Abstract
It is oft remarked by marketing firms that influencers are effective as marketers because they communicate authenticity, functioning as a perceived alternative to the falseness of more traditional marketing and the corporate world. Self-disclosure is key to generating this user perception of authenticity, and such disclosure also works to offset any suspicions regarding the highly curated images that make up an influencer’s feed. In a marked irony, it is the juncture at which the influencer monetizes their feed through sponsorships, the same moment when their authenticity becomes most crucial, where the always-already present frame of capital and consumption most fully subsumes the person behind the influencer. This paper is concerned with the processes, elisions and evasions described above and the acceleration of their attendant ironies with the rise of the AI generated influencer. What does self-disclosure mean when there is no self? Does the double-consciousness of the consumer (knowing both that the images of social media accounts are, at best, highly edited and believing that they are somehow more real, or different in kind, from the images of mass media) run deep enough to allow for the fantasy of an authentically self-disclosing virtual other?
Presenters
Mark HarrisonSenior Lecturer, Indiana University, Indiana University, Indiana, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2024 Special Focus—Images and Imaginaries from Artificial Intelligence
KEYWORDS
Influencer Culture, Pseudo-Authenticity, Artificial Intelligence, Consumerism
