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. Social media influencers include those who bring pre-existing fame to an online platform, those who establish a visible digital presence without earlier public recognition and those again who transfer their social media fame to more traditional entertainment forms and formats. However, what much existing literature in the field and the contributors in this volume demonstrate is the scale and scope of fame and recognition that exist within that term, and the distinct ways in which each one opens up a discussion around authenticity and performativity. With that in mind, this volume considers the ways in which disability and climate activists, maternal and religious content creators, Vtubers and queer male beauty influencers chose to curate a public persona, presented as ordinary and/or authentic for an interested and invested following and fan base. Accessible and thought-provoking, this book offers valuable insights for anyone interested in the contemporary celebrity, fame cultures and social media visibility. It will be useful for researchers and students of media and culture studies, gender, disability, communication and celebrity studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Celebrity Studies.

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