The Industrialization of Digital Entrepreneurship: The Case of Beauty Influencers in China’s Multichannel Networks Economy

Abstract

With the rise of multichannel networks (MCNs), China’s influencer economy has developed along a highly industrialized trajectory. This article examines that process through the case of MCN-affiliated beauty influencers on Weibo. Drawing on a mixed-methods study of 17,629 posts from the top 100 beauty influencers, combining topic modeling with qualitative textual analysis, we identify 4 patterned domains of content production: commercial promotion, beauty professionalism, performative everydayness, and community engagement. Across these domains, we further trace three interrelated practices of industrialized entrepreneurship: scripted selfhood, industrialized intimacy, and commercial orchestration. These findings demonstrate how self-presentation, audience engagement, and content production are systematically manufactured through MCN mechanisms, platform logics, and commercial cycles, turning intimacy and self-expression into replicable resources for monetization. By centering the Chinese context, this study extends prior influencer scholarship by demonstrating how MCN-driven industrialization materializes in everyday influencer practices. It further advances a conceptual account of industrialized influencer labor, in which creativity, authenticity, and intimacy are institutionally structured and reproduced at scale.