Influencers, a societal force so far mostly unaccounted for, subject to inquiry in Europe
Influencers get close to power, and have power themselves.
The rise of social media in the last decade has caused some users to rise above the ranks as influencers due to the social media logic of datafication, popularity, connectivity and programmability, as theorized by José van Dijck1 and ThomasPoell.
In Finland, a small Northern European country in Scandinavia, there are nearly 50 000 people on social media with more than one thousand followers. The Influencity data tool finds public profiles with the amount of followers above 1000, but it does not differentiate if the profile has ever made brand collaborations or not. Influencers have been discussed in the media in Finland recently, due to the prime minister Sanna Marin’s partying with celebrities and social media influencers.
Influencers make money by promote services, products or ideas. It is recognized as a problem that often influencers do not disclose their paid promotions, according to a recent inquiry by the European parliament. There are substantial amounts of advertising money being invested in Influencer marketing according to a recent OECD report.2
Social media influencers are understood to wield power on their followers’ decisions from purchases to even voting behavior. It is Italy that has the most influencers per capita in Europe, according to the data tool Influencity. Over two percent of the Italian population are influencers, notes a recent study by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Economic, Scientific and Quality of Life Policies at the request of the committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO).
According to Influencity data, there are over 1,2 million nano influencers and over 65 000 micro influencers in Italy. Nano influencers are those with at least 1000 followers and micro influencers those who have at least 10 000 followers. All in all, there are over 1,3 million influencers in Italy. The influencer market value in Italy reached 280 million euros in 2021, and the growth compared to the previous year was 15%, the IMCO study found.
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See also “Governing trust in European platform societies: Introduction to the special issue” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02673231211028378
OECD (2020), Competition in digital advertising markets, http://www.oecd.org/daf/competition/competition-in-digital-advertising-markets-2020.pdf