Defining influencers by ostension
There are ten thousand social media influencers in Finland
Many young Finns have built livelihoods for themselves as influencers. The advertising industry organisation Marketing Finland estimates that there are 10 000 influencers in Finland.
Not much is known within media and mass communication studies of these young media entrepreneurs, a gap in the knowledge that my ongoing research addresses.
One could begin defining influencers by referring to two industry awards ceremonies, the Tubecon awards associated with the youtuber event Tubecon since 2014, and the Creator awards, broadcast on Nelonen TV and Ruutu in 2022. The practitioners rewarded in each of the categories would certainly be good examples of influencers. One could point to the nominees in the category “Creator of the year”, stating that what these people are like, defines by ostention, what influencers are.
Kai Rinkinen of Biisonimafia at the Tubecon Industry Day - seminar in 2019. Rinkinen was awarded with the Lifetime Achievement Award in Tubecon Awards 2022.
In the field of strategic communication, a real definition of influencers is already available: "An influencer is someone who has built an audience, naturally and over time, and who is viewed as an authority on a certain subject, practice, or perspective in online spaces.” "Because an influencer has the trust of a community, that person can share content that persuades their audience to take a specific action." (Freberg 2022).
Today, in Finnish, the words “influensseri” (influencer) and “vaikuttaja” (influencer) are used interchangibly. Before the growth of the practice of “influencer marketing”, that is, towards the end of the 2010’s, the online content-producing personalities were often referred by their choice of platform, ie. “tubettaja” or “youtubaaja” (a youtuber), or by the activity type, as in “bloggaaja” (a blogger).
YouTubers Timo Wilderness (Timo Korpi), Joannaemiliaa (Joanna Suomalainen), Herbailua (Juuso Karikuusi), Antsavlog (Anton Laakso), LauraLaura (Laura Nikkilä) and jassumonsteri (Jasmin Halonen) at the Tubecon vlogger panel in August 16th, 2014.
In Sweden, influencer marketing has been measured since 2016, but in Finland, the first estimates of the size of the influencer industry were made in the 2020’s.