Precarity, algorithmic visibility, and aspirational labour in the construction of lifestyle

<p><br></p><p dir="ltr">While precarity has been experienced widely across journalism practice in recent years, the extent to which this might be felt particularly within digital lifestyle journalism globally remains undertheorised. However, lifestyle journalists face specific pressing threats to their livelihoods in multiple geographic contexts, which include the financial disruption of the lifestyle industries, the income challenges of freelance careers, the continuing difficulties of the global pandemic, as well as the normative elision between digital lifestyle content and lifestyle journalism. This chapter argued that this elision necessitates a reconsideration of the sub-genre of lifestyle journalism in light of the critical theorisation of the labour around lifestyle influencer content. This chapter considers the literature on the precariousness of content creators in light of journalistic precarity and visibility, including the hybrid roles that lifestyle journalists often occupy across both content creation and journalism; the dimensions of exclusion which might perpetuate among those dependent on visibility within the lifestyle journalism industries, as well as the dangers of labour practices reliant on free content.</p>