Social media have facilitated an environment in which ordinary users can reach large audiences and make money with the content they produce. However, with growing success, their ordinary appeal begins to lack credibility, leading micro-bloggers to invest in authenticity labour, a process where they perform and present genuineness. While authenticity labour has previously been discussed in light of ‘realness’ and covert product placement, visual dimensions of authenticity have been underexplored, despite the fact that many social media have important visual components. To address this gap, this study explores Instagram micro-bloggers’ and users’ views in relation to the various dimensions of authenticity labour. We find considerable congruence between producers’ and audiences’ perceptions of relevant authenticity dimensions. However, we also find incongruence around the evaluation of visual components, where producers view editing as important to perform authenticity, but audiences disagree. Moreover, this study emphasizes the relational character of authenticity, as it is an evaluation of expectations met or disappointed.

社交媒体营造了一种环境，在该环境中，普通用户可以吸引大量受众，并利用他们制作的内容赚钱。然而，随着成功的增加，他们的普通吸引力开始缺乏信誉，导致微博主投资于真实性劳动，在这种过程中他们表现并表现出真实性。尽管先前已经根据“真实性”和隐蔽产品的位置讨论了真实性工作，但是尽管许多社交媒体都具有重要的视觉组成部分，但真实性的视觉维度仍未得到充分研究。为了弥补这一差距，本研究探讨了Instagram微型博客和用户对真实性劳动各个方面的看法。我们发现生产者和听众对真实性相关维度的理解之间存在相当大的一致性。然而，我们还发现视觉组件的评估不一致，制作人认为编辑对于执行真实性很重要，但观众对此表示反对。此外，本研究强调真实性的关系特征，因为它是对预期达到或失望的评估。