The CEO myth on social media: how digital entrepreneurship transforms aspirations among marginalised workers

This paper examines the pursuit of digital entrepreneurship among marginalised workers in Brazil, centred on Instagram and mediated by digital marketing coaches. We argue that workers’ shift to digital entrepreneurship transforms their subjectivities and aspirations for a better life, drawing from three ethnographic case studies on the sales (physical retailing and e-commerce), beauty, and cleaning sectors, complemented by semi-structured interviews and a computational analysis of the Instagram bios of aspiring digital entrepreneurs. Our study sheds light on a social media network that teaches, promotes, and models digital entrepreneurship, crafting and circulating what we term the ‘CEO myth,’ an idealised journey from a struggling individual to a successful entrepreneur, recognised expert, and coach of aspirants and other experts. We analyse three aspirations identified among our interlocutors, shaped by their pursuit of digital entrepreneurship – influence, material comfort, and opulence. The CEO myth provides a framework for Brazilian marginalised workers to aspire to social mobility in a country marked by socioeconomic and racial disparities that continue to shape their experience on Instagram’s digital ecosystem.