Social Media Influencers

The term social media influencer can be used in relation to a variety of entertainment, activist, commercial, amateur, professional and alternative faces and/or figures. This book explores influencer culture, the online personas these figures adopt and the interest around them.

Rebecca Feasey is Reader in Feminist Media Studies and Subject Leader in Media and Critical Studies at Bath Spa University, UK. She has published books on Masculinity and Popular Television (2008), Motherhood and Popular Television (2012), Maternal Readings of Popular Television (2016) and Infertility and Non-Traditional Family Building: From Assisted Reproduction to Adoption in the Media (2019), alongside work on gender and fame cultures in journals such as Celebrity Studies, Men and Masculinities and Feminist Media Studies.

Introduction: Performance, authenticity and social media visibility 1. Influencers as role models 2. From attention to affect: gendered practices of status-seeking among Instagram content creators 3. The influencer in the age of climate change: the authentic role model for sustainability 4. Like a natural mom: social media influencers and digital maternal ambivalence in Italy 5. Consuming queerness: Jeffree Star and the paradox of profit and pleasure in the queer male beauty influencer 6. Disabled influencers on Instagram: exploring digital celebrity and marginalised identities 7. The godly girlboss 8. Beyond fame: online microcelebrity porn stars in the Twitter Alter Community in the Philippines 9. Waiting for a face reveal that never comes? How Vtubers challenge our understanding of influencer authenticity