Supervisors: Susanne Pedersen & Christiane Høvring
Discussants: Franziska Günzel-Jensen & Claus Holm

Abstract
This paper explores how social media influencers navigate their professional roles between personal authenticity and commercial demands. While influencers’ strength lies in building trust and intimacy with followers, their work increasingly involves managing multiple—and often conflicting—expectations from diverse stakeholders. Drawing on role theory, this study investigates how influencers who integrate their personal lives into their content navigate tensions between private and professional identities. Based on an inductive qualitative study of Danish lifestyle influencers, the paper applies thematic analysis to interview data to uncover how influencers manage their roles in an increasingly professionalized and regulated industry. The study contributes to influencer marketing literature by reframing influencers as professionals engaged in complex role work rather than as mere marketing intermediaries. It further extends role theory by illustrating how digital labor introduces new forms of role conflict, identity transitions, and emotional management.

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