Introduction: Bloggers and digital influencers are individuals who have gained prominence through the production and dissemination of media content, often presenting themselves as experts in domains such as lifestyle, travel, food, beauty, and fashion. The “blogger subject” is constituted through the pursuit of a blogger lifestyle, which has increasingly become a pathway to high-income entrepreneurship. These individuals commodify their personal lives through a distinctive lifestyle format—daily storytelling intertwined with advertising—which enhances their attractiveness and deepens audience engagement. As their number of followers grows, so does their social influence, granting them the capacity to shape behaviors, preferences, and orientations.
The emergence of the blogger subject and its associated lifestyle is the result of a multi-layered process that cannot be explained by a single factor. Rather, it is shaped through the interaction of individual, social, cultural, economic, political, institutional, material, and symbolic forces. Accordingly, understanding how ordinary individuals transform into well-known bloggers and influencers is essential for analyzing contemporary social phenomena from a novel perspective. In this regard, the central research question guiding this study is: Under what conditions and through which contextual processes does the blogger lifestyle emerge?
Methodology: This study adopts a qualitative research design based on the systematic approach to grounded theory. The sampling strategy was both theoretical and purposive. Data were collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 17 bloggers residing in Yazd, and interviews continued until theoretical saturation was achieved. The data collection process lasted five months and was accompanied by simultaneous data analysis in an iterative and reflexive manner.
Data analysis was conducted through three stages of coding: open, axial, and selective. Ethical considerations—including informed consent, respect for participants’ privacy, anonymity, and confidentiality—were rigorously observed throughout the research process. Trustworthiness was ensured through prolonged engagement in the field, peer debriefing, adequate referencing, thick description, and member checking. Reliability was further enhanced by the use of structured interview guidelines, comprehensive documentation, and accurate transcription of all interviews.
Findings: The analysis led to the identification of one core category and 18 main categories, which were systematically integrated into a paradigmatic model and articulated through a final narrative storyline. The findings suggest that the lived experience of the blogger lifestyle is primarily driven by several causal conditions, including the perceived necessity of sharing everyday life, the appeal of social popularity, the interaction between talent and experience, hyperreal self-presentation, familial conflicts surrounding blogging practices, and the decisive role of followers.
This phenomenon is simultaneously shaped by contextual and intervening conditions, such as enhanced psychological capacity, extroverted personality traits, the desire to create a hybrid private-public space, intensified formal and informal surveillance, self-doubt and fear of social judgment, and ongoing confrontation with socio-cultural pressures.
The blogger lifestyle requires strategic actions, including the intentional pursuit of blogging, occupational shifts, and aspirations for fame. These strategies ultimately result in three principal outcomes: the accumulation of social, economic, and symbolic capital. This demonstrates that engagement in the blogger lifestyle is fundamentally oriented toward multi-dimensional capital accumulation.
Conclusion:‌Symbolic capital, alongside social and economic capital, emerges as a consequence of the blogging experience. Together, these three forms of capital transform blogging into a dynamic and continuous process that may take shape through diverse trajectories and personal experiences. The blogger lifestyle can thus be understood as a form of self-formation through which individuals seek recognition as valuable social subjects. It represents an assertion of identity and presence—a mode of self-expression that may be constrained in everyday offline life but becomes attainable through digital media platforms.