Skip to content
Hindi News, हिंदी समाचार, Samachar, Breaking News, Latest Khabar – Pratirodh

Hindi News, हिंदी समाचार, Samachar, Breaking News, Latest Khabar – Pratirodh

Primary Menu Hindi News, हिंदी समाचार, Samachar, Breaking News, Latest Khabar – Pratirodh

Hindi News, हिंदी समाचार, Samachar, Breaking News, Latest Khabar – Pratirodh

  • Home
  • Newswires
  • Politics & Society
  • The New Feudals
  • World View
  • Arts And Aesthetics
  • For The Record
  • About Us
  • Featured

The Dark Side Of Social Media Influencing

May 20, 2022 | Pratirodh Bureau

There is less focus on the dark side of social media influencing. Influencers are motivated and often incentivized to increase their power on social media and many are becoming more proficient in attracting and engaging followers

Do you follow influencers on social media? Do you always check their posts? Do you find you’re spending too much time or becoming obsessed with checking influencers’ accounts? And when you can’t check in, do you feel disconnected or lost?

If you answered yes to all of these questions, you may have what’s known as “problematic engagement” with social media influencers.

But don’t blame yourself too much. You are among the many who have been swept away by dazzling social media influencing. And this can be attributed to many features and tactics social media influencers employ that help keep them influential — like livestreams and polls on Instagram.

As experts in social media and user behaviour, we recently published a paper that looks at followers’ problematic engagement with influencers on social media. Our paper is among the first to study which aspects of social media influencing may lead to followers’ problematic engagement. It is important to examine this context considering the significant volume and revenues of social media influencing — it’s a US$13.8 billion industry.

The Issue Of Problematic Engagement

In the age of social media, most people know of or follow some social media influencers. Social media influencers are users who have a significant number of followers with established credibility.

Whether you are a fashion fan or want information on health and fitness — there’s an influencer to follow. And followers often gravitate towards them for their authenticity and content creation.

But less focus is put on the dark side of social media influencing. Influencers are motivated and often incentivized (through product and brand endorsement) to increase their power on social media and many are becoming more proficient in attracting and engaging followers.

Followers, on the other hand, can easily become attached and obsessed with influencers and their engagement can often become excessive and unhealthy. Problematic engagement with social media influencers is common among followers, but not well known or understood.

Our Research

We recently examined the factors and mechanisms that lead to problematic engagement. We focused on three influencer characteristics (physical attractiveness, social attractiveness and self-presence) and two follower participation attributes (participation comprehensiveness and following length) to explore their effects on the development of problematic engagement through the formation of follower attachments.

Based on attachment theory, we studied two types of attachments — parasocial relationship and sense of belonging, both of which are key in social media influencing. Parasocial relationship is followers’ perception of their one-sided relationship with an influencer and sense of belonging refers to the feeling of being an integral member of the influencer’s community.

We conducted an online survey of 500 Instagram users. The results showed that when followers develop attachments both to influencers (parasocial relationship) and their community (sense of belonging), this can lead to problematic engagement.

We found that influencers’ social attractiveness has a stronger effect than other factors in building followers’ attachments. Following more influencers could reduce the impact of attachment to the community (sense of belonging) when it comes to problematic engagement, but not the effect of attachment to the influencer (parasocial relationship).

Implications For Influencers And Followers

Our study warns of and explains problematic engagement to social media users.

We argue that social media users who are attracted to influencers can become easily attached and engage excessively. Users need to be aware of, watch out for and exert self-regulations to manage their interactions with influencers.

For example, participation comprehensiveness — which refers to the reasons for following and extent of followers’ participation (like watching, liking, commenting, sharing) — can lead to attachment development. This, however, can be consciously managed by followers themselves. One way of doing this is by making use of the phone’s functions and tools like setting daily time limits on Instagram or turning off notifications for the app.

Social media influencers should also be aware of followers’ problematic engagement. Although it may be in contrast with their goal of increasing follower engagement, they can focus on creating a healthy relationship with their followers.

For instance, influencers can openly talk about the issue of problematic engagement and show care for their followers’ well-being. This will help with sustainability of the relationship because studies have shown that social media users with problematic behaviour are more likely to stop using platforms after a while.

More research on the dark side of social media influencers is needed and we call for future research to focus on additional negative consequences such as followers’ anxiety, depression and the impact of following influencers on followers’ well-being.

(This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.)

Tags: Pratirodh, social media, social media influencers

Continue Reading

Previous Yasin Malik Convicted In Terror Funding Case
Next Climate Change: Extreme Heat Waves In India 100 Times More Likely

More Stories

  • Featured

26% Of World Lacks Clean Drinking Water, 46% Sanitation: UN

2 hours ago Pratirodh Bureau
  • Featured

‘Severe Consequences’ Of Further Warming In Himalayas: IPCC

4 hours ago Pratirodh Bureau
  • Featured

NIA Arrests Kashmiri Journalist, Mufti Says This Is Misuse Of UAPA

20 hours ago Shalini

Recent Posts

  • 26% Of World Lacks Clean Drinking Water, 46% Sanitation: UN
  • ‘Severe Consequences’ Of Further Warming In Himalayas: IPCC
  • NIA Arrests Kashmiri Journalist, Mufti Says This Is Misuse Of UAPA
  • BJP Is Just A Tenant, Not Owner Of Democracy: Congress
  • Livable Future Possible If Drastic Action Taken This Decade: IPCC Report
  • Significant Human Rights Issues In India, Finds US Report
  • Bhopal Gas Tragedy: NGOs Upset Over Apex Court Ruling
  • Kisan Mahapanchayat: Thousands Of Farmers Gather In Delhi
  • Nations Give Nod To Key UN Science Report On Climate Change
  • AI: The Real Danger Lies In Anthropomorphism
  • BJP, Like Cong, Will Be Finished For Misusing Central Agencies: Akhilesh
  • J&K Admin Incompetent: Omar Abdullah Over Conman Issue
  • Oxygen Loss In Oceans Predicted To Threaten Global Marine Ecosystems
  • Ukraine War Crime Allegations: Arrest Warrant Against Putin
  • COVID, Bird Flu – Why We Are Seeing So Many Viruses Emerge
  • IMSD Takes On Right Wing Muslims Ridiculing LGBTQIA+ Community
  • Nothing Remotely Anti-National About Rahul’s Comments: Tharoor
  • Great Depression, Global Recession Repeat: No Lessons Learnt?
  • Why We Can’t Rely On Air Conditioning To Keep Us Cool
  • Iranian Child Detainees Face Torture In Brutal Protest Crackdown

Search

Main Links

  • Home
  • Newswires
  • Politics & Society
  • The New Feudals
  • World View
  • Arts And Aesthetics
  • For The Record
  • About Us

Related Stroy

  • Featured

26% Of World Lacks Clean Drinking Water, 46% Sanitation: UN

2 hours ago Pratirodh Bureau
  • Featured

‘Severe Consequences’ Of Further Warming In Himalayas: IPCC

4 hours ago Pratirodh Bureau
  • Featured

NIA Arrests Kashmiri Journalist, Mufti Says This Is Misuse Of UAPA

20 hours ago Shalini
  • Featured

BJP Is Just A Tenant, Not Owner Of Democracy: Congress

20 hours ago Pratirodh Bureau
  • Featured

Livable Future Possible If Drastic Action Taken This Decade: IPCC Report

1 day ago Pratirodh Bureau

Recent Posts

  • 26% Of World Lacks Clean Drinking Water, 46% Sanitation: UN
  • ‘Severe Consequences’ Of Further Warming In Himalayas: IPCC
  • NIA Arrests Kashmiri Journalist, Mufti Says This Is Misuse Of UAPA
  • BJP Is Just A Tenant, Not Owner Of Democracy: Congress
  • Livable Future Possible If Drastic Action Taken This Decade: IPCC Report
Copyright © All rights reserved. | CoverNews by AF themes.