Abstract Young African fashion microcelebrities are social media influencers who regularly share their outfits of the day and actively engage with their audiences, contributing to the burgeoning phenomenon of youth geographies in Africa. By examining their representations of authentic selfhood through a geographical approach to performativity, we not only suggest that authenticity on social media is both performed and performative but also argue that the performativity of performing authenticity is inherently spatial and relational. Sampling from 100 of the most popular fashion microcelebrities across four African countries, we conduct case studies of two from Nigeria and two from Senegal, illustrating spatial and cultural differences. According to visual methodologies in cultural geographies, qualitative analysis of all the posts made by four figures and their interactions with audiences after posting enables us to identify three strategic performances, namely branding, locating, and peopling authenticity. We further argue that these regularised and interrelated performances become spatial discursive practices, helping form and expand discursive spaces where authenticity is relationally performed and performatively enacted. This finding further develops performativity scholarship in human geography by bringing spatiality and relationality together in both virtual and everyday spaces. For youth geographies, we also emphasise that power dynamics in these spaces are relative and relational: The young African microcelebrities seemingly have full agency to perform authenticity, but they are actually compelled to follow the interactional modes in the ever‐changing discursive spaces which they create but cannot control.
Xiao et al. (Sun,) studied this question.