Influencers and De-Influencers
When deciding on a topic of discussion we landed on “The Influencers” because it was a subject the two of us were most familiar with. As young college students, we grew up during the age where the internet was first establishing itself as a legitimate medium for creativity and communication. On YouTube, users were posting movie clips and making parodies of their favorite pieces of content. Instagram was simply a place to share your nicest photos and curate an idealized gallery of your life. During these early phases, users were more focused on what they wanted to produce and liked to create. It wasn’t as easy to garner a following so it was difficult to imagine having an audience anywhere near the millions. The idea of being an internet celebrity was sort of a rarity if there ever were any.
Over the years however, we’ve seen social media grow and change into a medium in which anybody can truly have an audience. As more people started using the internet, the number of viewers as well as creators increased. As avid users of social media apps like Youtube, Instagram, and Tiktok we knew very well the sort of trends that would come and go as well as the different landscapes of each. It’s easy for us to know what kinds of people are popular and the ways in which they achieve that popularity and status. We’ve seen firsthand how audiences and creators interact with each other in a give and take manner. The viewership supports the creator by watching, liking and commenting, and even monetarily through donations, subscriptions, or purchasing merchandise. The creator in turn provides their viewers with content to watch that they can enjoy and the cycle continues. This relationship is transactional and yet we as audience members still form a strong emotional bond with the creators we watch.
We wanted to explore this relationship and how it’s often taken advantage of in order to serve the monetary needs of influencers. By focusing on the perspective of the audience, we wanted to examine the ways in which we resonate with certain influencers and content creators. Why are we so attached to these people on a screen and what compels us to listen to them and take what they say seriously? It’s one thing to analyze something and look for problems in a system but it’s another to come up with solutions to fix them. We also decided to research the ways in which social media users can and are actively examining their behavior in order to make better decisions.
We started first by thinking of specific instances we’ve come across where the toxic relationship between creator and viewer was apparent. One of the main things that came to mind were sponsorships. There are many online sponsorships that are specific to the online space that one would never have heard of unless they used apps like Tiktok or Youtube regularly. Bloom Nutrition became our focus because of its most recent boom in terms of advertising on Tiktok. Another example we wanted to briefly highlight was the Youtuber Logan Paul and his relationship with his audience. It was of note because he served as an example of how audience trust can grow and change with the influencer themselves. Specifically in how he made mistakes online in a public way, apologized and regained viewer support.
We also found that there were ways to reduce the harm that can be caused by the parasocial relationship between influencers and fans. De-influencing has been a more recently coined term for when users post content that convinces you not to buy a popular product. This can also be accompanied by suggesting cheaper or less wasteful alternatives. It was important for us to bring this up as it proved to be a concrete example of how an individual can be more aware of how they’re using social media. We stressed the importance of thinking for oneself and encouraged our target audience to not lean on the opinions and lifestyles of others.
The two of us settled on the idea of a brochure to organize the information we had in a way that was more visually appealing. By using the Canva website, we found it very simple and easy to accomplish our goals in terms of formatting and arranging the information. Much of the collaborative process for us was intertwined as we both contributed in terms of researching information and designing the final product.
References
Kiki Chanel. (2024, February 22). Why Are Influencers Still Promoting Bloom? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMedQUeBfII&t=213s
Logan Paul. (2018, January 02). So Sorry. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwZT7T-TXT0
Swell Entertainment. (2023, June 23). we should talk about Bloom [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZdhmg2gMqg
