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This article brings together scholarship on communication theory, influencer marketing, and personal branding to examine a new type of social media influencer—the college athlete influencer. Previous research in the field of sports has not specifically explored the distinct characteristics of college athletes that contribute to their effectiveness as marketing influencers. By adopting a sequential explanatory mixed-methods approach, this study provides a comprehensive understanding of the source of college athletes' influence via social media. Quantitative results indicate that projecting an athletic identity on social media enhances the influencer's credibility and increases the likelihood of consumers purchasing the products they endorse. Furthermore, qualitative findings indicated that the shared school identity acts as the ultimate impetus for the bond between the influencer and the consumer, which subsequently impacts the consumer's purchasing decisions. This study provides actionable implications for schools, colleges, and brands seeking to build compelling sponsorships in the name, image, and likeness era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media influencers have the ability to impact the behaviours and attitudes of others (i.e. their followers), affecting people's feelings of connectedness, and well-being. This has become particularly apparent during troubled times such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which has highlighted the importance of relationships and social interactions for people's well-being. However, less attention has been paid to influencers' own well-being in a monetised attention economy, which imposes tensions between the desire for authenticity and the self-presentations of influencers in online interactions. Using in-depth interviews and netnography as methodology, in this study we examine how the decision to engage with the topic of COVID-19 on social media impacted influencers' well-being during the pandemic. We build on self-determination theory to reveal how the contentious nature of the subject led to internal struggles of influencers' self-presentation, and elucidate how influencers navigated the boundaries of autonomy, competence, and relatedness in a quest for well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relations and dynamics between influencers, brands and marketers, social media digital platforms and consumers are indeed complex and can be analysed through the contrasting perspectives of parasitism and symbiosis. The influencer marketing symbiosis/parasitism framework One unique way of looking at the relationship between influencers, marketers and brands, consumers and social media platforms is to consider who is exploiting whom and to what ends. Recent contributions in this regard include special issues and sections in advertising scholarship that explore the efficacy and consumption of influencer marketing (Hudders & Lou, [46]) and how advertisers can best leverage influencers (Rosengren & Campbell, [93]), with in press special issues in business and marketing dedicated to examining virtual influencers (Koles et al., [60]), implications of influencers and influencer marketing for consumers and society (Mardon et al., [74]) and the ways influencers can be leveraged for the "greater good" to encourage sustainable and pro-social behaviours (Gerrath et al., [40]). In academic marketing research, the abundance of scholarly work to date centres on practical aspects of influencer marketing: how brands can profit from influencers (Hughes et al., [47]; Ki & Kim, [58]; Leung et al., [67]; Lou & Yuan, [70]; Martínez-López et al., [76]; Reinikainen et al., [91]), the functional components of influencer marketing (Brooks et al., [19]; Campbell & Farrell, [23]), roles and categorisations of influencers (Ouvrein et al., [84]; Rundin & Colliander, [94]), disclosure implications in influencer marketing (Audrezet & Charry, [10]; Chen et al., [26]; De Jans & Hudders, [29]; Giuffredi-Kähr et al., [42]; Karagür et al., [54]), and consumer perceptions of influencers (De Veirman et al., [30]; Lee & Eastin, [64]; Yuan & Lou, [114]). [Extracted from the article]

Whilst social media influencers (SMIs) excel at establishing positive parasocial relationships with their followers, they can also provoke intense negative responses, as evidenced by the prevalence of SMI-focused anti-fan communities. Prior research does not explain how consumers' parasocial relationships with SMIs become negatively charged, nor does it explain why this shift may fuel anti-fan community participation. Drawing from a netnographic study of two SMI anti-fan communities, we reveal that eroded reciprocal and disclosive intimacies, as well as exploitative commercial intimacies, can lead consumers' positive parasocial relationships with SMIs to become negatively charged. We demonstrate that anti-fan communities provide opportunities for consumers reluctant to sever ties with the SMI to sustain their negative parasocial relationship by rebuilding eroded intimacies whilst avoiding and/or retaliating against their exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disability is one of the largest minority groups, with a spending power of approximately £273bn every year. Consequently, many advertisers are now weaving people with disabilities into brand narratives. These narratives often evoke feelings of pity or portray people with disabilities as inspiring, solely or in part on the basis of their disability. Meanwhile, social media has emerged as a vessel for social change. Through the netnographic study of twelve influencers with visible impairments, complex personhood is proposed as a social ontology by which disabled lives are acknowledged in less confined terms. Our findings illustrate how social media influencers with disabilities may draw on narratives based on empowerment, playfulness, resistance, and responsibility to present themselves as neither victims nor superhuman agents but as complex human beings. We thus bring forward a complex model in market-mediated representations of disability, beyond the misrepresentational narratives based on pity and 'inspiration porn'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite opaque automated systems and few formal channels for participation, YouTubers navigate algorithmic governance on the platform through a strategy we call user-generated accountability: the generation of publicity via content creation to reveal failures, oversights, or harmful policies. Through an analysis of 250 videos, we identify common strategies, concerns, and targets of accountability. Creators primarily upload vlogs that acknowledge the platform's positive aspects, even as they express concern with YouTube's policies, automated enforcement systems, poor communication practices, and discrimination against certain creators or content. In publicizing critiques of platform operations, videos enroll creators and audiences as active stakeholders in platform governance that can coordinate actions to draw the company's attention to matters of concern. We argue that user-generated accountability practices offer a productive starting point for understanding how platform governance disputes come to be and how systems might be shaped or rebuilt to better serve the needs of competing stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing the #MeToo movement as its case, this article examines celebrities' symbolic power using social media's connectivity to enlarge the impact of social causes. This article adopts social network analysis as the primary method to explore the relationship between two #MeToo networks and media coverage regarding celebrities' roles. Based on theories of social capital and celebrity capital, the results of this article find that famous people's symbolic power in one social field can transfer into the social activism field through investment in their celebrity capital and social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The limitations of Content Based Video Retrieval (CBVR), such as large pools of video data, selection of features, limited processing capacity, and content-related issues, can be overcome by Deep Belief Neural Networks (DBNs). The search engine does the processing, and the results are effectively returned to the users. The deep learning model also has some comparable challenges to be solved at various levels. Typically, the selection of frames is one of the most essential tasks for a face retrieval system which is efficiently accomplished by using deep learning models. Also, the performance of recognition models highly depends on the selection of frames that include both low-level and high-level features from the given video sequence. This paper proposes ALPHA-TO-OMEGA (ALMEGA-VIR) Visual Information Retrieval scheme that analyzes the contents of the video file for a particular face and retrieves the user's relevant videos. VIR aims to solve the challenge of locating relevant pictures and videos based on a query. VIR can be based on text-based search, content-based search, and Mixed based search. VIR here focuses on content-based search approach. The YouTube Celebrities (YTC) dataset, the Youtube Face (YTF) dataset, and Honda / UCSD dataset are used in this work. The used dataset addresses issues such as illumination changes, occlusion, rotation, and scale. We propose an ALMEGA-VIR framework for visual novelty face identification for specific investigation and evaluation. The classification accuracy of the proposed ALMEGA-VIR model shows that 4% is more effective than traditional classifier algorithms such as SVM, Naïve Bayesian classifier, MLP and Random Forest classifier. A comparative study is also implemented with other existing works to check the superiority of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The burgeoning internet celebrity industry in China has encouraged the emergence of foreign wanghong (洋网红) as active content producers on the Chinese internet. Achieving online fame and constructing a resonant personal brand while staying within Chinese state's permissible boundaries is a challenge for all internet influencers in China. Foreign wanghong, for their part, also have to deal with Chinese publics' ambivalence and fluctuating perspectives on engaging foreign culture, expectations around "being foreign" and cultural nationalism fed by the currents of geopolitics. This study focuses on the performance and personas of foreign wanghong and investigates how these creators navigate the complexities of the Chinese internet to achieve substantial followings. Going beyond treating foreign participants in Chinese digital media spaces as co-opted instruments of propaganda, we take seriously foreign creators' articulations, constructions and self-presentations of foreignness and acculturation in their efforts to earn social, cultural and economic capital in the competitive Chinese internet celebrity sphere. A mixed-method content analytical study of several hundred Douyin videos generated by 33 foreign wanghong reveals the adoption of calculated self-presentation and cross-cultural communication skills alongside a constant negotiation of an individual's own foreignness and local constructs of the "typical foreigner". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the summer of 2020, dozens of high-profile influencers in videogaming entertainment were accused of sexual harassment and predatory behavior. Among them, popular gaming YouTuber Craig Thompson (username Mini Ladd) confessed on Twitter to sexting minors but resumed uploading content to his YouTube channel one month later, resulting in public outcry. Thompson's return to YouTube, as a case study, illustrates how predatory influencers can manipulate technical affordances across social media platforms to insulate themselves from accountability and maintain their revenue and audience. Drawing on data scraped from Twitter (34k tweets) and YouTube (62k comments and video network data), this article uses a mixed-methods social network analysis (Jean Burgess and Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández, 2016) to map the public effort to deplatform Mini Ladd. This case study explores issues of cross-platform insulation and audience manipulation by demonstrating how a predatory influencer: 1) censored keywords in his comments to obfuscate criticism; 2) optimized YouTube's video algorithms to avoid references to his scandal; and 3) upheld harassment towards his young fanbase. Ultimately, I argue that YouTube's policies are ill-equipped to manage the networked practices of predatory influencers and that the platform's reliance on morally motivated networked harassment (Alice E. Marwick, 2021) as a substitute is troubling and ineffective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines sexual humour in some Ghanaian and Nigerian YouTube comedy skits through the theoretical lens of social semiotics. It focuses on two YouTubers, Jeffrey Nortey from Ghana and Viper the Wiper from Nigeria, purposively sampled for their extensive use of sexual humour. Analysis reveals that they employ intertextuality, exaggeration, and dramatic irony as their key communicative strategies. Intertextuality draws on folk knowledge, the Bible, social, and religious issues. Exaggeration is used to depict actions that are humanly impossible, while dramatic irony introduces unexpected twists. The effectiveness of these strategies is evident from the numerous views and comments their skits receive, highlighting their successful engagement with the taboo topic of sex. However, the study also notes the potential negative impact of some sexual jokes, which may reinforce harmful stereotypes about men and women. It underscores the importance of responsibly portraying human sexuality in humour, advocating the avoidance of perpetuating damaging societal norms through comedic narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating novel collaboration modes is imperative for enhancing the cooperative ties between brand retailers and anchors as live streaming commerce moves progressively towards standardization. In this paper, we study a live streaming commerce supply chain system composed of a brand retailer and an Internet celebrity anchor. We also develop the pricing and live streaming service effort decision models under the equal proportion settlement mode of pit fee for the brand retailer and anchor. The research results show that under certain conditions, there is an optimal joint decision on price discount and live streaming service effort. In addition, the equal proportion settlement mode provides security for brand retailers but tends to expose the anchor's capabilities of live streaming sales. Consequently, anchors can only obtain a higher proportion of the pit fee by putting in more effort. Finally, through numerical analysis, we presented the impact of key parameters on the optimal decisions, demand, and profits of brand retailers and anchors. Based on these findings, we provided relevant managerial insights, offering valuable guidance and reference for the live streaming commerce industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the usage of social media continues to grow and local governments expand their promotional efforts, more internet celebrity cities (ICCs) are emerging as popular tourist destinations. To investigate the internal mechanisms that affect tourists' travel intentions to such destinations, place attachment and perceived value were proposed as two factors reflecting their deeper emotional connections and practical assessments to visit ICCs. This study was conducted to examine the relationship between social media usage, perceived government market orientation (PGMO), place attachment, perceived value, and travel intention in the context of Chongqing, a popular ICC in China. To evaluate the research hypotheses, 750 valid questionnaires were collected and analyzed by structural equation modeling. The results showed that social media usage had a positive impact on tourists' travel intention to Chongqing, while PGMO did not significantly influence travel intention. However, both place attachment and perceived value had mediating effects in the relationship between social media usage, PGMO, and travel intention. This paper concludes with theoretical implications, suggestions for further research, and recommendations for practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the content characteristics and user responses of athlete-run sports YouTube channels, providing empirical insights for content production strategies and contributing to the development of athlete-run sports YouTube channels. Content analysis was conducted on 3306 videos posted on 20 popular YouTube channels of South Korean athletes from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2021. The formal characteristics analyzed included video length, the presence of foreign language subtitles, paid advertisements, and information sources. The content characteristics examined were the types of sports events, main content themes, and whether the content matched the athlete's sport. Results revealed significant differences in content characteristics and user responses based on whether the athletes were active or retired. This study's distinctive contribution lies in highlighting the evolving role of athletes as content creators and providing strategic implications for enhancing the competitiveness of athlete-run sports YouTube channels. Future research should consider a broader range of sports YouTubers and a wider variety of YouTube channels to gain comprehensive insights into the sports content ecosystem on this platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the trajectory of Chen Guo, a successful moral educator who became an internet celebrity and bestselling author of self-help books thanks to the originality of her teaching methods. The article reveals that Chen Guo's contributions as a state teacher and as a popular cultural producer, rather than being at odds with each other, are to a very large extent unified, as she has managed to create a moralising but depoliticised approach to teaching which encourages personal self-improvement and social awareness by drawing from the principles and practices of self-help literature. Chen Guo's career and work thus offer a unique case to investigate the interactions and the intersections between official and popular culture in contemporary China, in particular, by observing how the current party-state's ideological apparatuses incorporate the creative use of popular cultural forms in their message with the aim of enhancing the efficacy of the official ideological education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak has led cities worldwide to implement lockdowns and stay‐at‐home orders, which has caused a sudden cessation of revenue generation from ticket sales at animal conservation institutions. Accordingly, the cost of feeding and caring for the animals remains unsustainable, and the threat of another outbreak and lockdowns lingers. To this end, the present study investigates the effectiveness of internet media for the sustainable development of animal conservation institutions (e.g., zoos) in the post‐pandemic era. A total of 321 actual visitors' responses were collected through an online survey, and PLS‐SEM was used for the data analysis. The stimulus‐organism‐response (S‐O‐R) theory was used as the framework to explore the effects of content characteristics and internet celebrities in animal conservation institutions on visitors' internal mechanisms and their behavioral responses. Stimulus factors were internet content characteristics and animal celebrities' attributes. Organism factors included visitors' internal mechanisms, such as the attitude toward the ecological environment, trust, and hedonic values. Critical behavioral responses of subscribing to the official channels, visiting the institutions, and making donations were considered. The findings confirm the influence of internet media (content attributes and celebrity attributes) as an antecedent to individual organisms, which in turn leads to spillover effects such as donations. Implications for academic research and practice are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More and more destinations are using short videos with Internet celebrities to attract tourists through social media. Building upon the attention-interest-desire-action model (AIDA), this study investigates the influence of the content (creativity and authenticity) of destination short videos on audiences' emotions (awe and enjoyment), and awe and enjoyment further influence audiences' attitudes toward videos and destinations, considering the moderating effect of parasocial interaction. Data were collected by systematic sampling and analyzed by PLS-SEM. The results indicated that creativity and authenticity have a positive influence on awe and enjoyment, and authenticity has a greater influence on emotions than creativity. Awe and enjoyment have a positive influence on the attitude toward the short video, which further influences the attitude toward travel to the destination. In addition, parasocial positively moderates the relationship between awe and attitude toward the video and negatively moderates the relationship between enjoyment and attitude toward the video. The study contributes to destination marketing literature by revealing the underlying mechanism of how the content of destination short videos shapes audiences' attitudes. In addition, suggestions are provided on how destinations can develop effective destination short videos to attract potential tourists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Sociales is the property of Fondo Editorial Fundacion Universitaria Luis Amigo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Fueled by the rise of social media, internet celebrities (or influencers) are a subgroup of public figures who have gained extreme public attention in recent years. In this study, we examined the qualities of finance knowledge influencers to elucidate the impact that investment discussions or tutorials posted by influencers have on followers' and audiences' investment willingness. We adopted attractiveness, expertise, and trustworthiness as the independent variables, followers' risk tolerance as the moderator, and followers' investment willingness as the dependent variable. For data collection, respondents were instructed to watch three different influencer videos and complete a questionnaire. A total of 327 valid questionnaires were collected and analyzed. The questionnaire survey results showed that influencers' attractiveness expertise, and trustworthiness positively affected followers' investment willingness. Furthermore, followers' risk tolerance negatively moderates the relationship between influencer attractiveness and investment willingness, but it positively moderates the relationship between influencer trustworthiness and investment willingness. The empirical findings of this study theoretically contribute to academics and have practical implications in the real world. We propose several suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Drawing on a framework of sustainable career theory, this paper aims to understand the interplay of agentic and contextual factors for digital micro-entrepreneurs to lead sustainable careers. Design/methodology/approach: Eighteen YouTube content creators in India participated in semi-structured interviews, offering coverage of digital content creators across acting, cosmetics, finance, fitness, food, law, modelling, music, teaching, travel, and video games. Findings: The findings showed three agentic and three contextual themes associated with the career sustainability of a digital micro-entrepreneur. Additionally, four paradoxes were identified, capturing the interplay between the agentic and contextual themes. Practical implications: The career of a digital micro-entrepreneur is a dichotomy of promising hope, stardom, and flexibility while concealing challenges like precarity, hate comments, and financial instability. Knowing this can help individuals make better-informed career decisions. Originality/value: The study advances sustainable career theory by capturing insights from digital micro-entrepreneurs in India to understand the interplay of agentic and contextual factors that create a series of paradoxes for such individuals to navigate over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the strategic role of a recommender who cares about accuracy and whose recommendations influence product quality. In the presence of such feedback effects, recommendations have a self-fulling property: the recommendation agent can select any firm that will end up being the firm with the best quality. This produces important inefficiencies that include (a) a lack of incentive to acquire valuable information, (b) a status quo bias, and (c) the avoidance of risky innovations. Monetary payments from firms may work in mitigating these inefficiencies, while competition between recommenders and monetary payments from consumers are ineffective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relevance of social media platforms in our daily lives is intensifying. Social media have become a "showcase" for our life experiences. In addition, they represent a range of dimensions of our status in the virtual and actual social world. These two factors trigger people to construct particular identities to thrive in dual social ecosystems. Subsequently, Tiktok's prominence as a current trending social media platform with a total of 500 million users globally transforms its function from a communication medium to a medium for gaining social capital. This phenomenon notably influences Indonesian society, with people being heavily invested in that platform, and triggered the rise of "influencers" as a popular career choice for the younger generation. Under those circumstances, this phenomenological study explores practical aspects of the identity construction of TikTok influencers on social media. Additionally, the study also analyses the motivations and experiences of the users in constructing their social media identity through impression management to build social capital. Eleven TikTok influencers were involved in this study as the key informants. The findings indicated that TikTok is socially tempting for building the users' social capital because of its high viral opportunity due to randomly generated algorithms. Moreover, the significance of viewer engagement for TikTok influencers compels them to create their most pleasing online impression for the sake of digital popularity. Therefore, popularity is regarded as both a gift and a social pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article criticizes the mathematical explanatory videos of YouTuber Daniel Jung and states that they have significant didactic and mathematical deficiencies. The videos present mathematics as a collection of rules without explanations and lack logical structure and technical correctness. They reduce mathematics to pattern recognition and routines and neglect authentic applications and modeling. The use of these videos in schools and educational foundations is considered alarming. It is emphasized that the success of such videos should be seen as a warning sign. [Extracted from the article]

In recent years, the use of digital channels for educational purposes has been strengthening. In this research, we sought to analyze the audiovisual content of five Spanish-speaking YouTube channels that, in 2022, have promoted scientific literacy in children and young people. For this qualitative study with a descriptive scope, a non-probabilistic sampling of type cases was applied, using the multiple case study. Documentary analysis was used as a technique, and a content analysis guide as an instrument. For data processing, open and axial coding procedures were performed. Among the results, the implementation of various didactic strategies to capture and maintain the viewer's attention stands out, as well as audiovisual resources that allow maintaining attention on the transmitted content. In turn, the use of diverse explanatory resources and persuasion strategies stands out, which contributes to transmitting quality scientific content. In addition, almost all youtubers use clear and simple language, with the inclusion of ironic or humorous elements. An evidenced weakness is the way in which scientific literacy is carried out, aimed at transmitting content from the perspective assumed by the youtuber without offering spaces for reflection by the viewer or the development of methodological procedures associated with scientific work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digitally created online celebrities (so-called virtual influencers) have appeared on various social media and video streaming platforms. While the scientific community has recently started to take an interest in this new phenomenon, it still remains mostly unclear how online audiences engage with—and relate to—these artificial digital creations. To address the identified research gap, we conducted a preregistered experiment (N = 179), comparing viewers' parasocial interactions (PSIs) with either a human or a virtual influencer. Based on natural stimuli, we find that viewers' parasocial response does not differ significantly between the two groups. However, by focusing on several theoretically relevant mediator variables, we uncover two opposing effects at play: While a significant direct effect signifies stronger PSIs with the virtual influencer, participants also attribute this persona with less mental human-likeness and similarity to themselves—which ultimately suppresses the observed advantage. Potential explanations for our results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language variation is a person's dissimilarity in expressing an expression. The existence of language variations means that someone with other individuals has differences in language. The inequality makes humans more diverse. Food vlogger-type content was taken by researchers. The Food vlogger's content was rich in words or sentences, and they used sentences that were easy to understand because their content provided various information related to food. This research aimed to describe the language variations of the Arabic YouTuber Hussain Sallam on the S7S YouTube channel. The research method that has been used qualitative descriptive method. The results above showed four language variations: code-switching, code-mixing, jargon, and slang. From this, we could conclude that all the detected language variations were included in informal language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates young consumers' reliance on social media influencers (SMIs) in the context of social commerce. With regard to the four streams of influencer endorsement – influencer credibility, influencer attractiveness, match-up, and meaning transfer – we propose that they can either lead to a direct consumer reliance on SMIs' suggestions for their purchasing decisions, or that attitudes toward SMIs mediate the relationship. By integrating both directions of partial- and no-attitude mediation, the proposed model explores all associations in order to better understand connections and driving forces between endorsement streams, attitudes, and reliance. We introduce the concept of reliance on SMIs, understood here as the degree to which young individuals base their preferences, lifestyles, and purchasing decisions upon SMIs. A research model was validated by examining 809 young individuals. The results reveal that attitude formation is affected by all four endorsement streams, and fully mediates the relationship between these endorsement streams and young people's reliance on SMIs. The differentiated reliance levels by gender and age confirm that females and teenagers tend to rely more on SMIs. The current study offers the first evidence for a relationship between the four endorsement streams and reliance on SMIs via attitude formation in the context of social media networking, as well as the association of reliance with sociodemographic characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The booming live streaming business has increased the number of consumer options for purchase channels, which has had a significant impact on firm sales models and management practices. This paper considers a multiechelon supply chain in which an upstream supplier can sell products through an online platform and a live streaming sales channel, and the online platform can choose to sign a reselling agreement or an agency selling agreement with the supplier. By constructing a Stackelberg game, we theoretically derive the equilibrium strategies of the supply chain members under different selling agreements in the presence of a live streaming sales channel. Specifically, we find that under the reselling agreement, the optimal retail price for the platform decreases with an increase in the commission rate, while the retail price for the live streaming channel always increases with an increase in the commission rate, and the relationship between the wholesale price and the commission rate depends on the ratio of the coefficient on the internet celebrity's effort for the live streaming channel to that for the online platform. Under the agency selling agreement, there is a threshold in the agency fee. The impact of the commission rate on pricing strategy on one side of the threshold is opposite that on the other side. Furthermore, we numerically explore the impacts of the system parameters on the selection of the sales model, profit, and the decision-making of the supply chain members and identify the conditions under which agency selling and reselling are chosen when there is a live streaming sales channel. Interestingly, we find that the internet celebrity should not charge a commission rate that is too large; otherwise, it harms others without benefiting the celebrity. Moreover, when the supplier chooses to hire an internet celebrity to sell goods via live streaming, the supplier should choose a celebrity with either an extremely large following or with little influence but should not choose a celebrity with only moderate influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the interplays between media organisations, platform affordances and governance logic on Douyin, one of the most popular short video platforms in China, and how these forces work together to construct the narratives of frontline care workers during the Xi'an lockdown. A digital ethnography was conducted on Douyin through the first two months in 2022. After sorting the videos based on their popularity, the first 100 'most liked' videos were documented and coded thematically. The results show that official media accounts were the main providers of the 'most liked' videos during the lockdown. Frontline workers were seen in over half of the videos (n = 58). Nearly a quarter of the 100 'most liked' videos (n = 22) featured frontline workers as the focus. The prevailing sentiments manifested by the videos when focusing on frontline workers include uplifting, endearing, touching, grateful and empathetic. Only four videos took on a critical tone. This study contributes a Chinese perspective to the current knowledge of Internet celebrity culture by expanding the discussions on the nexus between political and commercial forces during a pandemic lockdown and the implications on China's celebrity culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2022, Coca Cola has launched limited edition soda flavors: the first variant, Starlight, tastes like outer space and the second, Byte or 8-bit, like pixels. The synaesthesia challenges to make statements that go beyond whether or not the drink is liked or disliked, driving a ludic debate on media platforms about the taste of space, the pixels. This article analyzes, through semiotic tools, a sample of 16 youtubers' reviews that make contact with these sodas, without ignoring the audience's immediate comments. It seeks to describe how these bodies are configured in the videos and the interpretative positions that emerge, which tend to deviate from Coca Cola's desire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article critiques media narratives around the "science of reading" (SOR), arguing they perpetuate a false crisis in education, portraying teachers as incompetent and promoting simplistic solutions. It highlights the impact on policy and public perception of teachers, emphasizing the need for a nuanced understanding of reading instruction. Topics include Misrepresentation of educational crisis, impact on teacher perception, and the role of media in education policy.

Purpose: Endorsement marketing has been widely used to generate consumer attention, interest and purchase decisions among targeted audiences. Internet celebrities who become famous on the Internet are dependent on strategic intimacy to appeal to their followers. Our study aims to examine how multiple exposures to Internet celebrity endorsements influence consumers' click and purchase decisions in the context of influencer marketing. Design/methodology/approach: Based on a unique and representative dataset, the authors first model consumers' choices for clicks and purchases with two panel fixed-effect logit models linking clicks and purchases with the frequency of exposure to Internet celebrity endorsement. To further control the endogeneity produced by the intercorrelation between the click and purchase models, the authors also adopt the two-stage Heckman probit structure to jointly estimate the two models using Maximum Likelihood Estimation. Robustness checks confirm the effectiveness of the models. Findings: The results suggest that Internet celebrity endorsement plays a significant role in bringing referral traffic to e-commerce sites but is less helpful in affecting conversion to sales. The impact of repetitive Internet celebrity endorsements on consumers' click decisions is U-shaped, but the role of Internet celebrities as online retailers will "shape-flip" this relationship to a negative linear relation. Originality/value: Our study is the first to investigate the repetitive exposure effect of Internet celebrity endorsement. The results show a contradictory pattern with a wear-out effect of repetition in the advertising literature. This is the first study to show how the endorsing self, which is a common business model in influencer marketing, moderates the effectiveness of influencer marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to reflect on the images of childhood in videos featuring child YouTubers playing, analyzing the nature of play portrayed in them and its relationship with the child's right to play and be protected against any form of exploitation. Method: A documentary study of 100 videos shared on YouTube was conducted, subjected to categorical content analysis with an emphasis on the modes of participation of adults and children in dialogues with the platform's languages present in the videos. Results and Discussion: The boundaries between children's artistic expression and child labor exploitation are becoming increasingly challenging, with legal discussions presenting difficulties in regulation due to the home environment and predominant parental control. The analysis reveals how the videos are perceived as standardized commodities, hiding the concrete work behind an image of apparent spontaneity. Conclusion: The research highlights contractual digital risks for children, focusing on those related to commercialization. The analyzed videos reflect an instrumentalization of the child's basic right to play, associated with market interests, an aspect that takes on the contours of child labor exploitation, compromising the freedom to play spontaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of OPUS Journal of Society Research is the property of OPUS - International Journal of Society Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In recent years, influencer marketing has taken over traditional brand advertisements on social media platforms, combining word-of-mouth marketing with celebrity endorsements. However, there has been limited academic research on the key success factors in influencer marketing. This paper used a hybrid MCDM model that integrates the Delphi method and the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) approach. Through a two-stage empirical study, the research aims to explore the crucial success factors in influencer marketing. This study focuses on the Taiwanese market. The target respondents for the survey are consumers in Taiwan who have purchased products or services based on recommendations from key opinion leaders (KOLs) or internet celebrities. This systematic research framework not only pinpoints key factors that capture consumer attention towards influencers, but it also illustrates the inter-relationship of structure and improvement directions among these factors. According to results, the key factors include influencer reputation, credibility, degree of key opinion influence, attractiveness, popularity, consistency between influencers and brands, fan engagement level, and informativeness. Finally, businesses can consider five aspects to be the purpose of collaboration, product type, target audience for the product, characteristics of the influencer's creative content, and media attributes. By comprehensively considering these aspects, businesses can determine the appropriate format for collaborative content. This decision can then guide how influencers communicate with consumers, effectively conveying brand information to the relevant target audience. The research findings provide fresh and significant insights in the field of influencer marketing studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of online media use has been elemental in shaping the research on publics within communication and media studies in the last few decades. This article takes a critical view of this research by asking to what extent it has been informed by the long history of theoretical work on the concept of the public. Reviewing the literature on 'networked publics' as an illustrative example, we demonstrate how the lack of public-theoretical engagement creates both conceptual and empirical limitations to the study of online publics. We also indicate how the sociological, political theory and cultural studies traditions on the concept of the public can contribute to widening the perspectives of online publics research within communication and media studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this study is to discuss whether online influencers can improve customer brand attitude and thus increase purchase intention as both of them are important performance indicators in a live show. Drawing on the persuasion theory, the authors aim to investigate the impacts of influencers' attributes (professionalism, credibility, interactivity and attractiveness) on customers purchase intention from the perspective of attitude toward brand. Data were collected from 233 customers in China where the influencer centered livestreaming e-commerce is enjoying rapid growth. The hypotheses were tested via structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that the influencers' credibility and attractiveness increase purchase intention directly. Further, customer brand attitude plays a mediating role in the relationship between the influencers' attributes (attractiveness, credibility, and interactivity) and purchase intention. While, the professionalism improves neither favorable customer brand attitude nor purchase intention. The findings provide theoretical implications for scholars to rethink the role of internet influencers in influencing customer purchase intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the relationship between social media influencers (SMIs) and followers' engagement, social attractiveness, and establishing brand loyalty. The study seeks to redefine current theoretical frameworks and provide practical insights for marketers by investigating the mediating role of followers' engagement (FE) and social attractiveness (SA) and the moderating influence of parasocial interactions. The present study utilized a quantitative research methodology. The researchers employed the Smart PLS 4 structural equation modeling (SEM) technique to analyze the data. The data was obtained from the participants using the convenience sampling technique. This study's findings reveal that the sole influence of social media influencers' homophily on brand loyalty was insignificant; the presence of a substantial mediator, namely consumer engagement, suggests that engagement plays a role in channeling the impact of homophily on brand loyalty. Furthermore, the SA played a crucial role in mediating, emphasizing the significance of aesthetic and emotional appeal. The study revealed that parasocial relationships did not have a significant moderating effect on FE. However, they significantly modified the association between SMIs' homophily and brand loyalty. These study findings highlight that marketers operating within the laptop industry specifically utilize engagement activities, emphasize visual harmony, and foster parasocial relationships to maximize the influence of influencers on brand loyalty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this study is to investigate the impact that online celebrities had and still have on Malaysian customers' intents and purchasing behaviours. The use and gratification theory, the source credibility model and the source attractiveness model are the three theoretical frameworks that form the foundation of this study. These models provide the foundation for this research. 384 respondents who are older than 18 and use social media provided answers to the questionnaire which takes the form of an online survey. SPSS software (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) was used for the data analysis and regression analysis was chosen as the method to use in order to establish the significance of hypotheses based on the data collected in order to determine whether or not the data collected supported the hypotheses. This study found that in order for social media celebrities to successfully influence consumers' intentions to make a purchase through the internet, they need to demonstrate that they are reliable, appealing and knowledgeable. In the context of Malaysia, these are the characteristics that are particularly important in determining whethe r or not a customer will make a purchase over the internet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to analyze the antecedents of viewers engagement from social media influencers specifically in relation to YouTube channels, which include feelings of escape, self-improvement, fun, glamourous, connectivity from the audience as well as Overall Perceived image of the influencer. The sample design used in this research is non-probability sampling with purposive sampling technique. The processed data came from 280 respondents and then the data was analyzed using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) method. The results of this study indicate that there is a positive influence of escape on fun, there is a positive influence of self improvement on fun, glamorous and connectivity, there is also a positive influence of fun, glamorous and connectivity on overall perceived image and there is a positive influence of overall perceived image on viewers engagement. Likewise, this study found that there is no positive effect of escape on glamorous and connectivity. In general, the results of this study show that fun, glamorous and connectivity, and overall perceived image are important factors that influence viewers engagement. Content that has a positive, authentic and informative overall image tends to attract more attention and is easily understood by viewers. Suggestions for future research, researchers can conduct research on Indonesian youtuber objects that are not included in this study and overseas youtuber objects. and can also conduct research on the impact of escape and self improvement on viewers engagement by adding job occupation variables as moderators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the need for legislative updates to protect child social media influencers from financial exploitation by their parents, using New York's amended Coogan Act as a model. It highlights the inadequacies of current laws that fail to cover the unique circumstances of social media child stars and advocates for amendments that would ensure parents are held accountable and children's earnings are safeguarded.

A great many may perceive social media filters or lenses as ridiculous and filtering selfies as an act of sheer vanity or blind imitation of glamorous social media influencers. However, from within this pervasive contemporary digital phenomenon, resistance to dominant representations or subversion of societal expectations can be discerned. In other words, filters and filtered self-images are by no means simply and exclusively reproductions of socially idealized beauty standards and pre-existing cultural norms. Some filtered representations often disrupt the effect of the bandwagon from within, using the very digital resources provided by social media and filter applications. In this article, we approach this rather unexplored kind of filtered images from Mikhail Bakhtin’s perspective, precisely employing his conception of the carnivalesque. Using this framework, the aim is to explore the potential subversiveness of certain playful social media filtered representations. Some social media filtered images while satiric and playful also constitute powerful statements with regards to identity politics and the current status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]