility of internal trouble, while remaining stylised, and reflective of contemporary feminine physical ideals. The moody perfection of the image—and its marked stylistic contrast with Godso’s more usual, colourful workout videos—may draw viewers in, suggesting a behind-the-scenes, authentic insight into Godso’s psychology and emotional experiences. Meanwhile (and in contrast to Anna’s post analysed above), the text reaffirms Godso’s commitment to positivity and protects her from appearing weak, vulnerable or lacking in resilience. Thus, image and text work powerfully together, making implicit connections between an ideal look, an invocation of the good life, and the seemingly accessible psychological strategies being disclosed and affirmed by Godso, and by positivity pedagogies more generally.

The affective pull of the pedagogy on offer is evident in how followers interact with Godso’s post, affirming and amplifying the atmosphere she presents. Many thank Godso for the inspiring message and encouragement it conveyed (“needed this today” “Beautiful post. Thank you coach ”); others commend her for “being open and vulnerable” and “for your words and authenticity.” Scattered alongside these comments are a few messages more aligned with Godso’s regular content admiring her look (“Freaking love your outfit ” “Beauty @kirstigodso ”) and commenting on her workout videos (“I just did your Breakthrough HIT and Core 1 workout today”). Taken together, these comments demarcate the multiple pedagogical registers at which the post works on/for followers, inspiring followers to take up forms of emotional and bodily discipline as part of a commitment to self-improvement.

Discussion

Our analysis has presented a close reading of affective pedagogies of positivity, as they take shape in the everyday practices of Instagram influencers. Throughout our analysis, we have mobilised analytic tools associated with affective-discursive practice to locate and make sense of the pedagogical orientation we have identified. We have shown how a pedagogical tone enables Instagram posting to operate across a number of contradictory affective discursive registers. An emphasis on pedagogies of positivity and resilience can communicate wholesomeness and relatability; they amuse and empower, all the while shoring up affective investments in prevailing feminine ideals of embodiment and emotional management. The psychosocial patterning of these pedagogies recalls what Lauren Berlant (2006) theorised as cruel optimism: an affective orientation of desire that coalesces around bodily and psychological practices that are virtually unattainable—or, at a minimum, unsustainable. In this final section of our paper, we pull out key analytic considerations and implications working across both psychosocial and sociocultural domains.

Being a positive influence(r)

As we outlined in the introduction to this paper, a great deal of mainstream scholarship exploring the phenomenon of Instagram influencing has focussed on questions of audience impact and harm to users. Our analysis enters this debate from a different angle. Conducted from a critical perspective and taking an influencer-eye-view, our analysis speaks to the complexities lifestyle influencers encounter as they build online lives and livelihoods. Accordingly, our findings offer insights into the emotionally-charged identity positions and feeling rules that shape conditions of possibility for interviewees’ influencing practice.

The strength of this identity position of positive influence(r) lies in its potential to resolve a range of tensions that trouble Instagram influencing. Firstly, and as our analysis demonstrates, in a profession sometimes associated with flakes and fakes, a pedagogical position is a powerful defence against gendered accusations of narcissism and vanity. At the same time, positioning oneself as a “good” and “authentic” model helps to affirm influencers’ claims to have something genuine and worthwhile to offer. Certainly, there is a comfortable, recognisable and authoritative affective valence to the position of teacher/coach. It is also a position that is readily claimed, even when the lessons conveyed are seemingly unoriginal (think positive) or unremarkable (how making your bed lifts your mood).

Taking up a pedagogical orientation also facilitates a balance between authenticity and relatability, on one hand, and aspirational ideals on the other. This balance is exemplified in “down day” posting. The positive influencer can orient to the possibility of trouble and distress (through retrospective personal narrative, like Lauren, or a more diffuse reference, as with Kirsty Godso), but is never engulfed by negativity or other seemingly messy and unattractive forms of emotionality. As our analysis has demonstrated, successful down day posting provides an avenue for influencers to get some complex affective identity work done: maintaining relatability through vulnerability without shattering the affirmative affective atmosphere or success and wellbeing that scaffolds their position as worth listening to.

This finding meshes with previous research documenting the utility of carefully packaged vulnerability for influential figures. For example, Saraswati’s (2021) Pain Generation explores how confident, funny feminism activism rearticulates and disavows pain through the conventions of the neoliberal self(ie). Working from a different angle, Lehto (2021, 209) shows how Finnish mother influencers’ articulations of distress and anxiety can be “transformed into a tactic”; expressions of vulnerability help to build a prized affective atmosphere of intimacy with followers. At the same time, this “expert” position and the affective practices that scaffold it are difficult to pull off. Where vulnerabilities threaten the present—as with Anna’s example—the license to teach others slips with it, and influencers may find themselves subject to their own pedagogical practices. These patterns evidence the potential of negative emotionality to disrupt the position of the positive influence(r), highlighting the affective precision successful Instagram posting requires.

Positivity pedagogies in context

The stickiness of the positivity pedagogies that suffuse mainstream Instagram influencing can tell us something important about wider cultural shifts and preoccupations. A push to “think positive” has been a central trope of Westernised popular culture for at least the past 70 years (see, for example, Norman Vincent Peale 1953), and the current incarnation pulls together a distinctive range of sociocultural threads, including cognitive science, positive psychology, self-help, and the turn to happiness and wellbeing in global policy discourse (see Sam Binkley 2011; Ashley Frawley 2015; Sarah Riley, Adrienne Evans, Emma Anderson and Martine Robson 2019; World Health Organisation 2013). The Aotearoa-based Instagram influencers we spoke to are thus teaching and modelling versions of an affective practice with a much wider sociocultural life.

The pedagogical figure of the positive influence(r) discussed above aligns with broader theorisations of the “psychic life” (Christina Scharff 2016) of neoliberal postfeminism, which scholars have traced from television and print to social media over the past decade. As we have explored elsewhere (Calder-Dawe et al. 2021), expressions of positivity and optimism are a marker of dominant neoliberal identities for women. In feminist and media scholarship, optimism, confidence and resilience attract critique because they offer fundamentally individualised solution to intersectional dilemmas and injustices (Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad 2017; Riley et al. 2019; Scharff 2016). Indeed, positivity culture appears distinctive in its capacity to weave together “powerful and contradictory cultural formations of femininity and their associated feeling positions” (Calder-Dawe et al. 2021, 565): neoliberal femininities predicated on self-optimisation, confidence, and invulnerability (Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad 2018; Scharff 2016), and longer-standing constructions of the feminine—and good women—as visually and temperamentally pleasing, a source of others’ happiness and delight (Sara Ahmed 2010). Accordingly, our analysis offers insight into how pedagogies aligned with neoliberalism and postfeminism cycle through everyday gendered mediated practices.

Affective pedagogies of positivity also intersect with broader attitudes and practices of the emerging Digital Wellness (or Wellbeing) movement. The animating argument of this movement is that time on screen should be salutogenic. Resisting the “toxic” uses of smart phones and social media, proponents of digital wellbeing urge us to use these technologies wisely to “enhance” our lives rather than diminish them (Arielle Pardes 2018). This argument adds a new dimension to analyses of the transactional morality underpinning Instagram influencing: followers need to be rewarded for their time (Susanna Paasonen 2016) and therefore influencers seek to offer content that followers might perceive as helpful, beneficial—a “good deal”, in Tim Wu’s words (2017, 14). Casting Instagram as a space of coaching and self-improvement (rather than a space of leisure, voyeurism or mindless scrolling), helps to cement followers’ attachments to the platform as a good influence on their lives; a place where time is well spent.

Conclusion

This paper has examined the affective-discursive practices of eight influencers, illuminating how affective pedagogies of positive thinking, optimism and resilience take shape. A feminist analytic toolkit combined with an affective-discursive practice approach has helped demonstrate the pedagogical work of influencing as gendered labour, shedding light on the psychosocial utility and sociopolitical entanglements of this emotional work. We have shown how upbeat affective pedagogies—and carefully framed narratives of “down days” – weave together a positive emotional style with entrenched gendered ideals, such as “worked on” feminine bodies and affluent consumer lifestyles.

On a broader level, one lesson being shared through positivity pedagogies is that wellbeing resides in the cultivation of a particular kind of psychology and psychic energy. Gregg (2018, x) has argued that the popularity of the self-help genre lies in the solutions it purports to offer to the “persistent social contradictions” and pressures of productivity cultures—most specifically, the scarcity of time and the imperative of time management. Building on this observation, we suggest that affect-based, mindset-oriented pedagogies reflect a mainstream shift away from the management of time (that is, the management of one’s schedule and immediate environment) to something more interior: the management of energy and inner potentials. While our analysis of influencers’ affective labour has highlighted its sociocultural dimensions, popular renderings of emotion are far more mechanistic (“recharging”, “flip the switch”, and “rewiring”). These metaphors contribute to a framing of “down days” (as well as troubling feelings and experiences more generally), as problems of personal circuitry, with personalised solutions. This framing of emotional experience is consequential: it is narrow, potentially punitive and, in sociocultural terms, profoundly unambitious (Mary Breheny and Octavia Calder-Dawe 2021).

Finally, we note that our findings—like cultural practice in this area—are not static. Changes in social media norms and practice unfold with speed and dynamism and we do not expect the specifics of our empirical analysis—the emphasis on positivity and the “down day” post—to remain central elements of lifestyle influencing. Our broader argument about the organisations of affect and pedagogy on Instagram is likely to have more durability. There are hints of such durability in the new deinfluencer movement, wherein influencers gleefully instruct followers on what not to do and what not to buy (Ellie Ellie Violet Bramley 2023). While its “no holds barred,” transgressive flavour feels new, deinfluencing may indicate a development in rather than a departure from the affective pedagogies of influencing.

Acknowledgements

Our warmest thanks to all participants, especially to those whose talk and perspectives inform this paper. Thanks to Maree Martinussen, Alex Tant, Frances Bird and Ella Eagar for your important contributions to the research process. We also thank Karen Witten and Helen Moewaka Barnes for their guidance and encouragement as this research was developed. Finally, thanks to our colleagues near and far whose questions and comments have strengthened our work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Marsden Fund Council from Government funding, managed by Royal Society Te Apārangi [18-MAU-007].

Notes on contributors

Octavia Calder-Dawe

Octavia Calder-Dawe is a Lecturer in Health Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington. Her work explores the sociocultural dimensions of health and wellbeing, asking how broad social and cultural logics resource and inform our sense of how we can – and should – live our lives. Recent work explores connections between privilege, identity, affect and emotion, particularly in relation to gender, ableism and wellbeing.

Cherie Lacey

Cherie Lacey is a Research Fellow in Media and Communication at Victoria University of Wellington. Her work investigates aspects of digital wellbeing, including its relationship to privacy, emotion, and behaviour.

Margaret Wetherell

Margaret Wetherell is an Emerita Professor in the School of Psychology, University of Auckland. Her research focuses on affect and discourse and the ways these intertwine in identity practices and performances. The theoretical base for this work was developed in her 2012 book Affect and Emotion (SAGE).

Michael S. Daubs

Michael S. Daubs is a Senior Policy Advisor at InternetNZ and a co-director for Kōtaha—the Internet, Social Media and Politics Research Lab at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. His research investigates authenticity and transactional affordances on mobile social media apps, and the spread misinformation and white extremist ideologies. He is the co-editor (with Vincent Manzerolle) of Mobile and Ubiquitous Media: Critical and Internal Perspectives from Peter Lang.