SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS AND DIGITAL BRANDING: UNPACKING THE ‘MEDIA KIT’ AS A MARKET DEVICE (Paper presented at the AoIR Conference as part of the panel “The Cultures, Politics and Economics of Social Media Influencers) DRAFT – PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE OR CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHORS. Arturo Arriagada Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez Cultura Social Media arturo.arriagada@uai.cl Francisco Ibáñez Cultural Social Media Abstract The work of social media influencers -like YouTubers, Bloggers, and Instagrammers- has been explored as a form of digital labor performed on social media platforms (Abidin, 2016; Duffy, 2017; Rocamora, 2018). However, little attention has been paid to how this type of labor functions as a form of valuation (Helgesson & Muniesa, 2013) in a specific market: the market of digital branding. This market is formed by the interaction between actors and devices where influencers’ working practices produce and assign value. Drawing on actor-network theory (Latour, 2005) and ideas of market performativity (Muniesa, Millo, & Callon, 2007), the work of social media influencers can be interpreted as an assemblage resulting from discourses, practices and devices, and a valuable form of cultural production. Social media is not the only technological device through which their digital labor becomes valuable. A key device in this process is the ‘media kit’, a portfolio where influencers describe their services and strategies to connect audiences’ taste with brands and products. Based on interviews with a group of Chilean fashion bloggers (N: 35) in 2017 and textual analysis of their media kits, this paper argues that influencers represent an ideal type of consumer that offers cultural and technical expertise to produce and circulate branded content across digital platforms. The ‘media kit’ functions as a performative agency of digital labor, framing and producing a specific type of digital worker, through a set of classifications and categorizations about consumption, consumers and digital content production in the social media economy.