Science, Faculty of
Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute for
DSpace
UBCV
Anderson, Lea M.
Master of Arts - MA
University of British Columbia
Academics, NGOS, and governments alike have called upon social media influencers to support sociocultural change for sustainability by promoting and popularising more sustainable ways of living. Enabling influencers to answer this call requires a better understanding of how and why these salient members of social media communities understand and portray sustainable lifestyles. This thesis asked: what elements of sustainable lifestyles do influencers promote, and how do they portray the desirability of these lifestyles to their audiences? Through a qualitative study that draws on conceptions of transformative change for sustainability, pro-sustainability values, and subjective wellbeing, this thesis found that some influencers are already promoting private pro-sustainability actions in ways that signal both the hedonic and eudaimonic value of more sustainable ways of living. However, features of social network sites such as online hate and shadowbanning pose barriers to influencers promoting civic and political practices that are integral to sustainable lifestyles. Addressing these barriers will be key to enabling influencers’ support of the widespread action necessary to advance transformative change for sustainability.
SEEKING TRANSFORMATIVE LIFESTYLES: A ROLE FOR SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS IN CREATING SUSTAINABLE FUTURES by Lea M. Anderson B.A., The University of British Columbia, 2019 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Resources, Environment, and Sustainability) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) June 2023 © Lea M. Anderson, 2023 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled: Seeking Transformative Lifestyles: A Role for Social Media Influencers in Creating Sustainable Futures submitted by __Lea M. Anderson_______________ in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of __Master of Arts____________________________________________________ in __Resources, Environment, and Sustainability_____________________________ Examining Committee: Dr. Kai M.A. Chan, Professor, Institute of Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES), The University of British Columbia Supervisor Dr. Mollie Chapman, Senior Scientist, University Research Priority Program in Global Change and Biodiversity, University of Zürich Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Terre Satterfield, Professor, Institute of Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES), The University of British Columbia Additional Examiner iii Abstract Academics, NGOS, and governments alike have called upon social media influencers to support sociocultural change for sustainability by promoting and popularising more sustainable ways of living. Enabling influencers to answer this call requires a better understanding of how and why these salient members of social media communities understand and portray sustainable lifestyles. This thesis asked: what elements of sustainable lifestyles do influencers promote, and how do they portray the desirability of these lifestyles to their audiences? Through a qualitative study that draws on conceptions of transformative change for sustainability, pro-sustainability values, and subjective wellbeing, this thesis found that some influencers are already promoting private pro-sustainability actions in ways that signal both the hedonic and eudaimonic value of more sustainable ways of living. However, features of social network sites such as online hate and shadowbanning pose barriers to influencers promoting civic and political practices that are integral to sustainable lifestyles. Addressing these barriers will be key to enabling influencers’ support of the widespread action necessary to advance transformative change for sustainability. iv Lay Summary Social media influencers affect their audiences in many ways. By portraying and promoting more sustainable ways of living on their social media platforms, influencers could support social and cultural change to create more sustainable societies. With more knowledge about the experiences of influencers who use social network sites to create lifestyle content, we might enable them to promote more sustainable ways of living that go beyond individual behaviour (such as recycling and purchasing more environmentally friendly products) to include other elements of sustainable lifestyles (such as environmental activism). We interviewed influencers and found that while many of them are already promoting important elements of sustainable lifestyles, they also experience barriers to addressing structural and systemic issues. Informed by studies like this one, influencers may work with organisations, governments, and researchers to address these barriers and support widespread social and cultural change for sustainability. v Preface This thesis is my own original and unpublished work. I defined and designed the research problem and study with guidance from Kai M.A. Chan, Mollie Chapman, and Barbara Muraca. I conducted the interviews and analysis with instruction and resources provided by Kai M.A. Chan, Mollie Chapman, and Barbara Muraca. All methods used in this thesis were reviewed and approved by the Behavioural Research Ethics Board at the University of British Columbia (certificate number H22-01635). The second chapter of this thesis is intended for journal publication, with me as lead author, and Kai M.A. Chan, Mollie Chapman, and Barbara Muraca as co-authors. The first chapter of this thesis gives additional context while the third explores the implications and limitations of the study, with suggested directions for future research. I wrote this thesis, with insightful editing and comments from Kai M.A. Chan, Mollie Chapman, and Barbara Muraca. vi Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iii Lay Summary ................................................................................................................................. iv Preface............................................................................................................................................. v Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ ix Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... x Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... xi Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Prologue ............................................................................................................................... 1 1.2. Conceptualising sustainable lifestyles for transformative change ....................................... 4 1.3. Social media use and pro-sustainability actions ................................................................... 5 1.4. Values and “the good life” on social network sites .............................................................. 9 1.5. Influencers as socialising agents ........................................................................................ 10 1.5. Directions of the present research ...................................................................................... 12 Chapter 2: Manuscript................................................................................................................... 13 2.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 13 2.2. Methods .............................................................................................................................. 17 2.2.1. Participants and recruitment ........................................................................................ 17 2.2.2. Interview and analysis procedure ................................................................................ 18 vii 2.3. Results and Discussion ....................................................................................................... 19 2.3.1. Influencers’ sustainable lifestyles: the hedonic potential of value-based living ......... 19 2.3.1.1. The benefits of buying less for people and the planet .......................................... 20 2.3.1.2. The aesthetic value of circular economies ............................................................ 21 2.3.1.3. Tensions between advertising and anti-consumerist values ................................. 24 2.3.1.4. Prioritising the local for yourself and the environment ........................................ 25 2.3.1.5. Slowing down to savour life and relationships ..................................................... 26 2.3.1.6. Connecting with people and nature....................................................................... 27 2.3.2. Influencers experience barriers to promoting system-changing actions ..................... 28 2.3.2.1. Leaving a niche is hard ......................................................................................... 29 2.3.2.2. System-changing actions do not have a clear aesthetic ........................................ 30 2.3.2.3. Social network sites encourage shallowness ......................................................... 31 2.3.2.4. Shadowbanning discourages civic and political engagement ............................... 32 2.3.2.5. Shifting an account’s focus can threaten economic capital .................................. 33 2.3.2.6. Feeling unqualified to talk about sustainability .................................................... 34 2.3.2.7. Experiences of hate discourage civic and political discussion ............................. 35 2.3.3. Private and social-signalling actions abound, but system-changing actions pose a challenge: what does this mean for transformative change? ................................................. 36 2.3.3.1. Focusing on private and social-signalling actions gets people on board .............. 37 2.3.3.2. Pathways to promoting system-changing lifestyles .............................................. 39 viii 2.4. Limitations and Future Directions...................................................................................... 40 2.5. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 41 Chapter 3: Conclusion................................................................................................................... 42 3.1. Key contributions ............................................................................................................... 42 3.2. Limitations ......................................................................................................................... 43 3.3. Implications ........................................................................................................................ 44 3.4. Future directions ................................................................................................................. 47 3.5. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 49 References ..................................................................................................................................... 51 Appendices .................................................................................................................................... 62 Appendix A. Interview Guide ................................................................................................... 62 ix List of Figures Figure 1. Photograph exemplifying the aesthetic norms of zero- and low-waste digital communities, including reusable containers and toiletries made of cloth and bamboo, by Sylvie Michel on Unsplash (CC0 1.0) …………………………………………………………………23 Figure 2. Example of visibly-mended clothing by Sherri Lynn Wood on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0) ……………………………………………………………………………………………………31 x Acknowledgements I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Kai M.A. Chan, for his excellent mentorship and countless insights that guided this project. Your patience, compassion, and generosity throughout the past two years have been invaluable. This gratitude extends to Mollie Chapman for her pivotal suggestions and endless patience when answering my many questions, and Barbara Muraca for her inspiring comments that consistently expanded my thinking surrounding the implications of this work. I would also like to thank the study participants, whose insights and expertise made this work possible. This research was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I am immensely grateful for my community of labmates, IRES peers, and brilliant friends who have made this place and program a home for me. I feel lucky to have started this program alongside Dana Johnson and Daniel Forrest, who have been consistent sources of support and joy. This gratitude extends to Aaron Aguirre, Alberto Campos, Andy Stock, Anna Santo, Ashli Akins, Colton Stevens, Ed Gregr, Harold Eyster, Jo Fitzgibbons, Julia Craig, Rocío López de la Lama, Rumi Naito, and the other incredible members of the CHANS Lab. I would also like to thank my wonderful friends for the coffee breaks, trivia nights, camping trips, late night walks, dancing, Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, and other innumerable moments of joy. I tried to list all of your names here and ran over the page limit, but please know that you are loved. Finally, my greatest thanks goes to my parents, sister, and the rest of my family, whose love and support I feel every day. You are each an endless source of inspiration and hope, and an acknowledgements page one hundred times this length could not express the gratitude I feel for you. xi Dedication This thesis is dedicated to my Grandma Ann. Together we looked with wonder at the world. Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1. Prologue I am sitting in a garden. Rows of food crops—veins of apples and caning berries to my left, dense strips of alliums and broad beans behind me—grow alongside a patchwork of pollinator plants that the caretakers of the Riley Park Community Garden leave deliberately undisturbed. I watch as a northern flicker moves cautiously along this patch’s edge, seeming wary of my gaze. The European starling to our right is not so timid. It warbles noisily, constellations of white shimmering on its chest. The flicker belongs to a species that has been living and evolving for millenia in this region: the traditional and ancestral territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueum), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples which, while never ceded or surrendered, is now known as Vancouver. Starlings were introduced to this continent in the nineteenth century by British settler-colonists and now contribute to the decline of flickers and other native bird populations by competing for nesting sites (Audubon, n.d.; J. O’Brien, 2014) . Its presence here is a living example of biodiversity decline: one element of the human-made climate-and-ecological crisis that threatens the future of humans and non-humans alike (IPBES, 2019; IPCC, 2023) . Awareness slithers uneasily through my body as the flicker and the starling dance across the thicket. I watch the two birds, thinking of crisis, and find them beautiful. I begin my thesis in this space because the Riley Park Community Garden is not a typical community garden. Using principles of ecological sustainability and techniques from agroecology, its caretakers grow food that is almost entirely distributed to community members experiencing food insecurity. Through a variety of programming and organisational partnerships, it provides a space for individuals to come together to build community connections, capacity, and resilience. I see the efforts of its caretakers—a collective of volunteers, organisers, 1 researchers, and neighbours—as proof of values in practice. It is an act of collective care: care for community, for land and place, and for the non-human others we share them with. This care is enacted amid structures, systems, and ideologies that actively oppose it: that would, for example, have us maximise food production at the expense of the land’s health or prioritise our individual time and wealth over the wellbeing of our community. When I look at this garden—which is quite often, as I live just down the street—I see values embodied in acts of resistance. Yet, amid the hope that this sparks, I also see reminders of the crisis we face: the insolent bits of plastic emerging from the soil; the failed garlic starts killed by the latest heat wave; the flicker and the starling. These are hyperlocal manifestations of a climate-and-ecological crisis that is global in scale. The direct drivers of this crisis—including climate change, pollution, the spread of invasive species, and the overexploitation of natural resources—are rooted in indirect drivers: economic, political, institutional, and sociocultural systems that shape and constrain human activity (IPBES, 2019) . These systems enable affluent nations and consumers to displace the impacts of the crisis onto communities and individuals who have contributed the least to its causes (Díaz et al., 2019; Walker, 2009; Wiedmann et al., 2020) . As a white, Canadian-American settler living in the Pacific Northwest, I have contributed far more to the climate-and-ecological crisis than the average citizen of the world; yet, sheltered by demographics, geography, and affluence, I face comparatively little risk (Ivanova et al., 2016; Song et al., 2019) . In addition to redressing these historical and ongoing injustices, rapid change to the crisis’ direct and indirect drivers in contexts like mine—high-income nations with both disproportionate responsibility for and great power over processes of globalised resource extraction and consumption—is necessary if we are to achieve a sustainable future for the planet’s human and ecological communities. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) 2 termed this process “transformative change”: a “fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors” (IPBES, 2019, p. 14) , from individual and collective practices, to institutions and infrastructure, to the sociocultural values, paradigms, and worldviews that underpin them (Chan et al., 2020; Naito et al., 2022) . The scale of the transformation necessary can feel overwhelming. Yet, while the concept of transformative change highlights the insufficiency of individual behaviour change alone, it also recognises the central role of individuals in achieving just and sustainable futures. Individual actions matter: they can shape social norms and practices, influence political processes, and mobilise others to work collectively to change infrastructures, technologies, laws, and other sociocultural structures (Naito et al., 2022; K. O’Brien, 2018; Shove, 2014) . Furthermore, individual actions signal, reflect, and influence the underlying values and worldviews that ultimately shape collective practices, structures, and systems (Chan et al., 2020; Loukianov et al., 2020) . This is what I see when I look at the garden around me: the actions of its caretakers have restored degraded soil, grown forage for pollinators, and provided food for community members. Through these actions, the gardeners have also signalled values of care, responsibility, and collectivism that challenge dominant narratives about the kinds of processes, structures, and systems we can desire and work to create. This is transformation at the scale of a garden—an incremental yet powerful vision of values in action. What would it mean for the creation of sustainable futures if similarly transformative actions, and the values that they signal, were far more visible? That is the question at the heart of this thesis. In it, I analyse the potential of social media influencers—some of modern society’s most visible individuals—to advance transformative change by portraying, promoting, and signalling pro-sustainability actions and values to large audiences. Our exploratory study asked: 3 what elements of sustainable lifestyles do influencers promote on social network sites, and what value-based framings do they use when portraying those elements? In the following sections, I review the existing literature on the relationship between social network sites, social media influencers (henceforth influencers), and sustainability. I then provide a brief overview of the study conducted in fulfilment of this thesis. Chapter 2 is a manuscript intended for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Chapter 3 summarises the study’s main findings, reflects on those findings’ implications, and offers suggestions for practitioners and future research. 1.2. Conceptualising sustainable lifestyles for transformative change In many discussions about the relationship between individual actions and sustainability, “lifestyle” is used as a narrow analogue for individual consumption patterns (for example, see Akenji et al., 2019) . While these discussions generally acknowledge the need for systemic and structural changes, this framing of sustainable lifestyles implicitly constrains individual agency to the scale of “household-level solutions” (Akenji et al., 2019, p. V) . However, because transformative change occurs across dimensions including and beyond individual consumption, this study draws on a broader conception of what sustainable lifestyles comprise. Naito et al.’s (2022) integrative framework for transformative change conceptualises the relationships between individual actions, social norms, and social structures to explain how individuals can advance transformative change through three classes of action: private actions, which comprise a practice itself (e.g. purchasing a more sustainable product alternative); social-signalling actions, in which individuals contribute to norm change by publicly sharing and signalling their opinions, attitudes, and values (e.g. posting about a sustainability initiative); and system-changing actions, which individuals engage in collectively to affect policies, institutions, and infrastructures (e.g. participating in direct environmental activism). In our analysis of 4 influencers’ social media content, we classify the elements of sustainable lifestyles that they portray and promote into these three classes of action in order to link influencers’ actions to broader sociocultural processes of transformative change. In addition to these three classes of transformative actions, this study also explores the underlying values that influencers convey in their portrayals of sustainable lifestyles. This study draws on the distinction between eudaimonic and hedonic value in its analysis of influencers’ framings of sustainable lifestyles. This distinction stems from ancient and ongoing philosophical discussions that frame values as being related to the relevant markers of “the good life”: hedonic value views the quality of a life as the totality of one’s experienced pleasure versus displeasure, or the presence of benefits and the absence of suffering; and eudaimonic value views a good quality of life as emerging from the pursuit of personally meaningful goals, virtues, and values (regardless of whether that pursuit results directly in pleasure or happiness; Meier & Reinecke, 2021; Mock et al., 2019; Oliver, 2022) . While hedonic and eudaimonic value are not generally considered to be mutually exclusive, hedonic value is often related to materialism and consumerism and is thus associated with unsustainable trajectories. However, scholars such as Kate Soper (Soper, 2020) have challenged this distinction. Soper’s concept of alternative hedonism calls attention to the hedonic potential of more sustainable ways of living and emphasises the ways in which pro-sustainability actions may have components of both eudaimonic and hedonic value. 1.3. Social media use and pro-sustainability actions As social network sites grow in global reach and usage, research has provided mounting evidence of their impact on social discourses, cultural norms, and offline practices. About 60% of the world’s population uses some form of social media (Statista, 2023a) , which Bayer et al. 5 (2020) define as internet-based media that support asynchronous social interaction, user-generated content, and enable users to broadcast interpersonal communications to large audiences. Social network sites are a subclass of social media that allow users to construct uniquely identifiable profiles, publicly display their connections to other users, and interact with streams of user-generated content (Ellison & Boyd, 2013) . The creation of unique profiles and content is associated with the growing phenomenon of ‘self-branding,’ in which users construct a public identity for the gain of social, cultural, and/or economic capital (Khamis et al., 2017) . Self-branding as a phenomenon is particularly prevalent on Instagram and TikTok, which feature prominently in the digital landscapes of this study’s context: from 2022 to 2023, research estimated that 44% of Canadians and 38% of Americans had Instagram accounts, and that 26% of Canadians and 45% of Americans had TikTok accounts (Lee, 2023; Mai & Gruzd, 2022; Statista, 2023b, 2023c) . Studies from fields including psychology, sociology, and communication have identified social network sites as spaces where sociocultural discourses, norms, and practices are articulated, transmitted, and negotiated (Boulianne, 2015; Conger & Singg, 2020; Hynes & Wilson, 2016; Literat & Kligler-Vilenchik, 2021) . However, empirical research has thus far demonstrated mixed results and general uncertainty about the relationships between social network sites, sociocultural change, and pathways toward sustainable futures (Frick et al., 2021; Leyva, 2017; Shen et al., 2023) . While research on this subject is still nascent, social network sites have nonetheless been recognised as important spaces of sociocultural meaning-making that may affect aspects of transformative change including private pro-environmental behaviours, civic participation and political mobilisation, and broader sociocultural narratives and values surrounding sustainability (Boulianne, 2015; Loukianov et al., 2020; Vautier, 2021) . 6 Empirical research on the relationship between social network sites and private pro-sustainability actions has stemmed largely from the fields of business marketing and psychology. These studies often focus on consumer behaviours, which do have a central (albeit limited) role in affecting transformative change. Liu et al. (2019) , Frick et al. (2021) , and Pellegrino et al. (2022) found that using social network sites is positively correlated with increased levels of consumption (measured through the self-reported purchase of clothing, digital devices, and air travel). However, studies by Strähle and Gräff (2017) and Bedard and Tolmie (2018) have also found that social media usage can have significant positive relationships with green purchase intentions (i.e. opting to purchase more sustainable products). Hynes and Wilson (2016) suggest that the potential for social network sites to promote more sustainable consumption patterns may be limited to specific types of products (such as clothing, health, and beauty products), but did not find evidence that social media content was effective in bringing about large-scale change in consumer behaviours. While the features of social networking sites may drive unsustainable consumption by increasing exposure to advertising and enabling impulsive purchasing behaviour, these studies also identified possible sociocultural mechanisms by which social network sites affect consumption patterns. Increased levels of consumption have been linked to experiences of aspiration (in which viewing content triggers upward social comparison and the desire to emulate a behaviour or lifestyle) and broader norms surrounding the desirability and acceptability of various consumption patterns (Frick et al., 2021; Hynes & Wilson, 2016; Liu et al., 2019) . These patterns can also be affected by users’ experience of interpersonal influence (when looking to other users as a source for cues about opinions, attitudes, and behaviours), as well as increased awareness and concern about environmental issues (Bedard & Tolmie, 2018; Strähle & Gräff, 2017) . For example, Shen et al. (2023) found that browsing online green communities can increase users’ 7 levels of environmental concern and thus encourage pro-sustainability actions more broadly (beyond purchase decisions, such as donating to environmental organisations). Studies from the fields of sociology and communication have also demonstrated that social media use can also affect users’ civic and political engagement. Boulianne’s (2015) meta-analysis of studies on the relationship between social media use and participation in civic and political life found a generally positive correlation between the use of social network sites and civic activities such as voting and protesting. The underlying mechanisms for these effects may include social media users’ increased exposure to information, the building of social ties through social network sites, the use of social network sites by organisations to mobilise actions, and the leveraging of social norms surrounding participation. In a study that found that frequent use of social network sites predicts an increase in both online and offline civic and political participation, Leyva (2017) suggests that social network sites have particular potential for mobilising otherwise disaffected youth into online (and, eventually, offline) participation. Regarding individuals already involved in political movements, Parigi and Gong’s (2014) study of the social media usage of members of a political consumerism organisation found that social network sites can reinforce individuals’ commitment to a movement by fostering a sense of community and shared identity. Parigi and Gong also highlight that social network sites allow users to give audiences to actions that would otherwise be invisible, such as by creating a public post about a private purchase behaviour. By “transforming private actions into public ones” (Parigi & Gong, 2014, p. 249) —a process that resonates with Naito et al.’s (2022) distinction between private and social-signalling actions—social network sites may be particularly powerful platforms for promoting all three classes of transformative action and shifting broader norms surrounding sustainability. While the 8 underlying mechanisms by which social network sites affect users’ behaviours, actions, and attitudes is still unclear, empirical research generally suggests that individuals’ experiences on these platforms can influence their day-to-day actions in the offline world. 1.4. Values and “the good life” on social network sites Beyond encouraging or discouraging particular pro-sustainability actions, social network sites also serve as platforms where shared sociocultural values are reflected, shaped, and negotiated. Loukianov et al. found that social network sites tend to emphasise the desirability of certain lifestyles, where posts act as “reflections of people’s ideas about ‘the good life’” and thus “constitute shared resources and inform personal understandings of living well” (2020, p. 2) . Through discourse and network analyses of Instagram posts tagged #goodlife, the authors found that the most popular good life narratives on the platform (such as those of the affluent entrepreneur and world traveller) are less likely to support sustainable futures. However, the study also found evidence of less-popular yet still prevalent narratives that align with more sustainable notions of living well, such as those that emphasise spending time with significant others, engaging in creative endeavours, and participating in place-based physical activities. The authors note that this good life narrative (which they term “shared experiences”) resonates with Kate Soper’s concept of alternative hedonism. In a study that drew on the Schwartz Theory of Basic Values to explore the relationship between social network sites and extrinsic versus intrinsic values, Vautier (2021) found that social media use disincentivizes environmentally responsible attitudes and behaviours by promoting extrinsic values (which are measured in rewards from others and include values such as wealth, status, or image) more frequently than intrinsic values (which are intrinsically motivated and include values such as connection to nature and close personal relationships). While intrinsic values 9 correlate with environmentally responsible behaviour and pro-environmental worldviews, extrinsic values are correlated with higher carbon footprints and lower levels of environmental concern. The distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic value used by Vautier somewhat parallels distinctions between eudaimonic and hedonic value: eudaimonic value shares some similarities with intrinsic value, as both are linked to personally-held values, virtues, and morals; while hedonic value share commonalities with extrinsic values, such as their focus on instrumental benefits. Both Loukianov et al.’s and Vautier’s findings therefore suggest that social media content (and, by extension, social media influencers) may emphasise hedonic values and notions of living well over eudaimonia. 1.5. Influencers as socialising agents Influencers are among the most salient users of social network sites. They are individuals with a large number of followers (with the minimum threshold for ‘micro-influencers’ generally considered to be 1,000 followers; Schmuck, 2021) and higher levels of relatability than traditional celebrities, which leads them to form bonds with their audience members, exert influence on attitudes and behaviour, and often (but not always) monetise their platforms (Dekoninck & Schmuck, 2022) . Influencers have been the subject of increasing scholarly attention in recent years. Most research thus far has emerged from the field of business marketing and has focused on influencers’ potential for enhancing brand awareness, brand liking, and purchase intentions (Kim & Kim, 2022; Schmuck, 2021; Vrontis et al., 2021) . However, they are now receiving increased (albeit nascent) attention from fields including communication, ethics, cultural studies, and psychology in growing recognition that “the possible roles [influencers] can take may be significantly broader than to only impact consumer behaviour” (Suuronen et al., 2022, p. 301) . 10 Empirical research from these fields indicates the increasing relevance of the societal and political roles played by influencers, such as affecting their audiences’ perceptions of societal and political topics (Suuronen et al., 2022; Zimmermann et al., 2020) , health-related behaviours (e.g. nutrition; Sakib et al., 2020) , and environmental and sustainability awareness (Johnstone & Lindh, 2018; Schmuck, 2021) . These findings suggest that influencers are a modern iteration of opinion leaders, who are (following Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955) ordinary individuals that exert a large-scale impact on the opinions and behaviours of others. Most relevant to transformative change is the potential for influencers to affect their followers’ engagement in various pro-sustainability actions. For example, Dekoninck and Schmuck (2022) found that following influencers who post about the environment and political topics is positively correlated with users’ increased pro-environmental behavioural intentions and political participation. The authors suggest that influencers may affect these outcomes by: drawing their followers’ attention to previously unnoticed topics; making complicated topics more comprehensible; increasing their followers’ sense of being knowledgeable enough to participate in conversations and actions surrounding politics and sustainability; and providing a reference around which their followers can orient their own values and political beliefs. Empirical research has thus far indicated the potential for influencers to affect their followers’ private and civic actions, as well as shape the broader sociocultural narratives conveyed on social network sites. As particularly conspicuous members of platforms that are growing in significance as spaces where individuals absorb, reflect, and negotiate sociocultural norms, values, and structures, social media influencers may be viewed as socialising agents. Recognising influencers’ role as socialising agents aligns with the IPCC’s recent call for social influencers and thought leaders to assist in accelerating social, cultural, and behavioural shifts for sustainability (Creutzig et al., 2022) . In its Sixth Assessment Report on climate change 11 mitigation, the IPCC states that the “modelling of such shifts by salient and respected community members” can “set new social norms” and “increase the adoption of low-carbon technologies, behaviours, and lifestyles” (Creutzig et al., 2022, p. 506) . In light of the evidence summarised above, this study views social media influencers as falling under the IPCC’s categorisation of “salient and respected community members” who have a significant role to play in the creation of just and sustainable futures. 1.5. Directions of the present research Scientists, governments, and NGOs have called upon influencers to motivate widespread societal transitions for sustainability by serving as role models for more sustainable lifestyles. However, research has yet to relate the elements of sustainable lifestyles that influencers promote to the pursuit of transformative change for sustainability. Furthermore, it is crucial to assess the value-based framings that influencers use in their portrayals of sustainable lifestyles in order to understand how they may be affecting deeper sociocultural narratives and imaginaries surrounding pro-sustainability values and notions of living well. Through semi-structured interviews with 14 influencers, this study explores the elements of sustainable lifestyles that influencers do and do not promote, and the underlying values and motivations that shape their decisions. 12 Chapter 2: Manuscript 2.1. INTRODUCTION Human-made systems of production and consumption are driving a climate-and-ecological crisis that threatens the future of humans and non-humans alike (IPBES, 2019; IPCC, 2023) . The drivers of this crisis—including fossil fuel use, land-use change, pollution, and the exploitation of nature for unsustainable resource extraction—are rooted in political, economic, institutional, and sociocultural systems that enable affluent nations and consumers to displace the crisis’ impacts onto communities and individuals who have contributed the least to the its causes (Díaz et al., 2019; Purvis et al., 2019; Walker, 2009; Wiedmann et al., 2020) . Achieving just and sustainable futures for the planet’s human and ecological communities requires the fundamental transformation of these interconnected systems at an unprecedented rate. So-called transformative change for sustainability entails a “system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors” (IPBES, 2019, p. 14) , from individual and collective practices, to institutions and infrastructure, to the sociocultural values, paradigms, and worldviews that underpin them (Chan et al., 2020; Naito et al., 2022) . Individual behaviour change alone is insufficient for achieving this transformation. However, individuals have a central role to play in advancing transformative change, such as by shaping social norms and practices, influencing political processes, and mobilising collective action for sustainability and environmental justice (Naito et al., 2022; K. O’Brien, 2018; Shove, 2014) . As Karen O’Brien writes of transformative change for sustainability, the concept works to shift individuals “from being seen as ‘objects to be changed’ and reduced to their carbon footprints, to viewing themselves as subjects or agents of change who are capable of contributing to systemic transformations” (2018, p. 157) . 13 Inciting and enabling individuals to enact transformative change is central to addressing the climate-and-ecological crisis. In its Sixth Assessment Report on climate change mitigation, the IPCC calls upon social influencers and thought leaders to help accelerate necessary social, cultural, and behavioural shifts (Creutzig et al., 2022) . The report states that the “modelling of such shifts by salient and respected community members” can “set new social norms” and “increase the adoption of low-carbon technologies, behaviours, and lifestyles” (Creutzig et al., 2022, p. 506) . This spotlight on social influencers comes amid the past decade’s flurry of scholarly attention on social media influencers, or prominent users of social network sites who serve as role models for behaviours, attitudes, and lifestyles (henceforth influencers; Schmuck, 2021) . While early studies of influencers stemmed primarily from marketing research that examined their impact on purchase intentions and brand attitudes, recent work has recognized this group as opinion leaders who affect their followers in diverse ways, including political participation, sustainability awareness, and behavioural intentions (Dekoninck & Schmuck, 2022; Johnstone & Lindh, 2018; Sakib et al., 2020; Suuronen et al., 2022; Zimmermann et al., 2020) . The IPCC’s call to action for influencers reflects their significant potential for effecting sociocultural change through the modelling of “sustainable lifestyles.” While “lifestyle” is often used as a narrow analogue for individual consumption patterns—implicitly constraining individual agency to the scale of “household-level solutions” (Akenji et al., 2019, p. V) —transformative change occurs across dimensions including and beyond individual consumption. Empowering individuals to enact transformative change therefore requires a broadened understanding of what “sustainable lifestyles” comprise. In this paper, “lifestyle” refers to the various actions, practices, and materials that make up individuals’ day-to-day lives, as well as the broader goals, values, and worldviews that underpin those elements. To conceptualise what a “transformative” lifestyle for sustainability may look 14 like, we draw on a framework by Naito et al. (2022) which conceptualises three classes of individual action that contribute to transformative change: private actions, which people conduct individually to reduce their personal environmental impact; social-signalling actions, in which people publicly share and signal their pro-environmental values, attitudes, and identities to help shift sociocultural norms, values, and narratives; and system-changing actions, or actions that people engage in to change institutional, political, legal, and other structural components of unsustainable systems. A lifestyle that supports transformative change for sustainability includes private actions typically associated with sustainable lifestyles (e.g. recycling and environmentally-conscious purchasing), but also extends beyond so-called household-level solutions to include actions that shift sociocultural norms and values (i.e. social-signalling actions) and affect civic, political, and systemic processes (i.e. system-changing actions). Conceptualising influencers’ role in creating sustainable futures requires understanding their potential for modelling all three categories of transformative action. In addition to modelling particular elements of sustainable lifestyles, influencers shape shared sociocultural values and imaginaries about living well, or what makes “a life worth striving for” (Loukianov et al., 2020, p. 2; Vautier, 2021) . Research into the relationship between sustainability and conceptions of “the good life” often draws on the theoretical distinction between eudaimonic and hedonic wellbeing: hedonic perspectives evaluate a life based on the presence of benefits and the absence of suffering, while eudaimonic perspectives view the good life as emerging from the pursuit of personally meaningful goals, virtues, and values (Martela & Sheldon, 2019; Meier & Reinecke, 2021; Mock et al., 2019; Oliver, 2022) . Whereas living in accordance one’s moral and relational values is central to eudaimonic wellbeing, hedonism treats wellbeing as the product of the instrumental value of one’s actions and experiences (Knippenberg et al., 2018) . Although hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing are not generally considered to be 15 mutually exclusive, literature on pro-sustainability actions and values often associates hedonism with unsustainable trajectories (due to its association with materialism and consumption; Loukianov et al., 2020; Venhoeven et al., 2013) . In these framings, living in accordance with pro-sustainability values requires self-sacrifice, asceticism, and reduced experiences of pleasure (Barrington-Leigh, 2016; Binder et al., 2020) . However, scholars such as Kate Soper have called for a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between hedonism and sustainable lifestyles. Soper’s concept of “alternative hedonism” aims to highlight the hedonic potential of more sustainable ways of living, suggesting that widespread lifestyle change may be motivated both by “altruistic concern for the ecological and social consequences of consumerist lifestyles” and “in part by self-interest” (2020, p. 66) . Influencers may contribute to transformative change for sustainability by modelling the various actions and practices that constitute sustainable lifestyles, and by shaping collective understandings and narratives about what makes those lifestyles desirable. To explore the relationship between influencers and transformative change, this study investigated what elements of sustainable lifestyles influencers promote on social network sites, and how they frame their portrayals of those lifestyle elements. To meet this goal, we conducted 14 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of influencers who use Instagram and, in some cases, one or more of the following social network sites: TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, and/or YouTube. Our analysis of the interview data draws on Naito et al.’s (2022) three categories of transformative action to classify the types of actions and practices that influencers promote, while our analysis of how influencers frame these actions and practices draws on conceptions of eudaimonic and hedonic wellbeing (including Soper’s alternative hedonism). Following this analysis, the paper discusses the implications of influencers’ portrayals of sustainable lifestyles for advancing transformative change. 16 2.2. METHODS 2.2.1. Participants and recruitment Purposive sampling was used to identify influencers with experience and expertise using social network sites to communicate with a large audience of followers (Etikan et al., 2016) . Following Schmuck (2021) , this study defines influencers as users of social network sites who regularly post content that communicates their experiences, feelings, and opinions to an audience of at least 1,000 followers. To achieve an in-depth understanding of the relationship between the lifestyles portrayed by influencers and transformative change for sustainability, the sample targeted influencers whose content relates to the environment and/or sustainability to varying degrees. This ranged from influencers whose content does not explicitly discuss sustainability but portrays elements of lifestyles associated with more sustainable ways of living (such as regularly using public transit and purchasing second-hand goods; Soper, 2020) to influencers whose content focuses almost exclusively on environmental activism. The study focused on influencers who are based in Canada and the U.S. because these high-income nations possess a disproportionate historical responsibility for the climate-and-ecological crisis and have some of the world’s largest per-capita environmental footprints today, and thus represent contexts where transformative change is most urgently needed and could have far-reaching effects (Chan et al., 2020; Ritchie et al., 2020) . Most of the participants were between the ages of 20 and 30, although several were from older age groups. 11 of the participants were women, two were men, and one was non-binary. Apart from one participant (whose content focused on rural life and homesteading), most were based in urban and suburban areas. 17 Participants were initially identified using hashtag searches (i.e. identifying users who tagged their content with hashtags such as #zerowaste or #canadiantravel) and contacted via Instagram’s direct messaging function. The study was initially designed to focus on Instagram, following previous studies that demonstrated Instagram’s prevalence as a platform for conveying and shaping sociocultural norms, values, practices, and other lifestyle elements (Loukianov et al., 2020; Vautier, 2021) . However, because half of the participants also create content for TikTok (and, in some cases, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube), the study’s focus was ultimately extended to include additional social network sites. At the time when the interviews were conducted, the participants’ audience sizes ranged from approximately 2,600 to 370,000 followers. Recruitment and interviews were conducted with approval from and in accordance with requirements specified by the Behavioural Research Ethics Board at the University of British Columbia. 2.2.2. Interview and analysis procedure The interviews were conducted between August 2022 and March 2023. They were based on open-ended questions on topics including: participants’ experiences of using social network sites; their ideas surrounding sustainable lifestyles and wellbeing; their perspectives on the role of social media in advancing sociocultural change; and (if applicable) their experiences of monetization and working with commercial sponsors. Photo elicitation exercises were used to explore participants’ motivations for creating particular content and the meaning they ascribe to it (Harper, 2002) . Additional self-curated photo elicitation exercises, in which participants responded to a prompt by self-selecting and discussing a post from their accounts, were used to further explore their ideas surrounding wellbeing and sustainability (Marcella-Hood, 2020) . The interviews were conducted over Zoom and lasted approximately one hour. 18 The interviews were audio- and video-recorded, transcribed, and reviewed by participants, who were given the opportunity to amend or add to their responses. The interview transcripts were qualitatively analysed using NVivo V1.7.1 using a combined inductive and deductive coding approach, in which some themes were predetermined and others emerged inductively via descriptive coding of the transcripts (Saldaña, 2014) . Based on a first round of coding, a detailed coding scheme that incorporated both pre-determined (e.g. buying better ) and emergent (e.g. shadowbanning ) themes was developed and applied in a second round of coding. The interview and coding processes aimed to achieve an in-depth understanding of participants’ experiences using social network sites, placing primary emphasis on data saturation and developing a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between the experiences of influencers and portrayals of sustainable lifestyles. 2.3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 2.3.1. Influencers’ sustainable lifestyles: the hedonic potential of value-based living The study participants use social network sites to promote elements of sustainable lifestyles that tend to fall within the categories of private and social-signalling actions, especially regarding more sustainable patterns of consumption. While participants’ decisions to practise these lifestyle elements were often motivated by pro-sustainability values (and thus aligned with eudaimonic conceptions of wellbeing), their content often emphasised the practices’ hedonic benefits. Participants’ portrayals of sustainable lifestyles on social network sites often resonated with Soper’s concept of alternative hedonism, which emphasises the potential of living in accordance with pro-sustainability values to lead to experiences of pleasure and satisfaction (rather than contributing only to eudaimonic wellbeing and experiences of self-sacrifice; Soper, 2020) . Moreover, influencers convert lifestyle elements that may typically be considered private actions 19 into social-signalling actions through the act of posting and sharing on social network sites, and therefore may be contributing to norm change surrounding conceptions of desirable lifestyles. While each of the study participants can be described as influencers according to Schmuck’s (2021) definition, some participants self-identified using alternative terms including “content creator,” “environmental educator,” and “activist.” Some shared that they preferred these terms because the term “influencer” is often associated with consumerism. As stated by a participant who creates content about homemade and low-waste beauty products: “I think that influencer has a negative connotation, and what I do every day is create content, and yes, sometimes it influences people, but my channel is not really promoting consumerism” [Interview 01]. However, given the salience of the term “influencer” and its use in studies that demonstrate this group’s impacts on phenomena far beyond consumptive behaviours, we opted to continue using this term for the purposes of this study. The following sections describe the elements of sustainable lifestyles that the participants promote on their social media platforms. 2.3.1.1. The benefits of buying less for people and the planet Participants described engaging in behaviours such as choosing to “keep things until they break” [Interview 01], “buy just what I need” [Interview 02], and “having self-control” [Interview 08], and conveyed these behaviours through their social media content. For example, a participant whose account focuses on sustainable fashion described her self-brand as an “outfit repeater” who, rather than frequently purchasing and wearing new clothes, challenges prevailing norms by posting “a bunch of photos of me wearing the same exact outfit literally everywhere. [...] I am seen wearing the same thing in multiple posts, and that’s one of my ways of being sustainable” [Interview 11]. 20 By portraying these actions on social network sites, the participants signalled pro-sustainability values such as reducing their environmental impact and valuing their current possessions over participating in the newest trends. However, rather than portraying these choices as a sacrifice, participants emphasised the material and hedonic benefits of buying less. One participant, whose account focuses on outdoor recreation and sustainable travel, described posting content that conveys the combined monetary and wellbeing benefits of reduced consumption: “I really do find that anytime I make a choice that isn't for me, but that's for the planet, in a roundabout way, it ends up helping me too. Like having less stuff, like buying less. Just little things that helps, like your wallet. [...] Money is always on people's minds. So I do mention that aspect of it because I know it resonates with people. But beyond that, it's just having less reliance on material things” [Interview 12]. 2.3.1.2. The aesthetic value of circular economies When participants described their consumption behaviours, many shared that they prioritise engaging in circular economy practices such as purchasing second-hand, repairing and/or repurposing used items, and reducing purchase-related waste. Participants signal their pro-environment values and promote engagement in circular economies by creating posts that depict practices such as thrifting, upcycling, and visible mending (i.e. making repairs on clothing deliberately visible). Similar to their portrayals of efforts to reduce their overall levels of consumption, these participants’ content emphasises the hedonic benefits that can emerge from aligning their lifestyle with pro-sustainability values. As shared by a participant whose account focuses on sustainable fashion: “I really want to show people that you can live a sustainable lifestyle, but you can still have things that are aesthetically pleasing. [...] You don't have to give 21 up or sacrifice anything to be sustainable, and in fact, it can actually improve your style” [Interview 10]. The connection between circular economy practices and aesthetic pleasure, as signalled by this participant, was a common theme across the interview data. Participants who are members of zero- and low-waste communities also connected the promotion of low-waste practices to aesthetic desirability, but shared that aesthetic norms of social network sites and social media communities could also become burdensome or restrictive. As shared by one such participant: “There's an aesthetic around zero waste, that you have to have all your food in mason jars, and you can't have one bit of plastic in your pantry” [Interview 08]. This may be connected to what Soper describes as an “aesthetic revisioning” (2020, p. 157) in which a “greened aesthetic material culture” (2020, p. 6) permeates popular depictions of the good life. Some participants noted that elements of this aesthetic revisioning could be counterproductive, as captured by one participant’s reflection that “when I first started making changes in my own life, I got the impression that you have to have the newest, prettiest eco stuff” (such as plastic-free toiletries and bulk storage containers; Figure 1) [Interview 12]. However, other participants noted that many digital zero- and low-waste communities have recently shifted to emphasise “using what [you] already have” [Interview 07]. 22 Figure 1. Photograph exemplifying the aesthetic norms of zero- and low-waste digital communities, including reusable containers and toiletries made of cloth and bamboo, by Sylvie Michel on Unsplash (CC0 1.0). Accompanying the aesthetic elevation of circular economy practices are portrayals of waste that aim to elicit a negative affective response in audience members. Two participants described sharing images of plastic found in natural spaces, supporting Soper’s suggestion that “Images of waste may have an important part to play in a greening of aesthetic response, since the junk excreta of consumerist society is so plainly repellent” (2020, p. 159) . As perceived by one of these participants, sharing images of waste may encourage audience members to reduce their waste because it “does remind people that trash isn't pretty and nobody really wants it” [Interview 12]. 23 2.3.1.3. Tensions between advertising and anti-consumerist values Although participants’ content often portrays reduced consumption and anti-consumerist values, most also engage in product promotion via brand partnerships. Twelve out of the fourteen participants promote products through publicly-disclosed paid or gifting partnerships. These participants shared a range of criteria related to ethics and sustainability that influence their navigation of these partnerships, including whether companies were: supply-chain transparent; vegan and cruelty-free; sizing-inclusive; and Black- or LGBTQI+-owned (although participants did not explicitly connect the latter two categories to sustainability). Many participants relied on third-party certifications from organisations such as B Corp, PETA, One Percent for the Planet, and Fairtrade International when choosing whether or not to accept a partnership. Participants’ processes for navigating brand partnerships and monetization signal the notion that, when not buying less or participating in circular economies, they can encourage their followers to “buy better.” However, some participants expressed a sense of tension within their attempts to promote more sustainable consumption choices that could inadvertently promote consumption in general. In the words of a participant whose content focuses on low-waste lifestyles and product swaps: “As someone who gets asked a lot to be sent products, it's like, where do you draw that line between overconsumption? Because, obviously, being sent a bunch of sustainable products is overconsumption. [...] And trying to encourage people to buy other products, they might still be encouraged to buy those other products, and therefore have a ton of different products in their home that they don't really need. So, yes, it is still overconsumption. And that's something I'm still trying to work on” [Interview 08]. 24 2.3.1.4. Prioritising the local for yourself and the environment The subset of participants whose content focuses on travel and outdoor recreation frequently discussed the importance of “going local,” which Soper writes “must be at the centre of the cultural shift required to make holidays greener” (2020, p. 114) . While these participants promote the wellbeing benefits of travel, they conceptualise and portray these benefits as being achievable without travelling abroad. Several of these participants noted that the experience of being unable to travel abroad due to the COVID-19 pandemic shifted their perspective on the benefits of travelling locally: “It's about trying new things, and experiencing different cultures, and learning how other people live. Even here in Ontario, during COVID, I did a lot more in my backyard here. Just learning about different things, and watching the Mennonites in the country get on with their daily lives, and just do their thing. [...] If we could all see the way that other people were living in the world, not just across the ocean, but even in our own backyards, in other towns, in smaller towns if you're in a big city, or if you're in the small town, going to a big city and seeing different cultures. I think if everyone was able to do it within their means, the world would be a better place ” [Interview 06]. These notions align with Soper’s claim that the “life-enhancing aspects of encountering other spaces and cultures… can also be experienced much closer to home” (2020, p. 120) . Another participant associated local travel with the hedonic benefits of ease and stress reduction: “I think that [local travel] does help people too, because they're not stressed with the packing of going across the world. Or, you know, people are terrified of flying, so why are they flying when they can just see a few things in their backyard?” [Interview 12]. 25 2.3.1.5. Slowing down to savour life and relationships Beyond the above components of sustainable lifestyles, which tend to comprise specific behaviours, some participants also use social network sites to convey broader notions of wellbeing associated with more sustainable notions of living well. Many participants’ shared notions of wellbeing that align with the concept of “slow living,” which Soper frames in opposition to growth-driven consumer culture due to its emphasis on “less tangible goods such as more free time, better personal relationships and a slower pace of life” (2020, p. 44) . Phrases that participants used to describe their conceptions of wellbeing included “slowing down” [Interview 10], “being in the moment” [Interview 09], and “being present in your environment and seeing the beauty in it” [Interview 04]. Some participants emphasised the role of simplicity in their conceptions of living well, which they often accessed through time spent in nature. During a self-curated photo elicitation exercise, one participant shared that her understanding of wellbeing was captured by a photo documenting a recent camping trip: “ Not only had I gotten my exercise in, I got my dose of nature, I was there with my partner and my dog, so being surrounded by people you love and being out there just alone with your thoughts. I guess wellbeing for me is having that ability to not have any distractions and not have anything stimulating you. Because our world stimulates us all the time, so I think any chance you can get to not be stimulated is the definition of wellbeing” [Interview 12]. Another participant extended the concept of slow living to her approach to content creation and social media use, and made explicit its relationship to pro-sustainability values: “The biggest thing is slowing down and appreciating what you already have. And not this constant need to buy new things, or consume a bunch of content, or just mindlessly speeding around and following 26 trends and stuff. And it's about slowing down and getting to know yourself, and what truly fulfils you in your life. And then, through that process, you come to realise that you don't need that much to be happy” [Interview 10]. 2.3.1.6. Connecting with people and nature Finally, participants associated wellbeing with their relationships with loved ones, community members, and nature. Many participants associated wellbeing with time spent in community and used phrases such as “being with friends” [Interview 04] and “when people get together” [Interview 13] to describe their conceptions of wellbeing. Some participants connected these experiences more specifically to being surrounded by those who share their pro-sustainability values, such as one participant who linked wellbeing to her experience taking part in a conference for sustainability influencers where she connected with “like-minded people” who “care about the planet” and “really align with [my] values” [Interview 01]. Other participants linked their conceptions of wellbeing to time spent in nature. Some emphasised the hedonic benefits of relationships with nature (such as pleasure, happiness, and stress relief), sharing examples such as “It does make me feel better every time I can get myself outside” [Interview 05] and “I feel my happiest when I'm out in nature” [Interview 06]. Others linked wellbeing to self-transcendent relationships with nature, noting, for example, that wellbeing “will always be intertwined with being in nature, because I think if the Earth isn’t well, then we’re not well” [Interview 10]. Participants’ choices to engage in and promote the lifestyle elements discussed above were often driven by values traditionally associated with eudaimonic conceptions of wellbeing. However, when portraying these lifestyle elements on their social media platforms, participants tended to highlight their hedonic benefits. In doing so, participants conveyed that individuals may not have 27 to choose between living pleasurable and satisfying lives and behaving in accordance with pro-sustainability values—at least when it comes to the private and social-signalling components of sustainable lifestyles. 2.3.2. Influencers experience barriers to promoting system-changing actions The components of sustainable lifestyles discussed above have an important role to play in advancing the interrogation of consumerist and growth-driven conceptions of living well that currently dominate popular culture in the U.S. and Canada. However, these lifestyle components are largely constrained to the realms of private and social-signalling actions. System-changing actions that address the structural and systemic drivers of the climate-and-ecological crisis—such as collective mobilisation to change laws and policies, disrupt and remake institutions and infrastructure, and escalate direct environmental activism—are an equally crucial component of transformative change. However, whereas social media influencers may be uniquely positioned to reshape the cultural imaginary around the hedonic potential of more sustainable ways of living, they experience barriers to promoting system-changing actions. Some participants incorporate calls for certain civic actions in their content (such as by sharing petitions) and one participant focused almost exclusively on environmental activism; however, participants from low-waste, sustainable fashion, and sustainable travel communities perceived barriers to promoting system-changing actions that are linked to the mechanisms of social network sites and the potential loss of economic and social capital. 28 2.3.2.1. Leaving a niche is hard Several participants shared that they regularly consume instructional media (like blogs and podcasts) that discuss topics related to growing social network platforms, such as increasing engagement and navigating business partnerships. These participants noted that a salient piece of advice from these media is to “have a niche” [Interview 06]. For example, as one participant was instructed by a marketing expert: “When people look at your page, make sure right away they know what to expect. Because if it’s at all vague or not really obvious or to the point, it can make people just go on to the next page” [Interview 12]. These participants feel that once influencers find and establish their niche, platform algorithms make it difficult to shift the theme of their content while still maintaining engagement and growth. As shared by a participant whose content focuses on zero-waste practices and environmental education: “I think the thing about social media is that you do kind of get put into a box. Like, I sort of put myself in this box, but social media forces it on us. Because I started focusing on zero-waste, now I can only talk about zero-waste content. [...] Because my content has a niche, leaving that niche is hard. Not because of my followers, but because of the platforms themselves. Once you’re in a spot, you’re kind of in the spot” [Interview 07]. Likewise, participants who do portray system-changing actions find it difficult to promote these practices to audience members who are not already engaging in them. As shared by the one participant who uses social network sites almost exclusively for environmental activism and coordinating collective action: “People don't understand the solutions that are out there that are gaining scale because we're operating in a little niche bubble” [Interview 14]. In other words, algorithms can create an echo-chamber effect that can make it difficult to access new audiences or shift the theme of an account’s content. 29 2.3.2.2. System-changing actions do not have a clear aesthetic Whereas private and social-signalling actions (such as those embodied by the circular economy practices discussed above) have clear aesthetic components, some participants feel that the aesthetic dynamics of social network sites make it difficult to promote alternative actions that do not have a ready visual appeal. These participants shared that “with just the way social media is, things do have to be aesthetically pleasing for people to pay attention” [Interview 10] and “to attract people, the aesthetic is important” [Interview 12]. Participants perceived elements of sustainable lifestyles that are easily visualised (such as wearing thrifted or mended clothing) as being better suited to promotion on photo- and video-based platforms. In the words of a participant who engages in activist practices offline but generally devotes her social network platform to the promotion of visible mending: “It's harder in social activism to show the thing. I mean, you often have to use words. [Visible menders] don't have to use words” [Interview 13] (Figure 2). 30 Figure 2. Example of visibly-mended clothing by Sherri Lynn Wood on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0). 2.3.2.3. Social network sites encourage shallowness Some participants linked these aesthetic barriers to what they described as the “shallowness” of social media, or its perceived unsuitability for discussions of complex or nuanced topics due to its visual and short-format nature. As shared by one participant who promotes both conventional and second-hand fashion: “The messages I really want to make are way deeper than clothes. Way deeper than a simple Instagram post or a simple TikTok post” [Interview 03]. However, one participant, an outdoor recreation and sustainable travel influencer, noted that this dynamic may be shifting: “When I started doing this, people had very surface-level conversations. Very easy conversations. Very, ‘This won’t get anyone in trouble, this is very neutral, people will like this, easy peasy.’ But I have noticed recently that it’s starting to get more real talk” [Interview 09]. 31 2.3.2.4. Shadowbanning discourages civic and political engagement Some participants who do engage in political critique and discussion of system-changing actions on their accounts felt that platform algorithms suppress this content via shadowbanning. Shadowbanning, sometimes called opaque content moderation, refers to the practice by social network sites of hiding or downranking a user’s content without disclosing this “ban” to the user (Nicholas 2022). This term is colloquially used to describe any undisclosed algorithmic content moderation that reduces the visibility of a user’s content to other users. While the opaque nature of this practice makes it difficult to prove that a user has been shadowbanned, users (including several of this study’s participants) often ascribe sudden and severe drops in audience engagement to the practice. Participants who shared their experiences of shadowbanning suggested that content related to politics, civic action, and social and environmental justice was more likely to lead to platforms shadowbanning their content or account. As described by a participant who creates zero-waste and environmental education content: “I have a group chat with my fellow content creator friends, and a lot of us do experience that when we share stuff specifically about climate change and use that wordage, TikTok doesn’t like to post it. [...] And maybe it is just all in my head, but I do feel like TikTok is not pushing climate-related content” [Interview 07]. One participant shared that the possibility of being shadowbanned discouraged them from posting about issues related to politics and social justice: “I feel strongly about Black Lives Matter, but I feel like if I say all of my thoughts about Black Lives Matter, and how I feel like certain things should be in place versus others, then either my platform will be taken down, or I would be shadowbanned because that's a little bit too much for their algorithm” [Interview 03]. Another participant, a Black content creator whose account combines fashion and makeup 32 content with discussions of social and racial justice, highlighted the inequitable distribution of shadowbanning impacts: “I’m 98% sure I’m shadowbanned right now. [...] [Influencers] tend to be, you know, white, slim-ish, cis-presenting. They’ll make super controversial content. [...] People who deviate from that norm have a harder time getting their content out and usually will find themselves shadowbanned faster than others” [Interview 02]. Her experience corresponds with previous research on shadowbanning. While the practice remains understudied, some studies suggest that shadowbanning is disproportionately experienced by Black, plus-sized, gender diverse, and other marginalised communities (Nicholas, 2022) . 2.3.2.5. Shifting an account’s focus can threaten economic capital While the above themes are related to the algorithmic mechanisms of social network sites themselves, influencers are also discouraged from promoting system-changing actions by social dynamics that some study participants perceive as jeopardising their economic and social capital. As discussed previously, twelve of the study participants engage in monetized, product-based partnerships. Shifting the focus of their content away from private actions and “buying better” may represent a threat to these partnerships. Although brand partnerships were not the sole source of income for any of the study participants, many shared that monetization provides them with important economic security. As shared by one participant: “[Monetization] helps me out so much overall in my real life and being able to feel like I can financially take care of myself, and have enough buffer room in case something were to happen to me” [Interview 04]. Some participants felt pressured to accept more brand partnerships than they would otherwise like due to these financial constraints, such as the zero-waste influencer who above shared her concerns surrounding overconsumption: “A lot of the products I take, I take them because I need the money to be able to afford things like food, 33 rent for my house. I do think that sucks sometimes, to put it fairly. Because it's still overconsumption” [Interview 08]. 2.3.2.6. Feeling unqualified to talk about sustainability Beyond the potential loss of income linked to shifting the focus of their accounts from private, purchase-based actions toward system-changing actions, influencers also experience social deterrents from discussing politics and civic actions. Some participants shared that they do not feel “qualified [...] to talk about sustainability” [Interview 11] and that they avoid discussing certain topics out of “fear of saying the wrong thing” [Interview 10]. One participant, whose content promotes Canadian travel and outdoor recreation, shared that despite his love of nature and the environment, he sometimes felt afraid of posting about sustainability and social or environmental politics “because I'm not as informed as maybe I should be” [Interview 06]. Some participants shared that communities of influencers who discuss politics, activism, and system-changing actions can be perceived as intimidating: “The language that's used when discussing those topics, I feel like a lot of the time it's people who have… Maybe it seems like they've taken political science courses or, I don't know, they've learned a bit more about it through their education. [...] It can be very gatekeep-y. Kind of like, ‘Oh, you can only be part of this conversation if you know about politics and sociology and business’ and stuff like that” [Interview 10]. One participant who engages in offline social and environmental activism said that she deliberately does not use the term “activist” in her online branding because activism “can be terribly self-serious. And also just over-serious and a lot of people feeling a little bit superior, perhaps, because of knowing stuff and having this information that they then impart” [Interview 13]. 34 2.3.2.7. Experiences of hate discourage civic and political discussion The fear and anxiety that deters influencers from promoting system-changing actions may be linked to experiences of “hate” [Interview 01], which can range from negative comments and messages, to persistent pestering or harassment (“trolling”), to doxxing (publicly sharing someone’s personal offline information; Walther, 2022) . Participants shared that they had been negatively affected by their experiences of online hate: “I didn't know how mean people could be. [...] It gave me a different view of humanity than what I had” [Interview 02]. One participant conveyed his sense that the anonymity of social network sites encourages hate: “Because they're behind a veil or something, [users] feel that they can say whatever they want. And there are a lot of bad people out there, and they say a lot of really bad things” [Interview 06]. Previous studies have demonstrated that both receiving and witnessing online hate has negative wellbeing effects, including depression and anxiety, social isolation, and paranoia (Walther, 2022) . Participants from online communities related specifically to sustainability (including zero-waste, sustainable fashion, and environmental activism) shared the perception that discussing sustainability more would increase their experience of hate, especially if audiences may perceive them as not living a “perfect” [Interview 08] sustainable lifestyle. As shared by a participant who creates music, fashion, and sex education content: “I'm always afraid of posting something about sustainability and somebody being like, ‘But you own something from Zara,’ and I'm like, ‘That's true, I do. But I also got it when I was in eighth grade’” [Interview 11]. In a statement that resonates with the above discussion of shadowbanning, the participant who uses social network sites for environmental activism shared his perception that hate is disproportionately experienced by members of marginalised communities. He felt that this dynamic discouraged members of these communities, as well as audiences more broadly, from 35 discussing system-changing actions online: “I think it's not inclusive because it's so judgmental. I think people feel so harshly critiqued about how they look, who they are, how they identify, whether it's gender, sexuality, whether it's star sign, whatever it is, people feel like they're always under a watch glass” [Interview 14]. 2.3.3. Private and social-signalling actions abound, but system-changing actions pose a challenge: what does this mean for transformative change? We found that many influencers are promoting sustainable lifestyles by portraying a variety of private and social-signalling actions that, if adopted widely, would support transformative change for sustainability. Moreover, while influencers’ decisions to engage in and promote these lifestyle elements are often linked to pro-sustainability values and eudaimonic notions of wellbeing, their social media content frames these elements as pleasurable, desirable, and materially beneficial. Their portrayals of private and social-signalling pro-sustainability actions challenge prevailing norms surrounding consumption, travel, and other unsustainable practices, while also demonstrating that taking actions that align with pro-sustainability values does not have to be a sacrifice or reduce hedonic wellbeing. However, changing norms and private behaviours alone is insufficient for addressing the climate-and-ecological crisis. While participants expressed the ease of incorporating portrayals of private and social-signalling actions into their content, many experienced barriers to creating content that promotes the system-changing elements of sustainable lifestyles (such as civic and political actions). In light of this, what are the possible implications of influencers focusing on private and social-signalling actions due to the barriers they experience to promoting system-changing actions? 36 2.3.3.1. Focusing on private and social-signalling actions gets people on board When influencers emphasise the ease and hedonic benefits of private and social-signalling actions, they may be providing a low-barrier entry point to sustainable lifestyles for audience members with no previous interest in sustainability. Particularly in light of their sense that communities that focus heavily on political and civic actions can be intimidating or “gatekeep-y” [Interview 10], some participants felt that focusing on private and social-signalling actions serves as a way for new audience members to “get on board” [Interview 12] with sustainability, which may eventually lead to increased participation in the system-changing elements of sustainable lifestyles. Sustainable lifestyle content with built-in aesthetic elements, such as second-hand fashion and visible mending, leverages aesthetic desire to attract new audience members who may otherwise not have had any interest in more sustainable consumption practices. Previous work has demonstrated that user engagement with social network sites, many of which are designed to emphasise visual content, is driven significantly by visual stimulus and aesthetic value (Aljukhadar et al., 2020) . Some participants feel that content which combines desirable aesthetics with discussions of lifestyle change is “a very good way to introduce someone to sustainability and to attract that person who maybe doesn't care so much, but they're attracted to the aesthetic and the fun side of it” [Interview 10]. Participants shared the perception that new audience members could be “caught by your aesthetic” [Interview 12] before eventually developing an interest in deeper discussions of environmental and social issues. Some participants also emphasised the importance of positivity when engaging audiences and felt that content which focuses on consumption behaviours creates a more positive emotional affect by conveying ease and tangibility. In addition to the ease of “swaps” [Interview 08], or 37 purchasing more sustainable alternatives, some participants framed their portrayals of non-consumptive private actions such as trash pick-ups as creating positive affect through tangibility: “I probably lean more towards individual action just because I think it's more tangible for people. It's easier to see your impact when you're reducing plastic water bottles, for example, when it's harder to see the impact you're actually having when you're standing there at a rally” [Interview 07]. Some studies have tentatively linked the wellbeing impacts of various sustainability actions to those actions’ degree of tangibility, finding that being able to perceive the immediate effects of an action positively impacts subjective wellbeing (Mock et al., 2019) . Focusing on aesthetic pleasure, ease, and tangibility thus emphasises the positive aspects of sustainable lifestyles, which participants feel leads to higher audience engagement. This perception is supported by previous work that has found that emotionally “positive” or “elevating” content is more likely to be shared on social network sites than emotionally negative content (Oliver, 2022) . System-changing actions may conversely be associated with negative affects. As shared by a participant who focuses his content primarily on system-changing actions: “Systemic action, you feel pain. Individual action, oftentimes, is the easiest, lowest hanging fruit” [Interview 14]. This dynamic may discourage influencers from creating content related to civic and political actions that are perceived as more difficult, less tangible, less aesthetically pleasing, and thus as linked to negative emotions and lower engagement from audience members who, in the words of one participant, “don’t want to feel bad” [Interview 08]. In other words, it is possible that while private and social-signalling actions can easily be framed as having both hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing benefits, hedonism and system-changing actions may not fit together so easily. 38 2.3.3.2. Pathways to promoting system-changing lifestyles While it is possible that focusing on private and social-signalling actions may serve to bring new audience members into conversations surrounding sustainability, influencers may also become trapped in spaces that focus on these actions and struggle to incorporate the promotion of system-changing actions. In this way, aesthetic critique and cultural revisioning may be functioning as a substitute for civic engagement and system-changing behaviours, delaying necessary transformative action. This is not to downplay the significance of private and social-signalling actions; as the literature on transformative change emphasises, all three classes of actions (private, social-signalling, and system-changing) are crucial to address the climate-and-ecological crisis. As acknowledged by the participants who do engage in discussions of system-changing actions on their account, there is a need to bridge the narrative between communities who focus on one class of action over another. These participants expressed their desire to “find the middle ground” [Interview 10], emphasising the fact that consumer, civic, and political actions are “complementary” [Interview 14] rather than contradictory. It is therefore crucial to address the barriers that some influencers experience to promoting the system-changing elements of sustainable lifestyles. Our results show that many influencers share deep pro-sustainability values and a sense of care for the planet and their communities. Gathering around these shared values, they may work in partnership with NGOs, researchers, activists, and fellow influencers to create and share resources that make system-changing approaches more accessible to social media audiences. This could take the form of a “guidebook” [Interview 14] to help influencers include discussions of civic and political advocacy, environmental and social justice, and climate-and-ecological solutions on their platforms. These partnerships may also work to expand paid opportunities that are not rooted in 39 product promotion, similar to Action for the Climate Emergency’s Creator Collective which pays content creators to share evidence-based information about the climate-and-ecological crisis (Action for the Climate Emergency, n.d.) . When creating these shared resources, opportunities, and spaces to express pro-sustainability values, it will be important to remember the affective barriers to participating in system-changing actions. These actions are perceived by many as intimidating, difficult, or disheartening—but that does not have to be the case. Influencers may already be well-positioned to make space for emotions in conversations about transformative change by moving away from “doom and gloom” [Interview 08] narratives and toward approaches that frame sustainable lifestyles, in all their components, as ”desirable and joyful and playful” [Interview 13]. Crucially, this is not a call to minimise or invalidate the negative affective experiences that are inherent to living amid the climate-and-ecological crisis. Rather, this call resonates with the notion of “messy hope,” a term used by climate wellbeing scholars to recognise how seemingly contradictory emotions (such as grief and joy) can be experienced simultaneously when taking system-changing actions (Wise, 2022) . While system-changing actions may not have the same hedonic potential as private and social-signalling actions, barriers to supporting system change may be lowered by making space to discuss the spectrum of emotions experienced when living amid a climate-and-ecological crisis. 2.4. LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS At its inception, this study aimed to examine the relationship between transformative change and the lifestyles portrayed by influencers as valued and desirable. We rooted our sampling approach in a conventional understanding of influencers, salient across popular culture, as users who chronicle the materials and experiences of everyday life but are not generally associated with 40 civic and political engagement. As such, it is possible that our discovery of a gap in influencers’ promotion of system-changing actions was precipitated by the study’s initial design. Assessing the overall suitability of social network sites for promoting system-changing actions may therefore require future studies to concentrate more explicitly on users who focus on such content—the “activist-influencers” who made up only a minority of our sample. Nonetheless, the study’s design is supported by the reality that this latter group of influencers is still in the minority; we also did not anticipate the extent to which different influencer communities would diverge in their emphasis on particular classes of transformative action. Bridging the gap between niches of private action and system change in order to enable a majority of influencers to participate in processes of transformation will be key to leveraging the power of social media in the pursuit of just and sustainable futures. 2.5. CONCLUSION Rather than being constrained to roles as advertisers or promoters of consumption, this study found that many influencers are demonstrating creative ways to challenge prevailing norms and align pro-sustainability values with desirable lifestyles. However, participants also report barriers to promoting the system-changing actions that are key to the advancement of transformative change for sustainability. Many of these barriers are linked to the mechanisms of social network sites, which are inextricably embedded in hegemonic capitalist systems and, by their profit-driven nature, will likely continue to depoliticise, invisibilize, and reinforce systems of oppression via processes such as shadowbanning and data mining. While influencers have shown how social network sites can be used to enable certain transformative changes, achieving just and sustainable futures will require diverse actors to work together, online and offline, to enable widespread solutions. 41 Chapter 3: Conclusion 3.1. Key contributions Individuals have a crucial role to play in addressing the climate-and-ecological crisis and achieving transformative change for sustainability (Naito et al., 2022; K. O’Brien, 2018) . While this fundamental, system-wide reorganization cannot be achieved by private actions alone, individuals can also affect transformative change by contributing to the spread of pro-environmental norms, values, and practices (i.e. taking social-signalling actions) and working collectively to change laws, policies, institutions, and infrastructures (i.e. taking system-changing actions; Naito et al., 2022) . In addition to engaging in these three classes of transformative action, individuals can interrogate and shape deeper sociocultural narratives and imaginaries about the kinds of lives we ought to (or want to) lead. Social network sites are growing in prevalence and power as spaces where social norms, practices, and understandings of living well are reflected and shaped (Loukianov et al., 2020; Vautier, 2021) . As prominent users of social network sites, influencers play a particularly important role in these processes (Schmuck, 2021; Suuronen et al., 2022) . Recognition of the diverse effects that influencers have on their followers has led governments, NGOs, and scholars to call upon influencers to “use their power for good” by modelling more sustainable lifestyles and thus motivate widespread shifts in their audience’s behaviours, actions, and attitudes. However, research into how the dynamics of social network sites variously enable and constrain influencers’ ability to promote sustainable lifestyles has thus far been limited. In this study, we assessed the potential of social media influencers to promote sustainable lifestyles by exploring the perspectives of influencers themselves. To understand what elements of sustainable lifestyles influencers promote and why, we conducted 14 semi-structured 42 interviews with a purposive sample of influencers. We found that our participants promote many elements of sustainable lifestyles and, moreover, frame these elements in a way that challenges prevailing sociocultural norms and emphasises the hedonic value of pro-sustainability actions (which previous research had largely associated with eudaimonic value). However, while the dynamics of social network sites enable influencers to promote private and social-signalling actions, influencers experience barriers to promoting system-changing actions. To enable influencers to fully mobilise their platforms in support of just and sustainable futures, a diverse coalition of actors must work together to address these barriers. 3.2. Limitations This study attempted to characterise the elements of sustainable lifestyles that influencers portray on social network sites, the notions of wellbeing and living well that underpin those portrayals, and the barriers influencers experience to promoting civic- and politically-oriented (i.e. system-changing) actions. Some limitations of the study were discussed in Section 2.4 and are expanded upon here. This was an exploratory study that based its findings on in-depth discussions with a purposive sample of influencers who represent a small subset of a large and diverse population. Purposive sampling, like all nonprobability sampling techniques, limits the generalizability of our findings due to the subjective nature of participant selection (Etikan et al., 2016) . We also focused on influencers who are based in Canada and the United States. While these nations represent important contexts for the advancement of transformative change, this geographic focus may limit the applicability of the study’s findings in other contexts. The study’s 14 participants are not representative of all influencers in these nations. As such, their actions, experiences, and perceptions do not necessarily reflect those of the larger influencer community and may have been affected by the participants’ demographic characteristics (which are not 43 representative of the entire influencer community or the Canadian and American populations more broadly). Furthermore, the study focused on influencers whose content, or platform “brand,” already demonstrated elements of sustainable lifestyles (including sustainable travel, sustainable fashion, low- and zero- waste practices, and environmental and social justice activism). These represent only a minute subset of the categories of content and influencer brands that exist on social network sites, and thus the experiences and perceptions of the study participants may be limited to influencers who already create content related to sustainability. The study participants were also individuals who were available to and interested in participating in this study and discussing how their experiences of social network sites relate to sustainability. The sample was therefore likely influenced by a self-selection effect, which further limits the results’ generalizability. Despite these limitations, we were struck by the number of experiences and perceptions shared in common across the 14 participants and the remarkable consistencies that emerged from the interviews; this convergence of experiences and themes suggest that our results have important implications for the role of influencers in advancing transformative change. 3.3. Implications Various aspects of social network sites—from algorithms that downrank posts discussing climate change to the aesthetic norms of “Instagram-worthy” content—work to deter influencers from using their platforms to promote civic and political engagement. Beyond encouraging depoliticisation, these barriers also reinforce broader processes of inequity and injustice. Shadowbanning is the most cogent example of the ways in which social network sites can function as tools of marginalisation. Individuals from equity-deserving communities such as Black, Indigenous, and people of colour, queer and gender-diverse users, and plus-sized users 44 more frequently report experiencing shadowbanning than the general population (Nicholas, 2022) ; as such, barriers to civic and political engagement on social network sites are compounded for these users, serving to further silence and make invisible the system-changing efforts of marginalised communities. While shadowbanning is a particularly conspicuous example of inequitable depoliticisation, it speaks to foundational truth: social network sites are owned by corporations that exist to make money. These platforms, their algorithms, and the corporations who run them are driven by an inherent profit motive and designed to foster users’ addiction, with the ultimate goal of selling advertising space and user data. Influencers who attempt to use social network sites to change the hegemonic capitalist systems in which they are embedded will thus always be working against their fundamental design. This does not mean that social network sites are innately ineffective for the promotion of system-changing activities. Such a claim is easily disproved by the many environmental and social justice activists who use social network sites to organise actions, form ties and share information with other activists, and build movements around their causes. However, as lamented by a participant of this study who uses social network sites for just such purposes, these activist-influencers are (like other types of influencer) trapped in a niche. They are usually speaking to the converted. To increase the ability of social network sites to support transformation for sustainability, a bridge must be built between niches that currently tend, for the most part, to focus on either private and social-signalling actions (e.g. low- and zero-waste, sustainable fashion, and sustainable travel) or system-changing actions (e.g. environmental activism). While there are influencers (some of whom participated in this study) who are working to combine these classes of content in creative and impactful ways, the barriers presented by the mechanisms of social network sites must be addressed if they are to become a useful tool for the advancement of transformative change. 45 Other barriers relate more to individuals’ subjective experience and perceptions of various pro-sustainability actions than to the mechanisms of social network sites. While they may tend to avoid promoting civic and political actions, some influencers are actively interrogating dominant sociocultural narratives about what a desirable lifestyle entails. By emphasising the hedonic benefits of various pro-sustainability actions, influencers are problematizing debates surrounding the relationship between values and sustainability. In opposition to the notion that living in accordance with environmental and social values (i.e. eudaimonia) will negatively impact experiences of pleasure (i.e. hedonism), influencers demonstrate the ways in which pro-sustainability actions can benefit both hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. They are showing their audiences that sustainability does not have to be a sacrifice—that you do not necessarily have to choose between pleasure and living in accordance with your values. However, this framing most often occurs around portrayals of private actions. Many participants still associate system-changing actions with displeasurable experiences. This invites the question: does system change have to be negative? System-changing actions can certainly lead to experiences of frustration, overwhelm, and despair. However, communities working toward system change also experience joy, social connection, and moments of success and hope. Making space to discuss the entire spectrum of emotions and experiences associated with system-changing actions, both negative and positive, may be key to encouraging the promotion of every class of transformative action. 3.4. Future directions One of our study’s primary findings is that portrayals of system-changing actions are often absent from influencers’ efforts to promote more sustainable lifestyles. Each of the barriers that participants identify as discouraging them from promoting system-changing actions could be 46 addressed in a variety of ways; I will only attempt to address a few in detail here. I will, however, note that many of these barriers could be addressed through collaborations and partnerships between influencers, activists, researchers, and other actors working to create just and sustainable futures. Influencers are not alone in feeling intimidated by or “unqualified” to enter spaces oriented around activism, politics, and civic actions. Many of the perceptions shared by our participants resonated with my own experience of entering these spaces, which has taught me that people may want to take action for sustainability and justice yet still feel the need to be “invited in.” On social network sites, collaborations (such as Instagram Collabs, which allow two users to co-create and share a post on both of their accounts) between influencers who focus on private, consumer-oriented actions and influencers who focus on system-changing actions could help each collaborator break out of their niche, feel more comfortable entering new spaces and communities, and reach new audience members. Additionally, activists, researchers, and NGOs could work with influencers to create resources that promote literacy in topics that can feel inaccessible to general audiences, such as environmental justice, Indigenous rights and sovereignty, and evidence-based solutions to the direct drivers of the climate-and-ecological crisis. These resources could reduce the feeling expressed by some participants (and which may be shared by many influencers) that they are not educated, informed, or qualified enough to broach discussions of system change on their platforms. Influencer partnerships with NGOs could also increase the availability of paid opportunities that are not linked to product promotion, allowing influencers to maintain their economic security without feeling pressured to participate in and promote, in the words of one participant, “overconsumption.” By combining their diverse expertise and perspectives, these actors could support influencers’ efforts to leverage social network sites in the creation of just and sustainable futures. 47 However, the success of these collaborations and partnerships may be limited by the built-in or intractable characteristics of social network sites, such as online hate. Collaborating with other actors may decrease some influencers’ sense that discussing system-changing actions will put them at risk of being “cancelled,” but it will not address the risks of becoming a target for trolling, doxxing, and other forms of online harassment. Influencers and other users of social network sites could call upon social media corporations to take greater responsibility for online hate, such as by improving content moderation practices and other safeguards against harm to users (Bakalis & Hornle, 2021) . However, efforts to limit online hate may be constrained by the same limitations of social network sites discussed previously. Many events of the past decade—from social network sites’ resistance to regulating extremist groups (Bond, 2021) to their use as tools of for-profit digital surveillance (Chayka, 2023) —have demonstrated social media corporations’ unwillingness to take serious regulatory steps that would risk their continued growth and profit. Moreover, some of the steps that platforms do take to ostensibly address online hate (such as shadowbanning) already result in the suppression of system-changing content, and enhancing these practices may further encourage depoliticisation. This thesis offers an exploratory and preliminary understanding of how and why influencers promote certain types of pro-sustainability actions on social network sites. Our study focused on a sample of influencers from Canada and the United States who, to varying degrees, already create content that promotes elements of sustainable lifestyles. Future research could focus on influencers whose content does not relate to sustainability whatsoever to determine if they hold but do not express pro-sustainability values and, if that is the case, assess whether the barriers they face to creating sustainability-related content are the same or different from those identified in this study. Additionally, a future qualitative study could focus more explicitly on influencers who identify as activists and use their platforms to promote civic, political, and other 48 system-changing actions. While three of our study’s participants identified as activists, only one primarily used his platform to promote and organise system-changing actions. A study that focuses more explicitly on similar activist-influencers may further illuminate the viability of influencers and social network sites for supporting this class of transformative action. Future work could also use quantitative approaches (such as survey designs) to access larger sample sizes and assess the prevalence and generalizability of the themes identified by our study. Finally, our study was limited by its geographic focus; future research could explore these themes in other geographic and sociocultural contexts to determine if our findings and their implications are relevant outside of Canada and the United States. 3.5. Conclusion Influencers have a key role to play in creating more just and sustainable societies. They are social and cultural leaders who have the power to elevate a variety of transformative actions that can help address the climate-and-ecological crisis. Many influencers are already doing just that by creating compelling and popular content that demonstrates how various pro-sustainability actions can be integrated into desirable lifestyles that support both eudaimonic and hedonic wellbeing. However, the social media platforms used by influencers are inextricable from hegemonic structures that prioritise corporate profit and reinforce systems of inequity and oppression. As such, influencers experience barriers to promoting system-changing actions on social media. 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I’d like for you to tell me what that photo means to you and your thought process behind posting it. 4. What do you hope one of your followers will experience from looking at this photo? 5. From looking at your posts, I can see that… [e.g., you’re concerned about impacts on the environment, peoples’ lives, etc.]. Can you describe your thought process about what products [or values, initiatives] you promote? 6. Is there another post that you want to tell me about/share with me that informs some of these questions? Part 3: Visioning 7. I would like to do a short activity. If you like, you have the option to close your eyes, or you can leave them open. I would like you to picture yourself in the future — it can be many years in the future, or closer to now. In this future, you are living a good life. That could mean that you’re satisfied, you’re successful, you’re happy, or else that you just have a general sense of well-being. Take a few moments to think about it and let me know when you’re ready to share. Now, can you describe what’s come to mind? a. Follow-up prompts: i. Can you list 5 things that are key to this vision? ii. What are your surroundings like? Such as your home or the landscape? 61 iii. Are the things you have with you an important part of this vision? iv. How do you spend most of your day? v. What type of work are you doing, if any? vi. What sort of relationships are part of your day-to-day life? vii. What is your relationship like with nature in this vision? Why? Part 4: Success, Happiness and Well-Being 8. What are some long-term goals that are important to you? a. In life? b. On social media? 9. Thinking back on the vision we discussed earlier, when you’re older and looking back on your life, what do you think would make you feel fulfilled? (Like you’ve lived a good life?) a. How much of that sense of fulfilment comes from the notion that you would be happy, versus that you would feel some sense of achievement/success? 10. Who’s someone that you look up to and why? a. Is there another influencer who you look up to? 11. Can you describe your relationship with purchasing products, or consumption more generally? Part 5: Self-Photo Elicitation 12. Can you show me a photo that represents… a. …what the term “well-being” brings to mind for you? b. …what the term “sustainability” brings to mind for you? c. …what the term “happiness” brings to mind for you? d. …your relationship with nature, the environment, or non-human others? e. Are there any other photos you’ve posted that you feel represent what we’ve discussed so far? Part 6: Experience on Social Media 13. Why do you think people follow you? 62 a. How do you think you affect your followers’ ideas about [wellbeing/fulfilment/happiness]? 14. Can you tell me about how your experience on social media has affected how you think about things like success and well-being? About the decisions you make in your day-to-day life? 15. We’ve discussed many values and ideas that are important to you. Do you feel like these are things that you can express on social media? 16. Are there any questions you wish I had asked you during this interview? 63
Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Resources, Environment and Sustainability
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Graduate
Chan, Kai Ming Adam, 1975-
Seeking transformative lifestyles : a role for social media influencers in creating sustainable futures
Text