Dear colleagues,

We are organizing a invited session and invite short impulse contributions to the special session “The Sharenting Economy: Where Parenting Meets Personal Branding and Content Monetization” to be held at EMAC Fall Conference 2026 in Bremen (Germany) 16-18 September 2026.

Professional sharenting — the deliberate, monetized sharing of children’s lives by parent-influencers is the most acute instance of a broader and understudied phenomenon: the commercialization of embedded, non-consenting others in the influencer and creator economy. The child, who cannot consent and whose future autonomy is at stake, is the paradigmatic case. This session uses sharenting as its anchor to build a structured, cross-disciplinary research agenda spanning the full value chain of actors who produce, consume, host, sponsor, and govern this content.

We welcome 5–10 minute impulse presentations. Submissions on professional sharenting are especially encouraged, as are contributions on adjacent cases that share its core tension — child influencers (“kidfluencers”) as quasi-agentic earners, partners and elder kin as embedded content subjects, and the commodification of private and relational life more broadly. Work touching any aspect is welcome: the parent-influencer as personal brand; consumer responses to child-featuring sponsored content; platform and algorithmic logics; brand partnership structures and duty of care; and the regulatory gap.

We particularly value early-stage and in-progress work, since the session includes a guided idea-exchange format designed to seed collaborations and expanding research networks, facilitated by Michael Haenlein (ESCP Business School Paris).

To apply, please submit a structured abstract of 250–300 words by July 30, 2026 via this form.

Sandra Horvat and Morana Fuduric

University of Zagreb, Faculty of Economics & Business Zagreb

Session Co-chairs