Mobilizing Social Media Influencers: A European Approach to Oversight and Accountability

To build a robust information space that is resilient toward the dangers of mis- and disinformation, European policy-makers must recognize the role of influencers and their messages. The EU's Digital Services Act aims to establish accountability and transparency in online platforms. It includes civil society as an essential component of achieving that goal. Through collaborating with independent platform councils and promoting radical transparency, influencers can contribute to combating disinformation and ensuring that public values are upheld in online governance

Can we really have nice things? Preparing for the Metavers

Drawing from our previous experience of the virtual world Second Life, we engage in a critical reading of the hype and promotion of the Metaverse in Mark Zuckerberg’s 2021 Keynote Presentation (Meta 2021). We zoom in on the visions of the reality and of the future that big tech leaders promise to legitimize themselves as not only economically but socially and morally valuable. Presented with the help of three broad themes – connection, experiences, and creativity – the promises of a better future articulated in the descriptions and visions of the Metaverse are anchored in a deterministic narrative of technology as an enabler of individual choice and freedom. In this way, the commercial intent behind the world-building actions of a mighty economic actor becomes reframed as merely an expression of users own needs and dreams of a better future

Political Authenticity: Conceptualization of a Popular Term

Authenticity is a prominent concept in current political discourse. Its popularity in political communication has also inspired a growing but still fragmented body of research in communication science. Since this field lacks an integrative conceptualization, this article aims to clarify political authenticity for academic discourse and as a research object for communication science. The article provides a narrative review of research on authenticity in political communication and proposes an understanding of political authenticity as a social construction which is created and negotiated in complex communication processes among politicians, the media, and the audience. I propose performed, mediated, and perceived political authenticity as three analytic perspectives to deconstruct these complex processes and to link political authenticity with media and communication literature. Finally, I derive four dimensions of political authenticity (consistency, intimacy, ordinariness, and immediacy) and corresponding indicators that will help to operationalize it as a strategy by politicians, a product from mediation processes, and as an audience perception

Performing Authenticity on a Digital Political Stage: Politainment as Interactive Practice and (Populist?) Performance

This article investigates the way politicians use social networking sites as effective communication platforms to discursively enhance authenticity, sincerity and (self-)connection to what can be defined as the \u201cPeople\u201d (followers/lurkers/net-users). Within the framework of Social Media Critical Discourse Studies, and using tools coming from Multimodal Discourse Analysis, the paper analyses the multi-semiotic elements used by different political leaders (i.e. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Matteo Salvini), to connect with the \u201cPeople,\u201d and discusses the politainment product as a personalised way to skip the institutional mediation channels of politics

Imagined affordances of instagram and the fantastical authenticity of female Gulf-Arab social media influencers

© The Author(s) 2019. This study explores the image sharing site Instagram to reveal how affordances, or uses of the platform, occur within a nexus of technological architecture, sociocultural contexts, and globalized commercial practices. It suggests social actors draw upon Instagram’s affordances at material, conceptual, and imaginary levels while using social media. This triadic model for theorizing affordances of Instagram responds to the need for mapping ontologies and typologies of social media within increasingly visual, intercultural, and non-Western contexts. The lenses of critical multimodality and a participant-centered method consider how female Gulf-Arab social media influencers operate through an interplay of shifting affordances in ways that challenge current conceptions of authenticity surrounding social media influencers. It is suggested that the triadic affordances of Instagram, occurring at material, conceptual, and imaginary levels, provide both influencers and followers with strategies of “fantastical authenticity” for navigating conflicting modes of representation and self-presentation within local and globalized economies

La promoción de la imagen política en Instagram: un estudio del perfil personal de Santiago Abascal (Vox) en 2018

Due to Instagram’s growing popularity in Spain, politicians have also begun to turn to this social network increasingly more. Accordingly, this paper analyses the visual and textual discourse of 259 posts published throughout 2018 on the personal Instagram profile of Santiago Abascal, the leader of the party Vox. Insofar as he is the Spanish politician with the highest number of followers on Instagram, the aim here is to analyse how he uses this social network in order to identify possible strategies that justify his growing number of followers. In the analysis, special attention was paid to aspects that might have contributed to the (self)presentation of Abascal and the promotion of his party, such as posting personal information and the direct involvement with his followers. The results show that consistent with the use to which Spanish politicians put Instagram, Abascal’s profile highlights his ‘political’ dimension and, specifically, his agenda. Personal content (such as references to leisure or sports) are used strategically to highlight certain features of his persona and ideology. The predominance of unedited images, the framing of the photos and appeals to his followers are some of the clues that reveal that, rather than providing access to his personal life, Abascal’s use of Instagram is the result of a carefully planned promotional strategy.Debido al éxito de Instagram en España, los políticos también empiezan a adoptar esta red social. Este trabajo analiza el discurso visual y textual de 259 posts publicados en la cuenta personal de Instagram de Santiago Abascal, presidente del partido Vox, a lo largo de 2018. Abascal es el político español con más seguidores en Instagram. Esta investigación pretende vislumbrar cómo utiliza esa red social, para identificar posibles estrategias que justifiquen el aumento constante de sus seguidores. En el análisis se ha prestado especial atención a los aspectos que pueden contribuir a la (auto)presentación de Abascal y a la promoción del partido que dirige, como la exposición de información de carácter personal y la implicación con los seguidores. Los resultados muestran que, en línea con el uso de Instagram que hacen los políticos españoles, en la cuenta se destaca prioritariamente la faceta “política” de Abascal y, en especial, su agenda. Los contenidos personales (por ejemplo, las referencias al ocio o al deporte) son utilizados de forma estratégica para destacar determinados aspectos de su persona y su ideario. El predominio de imágenes no editadas, el encuadre de las fotos y las apelaciones a los seguidores son algunos de los indicios que muestran que, más que proporcionar un acceso a la vida personal, su uso de Instagram es fruto de una cuidada estrategia promocional

Selling brands while staying “Authentic”: The professionalization of Instagram influencers

While Instagram influencers may have started out as ordinary people documenting their everyday life through a stream of photographs, they are increasingly emerging as an intermediary between advertisers and consumers. This study examines the professionalization of Instagram influencers, combining data from 11 interviews with travel influencers with a visual and textual content analysis of their 12 most recent Instagram posts (N = 132). We show how the increasing professionalization of the influencer steers their relationship with their audience, the advertisers they work with, and the platform Instagram. We argue that, for the Instagram influencer to be perceived as successful, they need to negotiate a tension: they need to appear authentic, yet also approach their followers in a strategic way to remain appealing to advertisers. Although Instagram influencers are seen as more trustworthy than traditional forms of advertising, this tension ultimately leads to a standardization of the content shared by influencers

Populism as a mediatized communicative relation:The birth of algorithmic populism

In this paper, I want to introduce a(n digital) ethnographic approach to populism that understands populism as a (digitally) mediatized chronotopic communicative and discursive relation. Populism, I argue, is not only constructed in a (mediatized) communicative relation between journalists, politicians and academics, but also in the relation to citizens, activists and computational agency. Attention to all these actors, and the media they use, is of crucial importance if we want to understand populism. Digital media are not just new media that populists use, their algorithms and affordances reshape their populism. In times of digitalization, we cannot understand populism by only looking at ‘the input’, the frame that actors prepare for uptake, it is about the uptake as well. More concretely, I will argue that digital media have given birth to a new form of populism: algorithmic populism. Understanding and focusing on populism as a ‘communicative relation’ between all these human and non-human actors allows use to analyze ‘populism’ more precisely

Metapolitical New Right Influencers:The Case of Brittany Pettibone

Far-right movements, activists, and political parties are on the rise worldwide. Several scholars connect this rise of the far-right at least partially to the affordances of digital media and to a new digital metapolitical battle. A lot has been written about the far-right’s adoption of trolling, harassment, and meme-culture in their metapolitical strategy, but researchers have focused less on how far-right vloggers are using the practices of influencer culture for metapolitical goals. This paper tries to fill this gap and bring new theoretical insights based on a digital ethnographic case study. By analyzing political YouTuber and #pizzagate propagator Brittany Pettibone, this paper contributes to our understanding of radicalization processes in relation to the use of digital media