Social media influencers as human brands : insights from an analysis of a mega-influencer follower-generated hashtag network on Instagram

Rathnayake, Dilan Tharindu and Tonner, Andrea and Eckler, Petya (2022) Social media influencers as human brands : insights from an analysis of a mega-influencer follower-generated hashtag network on Instagram. In: Academy of Marketing Conference, 2022-07-05 - 2022-07-07, University of Huddersfield.

[thumbnail of Rathnayake-etal-AMC-2022-Social-media-influencers-as-human-brands]
Preview
Text. Filename: Rathnayake_etal_AMC_2022_Social_media_influencers_as_human_brands.pdf
Accepted Author Manuscript
License: Strathprints license 1.0

Download (607kB)| Preview

Abstract

This study investigates the followers’ perspective of social media influencers as ‘human brands’, via an analysis of follower-generated hashtags on Instagram. Instagram is the fastest-growing social media platform (Djafarova & Rushworth, 2017) having a higher user engagement (Casaló et al., 2018), making it a promising platform for social media influencers.