General Article The dark side of social media influencing

Topic Selected: Social Media Book Volume: 409

The dark side of social media influencing

Influencers like Kim Kardashian, who has 307 million followers on Instagram, need to be aware of problematic engagement. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Samira Farivar, Carleton University; Fang Wang, Wilfrid Laurier University, and Ofir Turel, The University of Melbourne

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 whats 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...

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