Caught in the wild: Vernacular surveillance and the collective construction of the influencer category

Social media has created new, horizontal channels for both vernacular surveillance and discipline. Social media influencers are often at the receiving end of both. This article explores the Instagram account Influencers in the Wild (IITW), which shares secretly recorded videos of individuals taking photos of themselves in public spaces, as an example of vernacular surveillance on social media. Through an analysis of posts and comments on IITW, this article aims to understand the mechanisms of vernacular surveillance constructed by IITW and its audience, and how they are affixed to public shaming on social media. Both the IITW’s content aggregation and the audience contribute to the construction of the influencer category. The posts on IITW suggest that the criticized behaviours depicted in the videos are often associated with self-obsession, inauthenticity, as well as the negative traits linked to selfies. By compiling these videos under a single account, chance encounters where strangers film other strangers are transformed into a category under surveillance.