Abstract
Social Media Influencers (SMI) have had a chokehold on followers, using their power and authority as leverage to influence others. Following social media and communities this conference paper will shed light on how SMIs come to reach such powerful positions and how the repercussions of their fame can lead to unintended consequences. The parasocial behaviours toward Instagram influencers will be highlighted and deciphered along with the self-improvement trend trailing celebrities such as the Kardashian-Jenner family.
Social influences dates back to 1765 when British entrepreneur, Josiah Wedgwood, set out to convince customers to buy sets of his porcelain china. Josiah turned to the royal family and created custom products for the Queen. By approaching the queen he won her “stamp of approval” which started a ripple effect of his product being known as “Queenware”. To this day it is still considered a luxury product due to and influential person advertising the brand (GCU, 2022). This was the first sign of socially influential people being able to persuade followers into willingly submitting to their decisions and habits.
Social media influencers (SMI) are described to have a vast social media network of followers as a result of their content posted online. This allows them power that they use to gain influence over followers (Malik et al., 2023). This power is earned through the ability of cultivating relationship with others over social platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, etc. For SMIs to have an influence over others they must gain trust and provoke aspiration within followers. In an article published by the Grand Canyon University (GCU) (2022), the authors state that there are characteristics that belong to social media influencers. These being:
- A figure that holds a position of authority or credibility,
- Someone who actively posts engaging, entertaining, and/or informative content related to a niche area,
- Someone who has attracted a sizable following of social media fans,
- And finally, someone who can use their authority as leverage to influence purchasing decisions of their followers.
The Kardashian-Jenner family is an example of SMIs who possess most of these characteristics. As stated by Seamus Kirst (2015) in her article ‘The Kardashian’s Social Media Influence’, “Celebrities are their own brand”. The Kardashians are no different. What started as a scandalous start for the family soon developed into one of the biggest social influences known in today’s online media. The Kardashian family first started gaining recognition through the late Robert Kardashian and his profession as a lawyer for some of the biggest scandals in Hollywood, followed by the infamous leaked footage of Kim Kardashian that took the internet by storm. The family has since maintained their status of “influencers” by building an empire by utilising the popularity gained from the past and through the entertainment of their reality television show ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ as well as branching off into various areas of business. Through all of this they stayed present throughout social media platforms, managing to keep up with upcoming trends and current celebrities. As mentioned before the Kardashians fit most of the characteristics named by GCU. They are figures that keep followers actively engaged and entertained as well as using their authority and mass following to persuade purchasing decisions. Some of the biggest brands have fought to gain the favour and status of being approved by the Kardashian-Jenner’s. This has only helped build on the Kardashian and Jenner name and the family reaps the benefits.
Social media influencers aim for a singular thing when presenting themselves on social media, to sell either a product of a brand or their self-image as a brand. When an influencer portrays themselves as a brand it is valued according to how others perceive them. Influencers held in high regard tend to be more successful in reaching audiences rather than smaller more unknown influencers.
This leads to influencers going to extreme lengths to gain attention and popularity to help boost their self-image. Influencers will show some of their most private and intimate moments to gain sympathy and interest from followers. However, by doing this they expose their raw selves to the world which leads to them being more vulnerable in the end. This is when the untrustworthiness of internet users becomes the biggest danger.
As influencers publicly portray their so called ‘human brand’ (Malik et al., 2023) their followers start forming relationships with the influencer. These relationships mimic the same emotions as personal relationships not related to media platforms would, and therefore the line between a cyber world and the real world start to blur.
In 2018 Instagram influencer, Andreea Cristina (30), was featured in an article published by Vice. Sirin kale (2018) interviewed Andreea about her experience with followers throughout her career as an influencer on Instagram. In the interview Andreea shed light on how her once loving fans started to slowly turn on her. She started receiving negative comments judging her for her lifestyle and choices. Her followers were acting like they knew her and her morals well enough to judge her for what she was saying and doing on the platform. Her once supportive following escalated to borderline harassment and following an incident with an unknown follower, that boarder was soon crossed. Andreea started receiving threats on her email accounts (that were never published) in which a male follower would try and contact her repeatedly. After being ignored he took it a step further and located her family home to which he sent packages and letters. This forced Andreea to take action. She turned to Instagram to seek help and report the fanbase that was now harassing her. In return she only received comments such as “keep blocking them” or “keep reporting them” from the platform. To this day there is still no proper way of fixing or preventing harassing or stalking on Instagram.
Following that incident, she discovered that another male follower trying to contact her claimed to be catfished by an account portraying themselves as Andreea with whom he formed a romantic connection. This romantic connection led to the follower repeatedly harassing Andreea and acting as if he should have input in her decisions. The incident is an accurate representation of parasocial behaviour, and the dangers SMI exposed themselves to when posting on social platforms for the public to see.
To elaborate, parasocial behaviour is the act of connecting or imagining a connection between regular people and celebrities (“Parasocial”, n.d.). In the case of Andreea and her follower (turned stalker), she was an influential figure with a high following that was used to deceive an unknowing user. Unbeknownst to the user he was slowly being deceived to form a parasocial attachment with the influencer which carried on into him holding onto the attachment even after he found out that he had been deceived. This shows that followers are often so desperately holding on to an idea of what the influencer is feeling that they end up deceiving themselves. They are blinded by their own selfishness to achieve an idealistic situation that the influencer is no longer a individual with thoughts and emotions. This can lead to dangerous events in which the influencers are no longer a target on social media but in person as well.
While the previous example was a severe case of stalking and how parasocial behaviour can lead to followers deceiving themselves to form a connection with the influencer, there are other outcomes of followers seeking out SMIs to fulfil their needs. In a journal article published by Malik et al. (2023), it is argued that the reason followers observe SMIs may also come from a place of self-improvement rather than a malicious roots. According to the Cambridge Dictionary (n.d) the act of self-improvement is to learn new things independently which in result make you a more skilled or able person. In relation to SMI, followers seek out influencers that they can learn from to help develop their self-enhancement. SMIs are mimicked by followers seeing as they have used their power to persuade habitual actions of their supporters. However, when an influencer aims to persuade their followers of one thing on their platform what is to say that said followers don’t start copying everything SMIs post on social media. Once again this leads us back to the parasocial behaviours of followers. It is hard to draw a line between what followers should/shouldn’t feel connections to in relation to the influencer’s life.
Circling back to the first example of the Kardashian-Jenner family and their hold on the world of social media, they have contributed to more than just brand awareness. The Kardashian-Jenner’s could be said to be responsible for a change in women’s ideal standard of beauty. Thin, slender, white skinned females were once thought to portray the ideal physique, however, the sisters are said to have changed the norms (McComb & Mills, 2022). With a new trend of overly exaggerated breasts and butt while keeping an impossibly small waist, almost all of the sisters have managed to achieve unrealistically sculpted bodies. This has set a new ideal body image that followers pay good money to achieve. In almost a chain-effect manor, other celebrities have taken to modifying their bodies to match those of the Kardashian and Jenners, which has in turn tempted those celebrities followers to follow suit. With the previously mentioned drive for self-improvement most followers stride for, they are convinced that with a certain “look” one is able to gain in popularity and acceptance both on social media and the real world. This however can still hold dangers, seeing as modifications are not always affordable or achievable. Severe mental and emotional strains can come from wanting to achieve a celebrity’s standard but being restrained physically or financially.
Conclusion
In conclusion, SMI will go to any length to maintain their status as a powerful authoritative figure with the ability to influence followers. However, exposing yourself to the public on social media can come with risks that most SMIs don’t anticipate. Followers will take parasocial fantasies or self-improvement too far and end up either hurting the influencer or themselves, whether that be emotionally or physically. The line between a healthy obsession and an unhealthy obsession gets blurred when confronted with Social Media Influencers.
Sources
Grand Canyon University. (2022). GCU. What is a social Influencer? https://www.gcu.edu/blog/performing-arts-digital-arts/what-social-influencer#:~:text=Quite%20simply%2C%20a%20social%20influencer,numbers%20of%20social%20media%20followers.
Kale S. (2018). Vice. The Relentless Horror of Being Stalked as an Instagram. https://www.vice.com/en/article/j5zeb4/andreea-cristina-instagram-stalker-blog
Kirst S. (2015). Forbes. The Kardashian’s Social Media Influence. https://www.forbes.com/sites/seamuskirst/2015/12/17/the-kardashians-social-media-influence/?sh=61aa47b91f03
Self-Improvement. (n.d). Cambridge Dictionary. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/self-improvement
Malik A. Thapa S. Paswan A. K. (2023). The Journal of Product and Brand Management: Social media influencer (SMI) as a human brand – a need fulfillment perspective. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JPBM-07-2021-3546/full/html?skipTracking=true
McComb S E. & Mills J. S. (2022). Elsevier. Body Image: The effect of physical appearance perfectionism and social comparison to thin-, slim-thick-, and fit-ideal Instagram imagery on young women’s body image. https://www.journals.elsevier.com/body-image.%20Body%20Image%2040%20(2022)%20165-175
Parasocial. (n.d). Dictionary. Retrieved March 19, 2023, from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/parasocial#:~:text=adjective,characters%20you%20come%20to%20know.
Hi L, The thing is the paper is mainly concentrated on the African continent particularly.If you make an analysis of…