Social Media Influencers and Influencing

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/107460

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Now showing 1 - 13 of 13

The Impact of Online Word-of-Mouth and Default News on Trading Volumes in Peer-to-Peer Lending Platforms
(2024-01-03) Shang, Yanan; Hu, Jin; Tao, Cheng; Hu, Daning; Yang, Xuan
This study explores the impact of default news of peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms on their trading volumes, particularly during a market downturn, and examines the moderating effect of online word-of-mouth (WOM). Using a dataset encompassing 694 P2P lending platforms from P2PEye.com, a premier third-party P2P information portal in China, this study employs advanced econometric techniques such as staggered difference-in-differences and difference-in-difference-in-differences analyses. The results show that default news diminishes trading volumes of P2P platforms, an effect that is more pronounced on platforms with a more positive WOM. Moreover, we find that platforms affiliated with banks or operating without Internet Content Provider (ICP) certification appear to be less susceptible to the negative effects of default news. This study offers novel perspectives on the interplay between default news and online WOM within in a declining market. It contributes to the existing body of literature and provides actionable insights for various stakeholders.
Decentralized Opinion Leadership: A Study of Crypto Influencers in the Twitter Discourse on Bitcoin
(2024-01-03) Lichti, Constantin; Ademi, Endrit; Tumasjan, Andranik
Based on 115 million Bitcoin-related tweets from 2009 to 2022, we propose an opinion leader index (OLI) for decentralized technologies, such as Bitcoin, and identify the foremost Bitcoin opinion leaders (N=218 BOLs). The OLI consists of a scoring scheme for social media opinion leader classification along six criteria: audience engagement, niche alignment, reputation, audience reach, activity, and consistency. We further classify BOLs into eight archetypes and show that their tweet activity strongly correlates with Bitcoin price performance. Linguistic content analysis reveals that each BOL archetype exhibits a distinct communication style and content focus, with themes ranging from financial and technological aspects to power and politics. Our study advances the field by introducing a classification approach for social media opinion leaders in the context of decentralized technologies. We derive future research avenues for other decentralized contexts across different social media platforms and further measures of opinion leader influence.
Predicting Sales Lift of Influencer-generated Short Video Advertisements: A Ladder Attention-based Multimodal Time Series Forecasting Framework
(2024-01-03) Fu, Zhe; Wang, Kanlun; Wang, Jianfei; Zhu, Yunqin
With the growing popularity of video-sharing platforms and video influencers, influencer-generated short video advertisements (ISAs) have rapidly emerged as a crucial marketing tool. However, effectively predicting the sales lift of multiple ISAs presents significant challenges due to the multimodal content of ISAs and their impact of joint complexity on product sales. In this research, we design a novel time series forecasting framework that leverages ladder attention-based multimodal to predict the sales lift of multiple ISAs. Our framework, enriched by a novel ladder attention model and a customized LSTM-based time series forecasting model, addresses the challenges of predicting the sales lift of multiple ISAs. We conduct experiments using our proposed framework on a comprehensive dataset of ISAs collected from TikTok, and our results demonstrate superior performance in comparison to the baseline methods. This study not only offers a novel predictive tool in short video advertisement optimization but also serves as a guide in multimodal prediction in information systems and marketing research.
Managing the Social Influence of Public Figures on Social Media
(2024-01-03) Tseng, Hsiao-Ting; Lo, Chia-Lun; Shih, Ting-Ann
Social media is critical to personal branding, and social advertising is commonly used to enhance brand communication and develop stronger personal brands. Public figures invest their resources in social advertising to improve their social influence within social networks. However, an effective social media advertising strategy has yet to be clearly defined. This study investigated effective social media advertising strategies and provided precise guidelines for social advertising investment for individuals managing personal brands. The study focused on political figures. The study applied machine learning to sort social advertisements and identify effective advertising patterns. Finally, fan pages were clustered to identify the most influential cluster. This study offers insights into personal branding on social media, which may help social investors refine their social influence marketing strategies.
What Makes a Climate Change Denier Popular? Exploring Networked Social Influence in a Disinformation Spreader Group
(2024-01-03) Yang, Aimei
This study examines the networked social influence within a climate change deniers' network. Focusing on social-mediated information-sharing networks, the research addresses two key questions: 1) who are the top influencers within the climate change denial community? And 2) what mechanisms contribute to the levels of influence among deniers? Using a machine-learning-based algorithm, the study quantifies levels of social influence for all members of a climate change denial network over a decade. The findings reveal that a core group of deniers maintains significant influence by spreading disinformation related to social and economic consequences of environmental policies, attacking opposition, and questioning climate change science. Among the four types of deniers, conservative media outlets have the most influence.
Unraveling the Role of Social Media Influencers’ Characteristics in Increasing Consumer CSR Engagement: A Perspective from Social Learning Theory
(2024-01-03) Yang, Kiseol; Menchaca, Elisha; Esquivel Lizarraga, Brenda
With the growing importance of CSR practices and the use of social media influencers in promoting companies’ CSR initiatives, it is timely to identify the role of social media influencer characteristics in increasing consumer CSR engagement to provide implications in selecting the right social media influencers for their CSR initiatives. This study examined the role of social media influencer (SMI) characteristics that affect perceived credibility of SMIs’ CSR messages, foster consumer desire to mimic SMIs’ CSR activities, and increase consumer CSR engagement. Further, the moderating role of SMIs’ deinfluencing activities was examined. The findings of this study suggest that authenticity, trustworthiness, and expertise of SMIs can increase perceived credibility of SMIs’ CSR endorsement, consumer desire to mimic the SMIs’ CSR activities and CSR engagement. SMIs’ deinfluencing activities increase consumer desire to mimic the SMIs’ CSR activities as consumers perceive the CSR message as credible. The study findings advance our understanding of how consumers respond to SMIs’ CSR endorsement and increase our insights to promote CSR initiatives by partnering with the right SMIs who can effectively promote their followers’ CSR participation.
The Attractiveness of Visuals vs. Content: Investigating the Impact of Video Features on Active Engagement for Virtual Influencer Videos
(2024-01-03) Wang, Ying; Wu, Jiao; Song, Jaeki
This study investigates the factors contributing to active engagement for virtual influencer videos. By integrating the elaboration likelihood model and social identity theory, our proposed theoretical framework elaborates on the relationship between various features of influencer videos and engagement rates. Further, it demonstrates that video character types could moderate this relationship. We found that visual features such as brightness, colorfulness, and vividness, which are processed through the peripheral route of information processing, have a more pronounced influence on engagement rates in animated character videos than in human-like character videos. In contrast, the content topics discussed in the videos, which are processed through the central route of information processing, exert a stronger influence on engagement rates in videos featuring human-like characters than in animated character videos.
Come Closer, but Not Too Close: How Virtual Influencers Can Facilitate or Restrict Brand Experiences in the Metaverse
(2024-01-03) Batinovic, Henrietta; Tingelhoff, Fabian; Hammerschmidt, Maik; Schöbel, Sofia
More and more brands adopt virtual influencers in the metaverse. Evidence from business practice suggests that coming closer to consumers through deploying virtual influencers can backfire, putting increased pressure on brand managers to understand their potential advantages and disadvantages. This study aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of how virtual influencers affect brand experiences in the metaverse. Based on 15 semi-structured interviews we introduce the concept of a virtual influencer’s social proximity capturing its ability to enter a user’s personal space in virtual environments. We identify facilitating and restricting technological factors of a virtual influencer and argue that their impact on brand experiences operates via altering social proximity. We contribute to theory by postulating social proximity to provide entry points for future research and guide the design of experience-centric virtual influencers.
Exploring the Influence of Contagious Threats on Consumer Perceptions of Social Media Influencers
(2024-01-03) Deng, Bingjie; Yin, Yunlu
This study explores the impact of contagious threats on consumers’ perceptions of social media influencers with different levels of social cues. By combining insights from the behavioral immune system (BIS) and research on social media influencers, we propose that contagious threats diminish consumers’ inclination towards social media influencers whose posts have salient social cues compared to non-salient social cues, regardless of their interaction and purchase behavior on social media. The activation of the BIS due to contagious threats leads to a decrease in consumers’ preference for objects associated with people, which explains the effect. The effect is also expected to be moderated by the type of influencer, with virtual influencers weakening the impact. Our initial findings from an experiment largely support our hypotheses. These findings enhance our understanding of the strategies guiding contagious threat avoidance and highlight how these strategies can influence consumers’ behaviors in terms of social media marketing.
Toward a Taxonomy of Social Media Influencers in Public Health Communication
(2024-01-03) Marx, Julian; Blanco, Beatriz; Bollmann, Hannah
In recent years, researchers have been discussing various strategies for public health communication to support individuals, populations, and communities in making healthier choices. In this context, the employment of social media influencers (SMI) is considered especially effective. Although we have seen extensive practical application during the COVID-19 pandemic, we possess little theoretical knowledge about the characteristics and narratives conveyed by SMI that engage in public health communication. This study takes a first step toward solving this issue by developing a taxonomy of SMI in public health communication. For the taxonomy development, qualitative content analyses of Twitter and YouTube data from the case of the German COVID-19 vaccination were conducted. The taxonomy emphasizes that SMI in public health communication can show major variations across different characteristics, thereby representing many facets of society. Moreover, conveyed narratives are not limited to health but also extend to political and social issues. This study contributes to the literature on broader SMI frameworks with a taxonomy of SMI in public health communication. The taxonomy offers a basis for further theory development and practical evaluations for context-specific employment of SMI.
Under Pressure: A Netnographic Study of Threats to Influencer and Creator Mental Health
(2024-01-03) Gretzel , Ulrike; Schöllhammer, Tanja
Media reports on toxic influencer culture and creator burnout are growing, but academic literature on influencer and creator mental health challenges remains scarce. The precarity of their work and their need to engage in visibility labor cast long shadows on what is often portrayed as a dream job. This study explores sources of pressure perceived by influencers and creators and threats to their psychological and emotional well-being. By conducting a netnography, the research explores the issue across a wide range of influencers and creators while capturing their emic perspectives. The findings provide a nuanced view on perceived mental health threats and reveal multiple sources of pressure across and beyond the influencer and creator ecosystem. It therefore expands existing literature on influencer and creator vulnerabilities and illustrates the importance of netnographic research for understanding technocultural phenomena.
Do You See Harm in Your Social Media Influencer Engagement? The Mechanism of Perceived Threat
(2024-01-03) Farivar, Samira; Wang, Fang; Turel, Ofir
In the era of excessive social media usage, users' coping responses are shaped by their assessment of potential harm, known as perceived threat. This study explores the mechanism underlying perceived threat in followers' engagement with social media influencers. Based on the stimulus-organism-response framework, we examine the relationships between followers' following and interaction comprehensiveness, their cognitive (obsession) and affective (emotional attachment) engagement, and perceived threat, with the moderation of influencers' intimate disclosure. Findings from a survey of 250 followers indicate that following comprehensiveness increases obsession and emotional attachment related to influencer engagement, while the effect of interaction comprehensiveness is insignificant. Obsession positively influences perceived threat, which is negatively moderated by influencers' intimate disclosure. These results highlight the importance of following (rather than interaction) comprehensiveness and the cognitive (rather than emotional) facet in followers' threat assessment. The study contributes valuable insights for users, influencers, marketers, and researchers, in fostering healthy and responsible engagement practices on social media.
Introduction to the Minitrack on Social Media Influencers and Influencing
(2024-01-03) Farivar, Samira; Wang, Fang; Wang, Wangshuai

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