Analysing virtual influencers:
celebrity, authenticity & identity on social media
Project Abstract
“My PhD project examines the emergent phenomenon of “virtual influencers”: characters native to social media without a singular referent in the offline world, usually designed to promote brands, products and/or messages, and recognisable for their animated and/or computer-generated appearance. Since the late 2010s, virtual influencers have appeared online with increasing frequency, populating an array of social media platforms, and cultivating increasingly intricate online footprints. The most popular virtual influencers have amassed hundreds of thousands of followers, and secured partnerships with global brands, representing a new iteration of “celebrity-commodity” (Turner et al., 2000) manufactured for, circulated within, and consumed on social media. Combining digital ethnography, interviews, press and archival research, this project will contribute to the foundation of knowledge about this emerging cohort of social media entities, mapping the evolution of the virtual influencer phenomenon and the industrial mechanisms supporting it.”
Virtual Influecer
This website talks about how, since 2010, the number of influencers actively online has continued to grow every day. These influencers have gained hundreds of thousands of active followers leading to being asked to promote products and brands in all different fields. While also being a public profile, these influencers have become a very hot topic for scholarly research. Looking at marketing and consumer perceptions, misinformation and ethics, digital fashion, and more. In this project, it provides a look of the virtual influencer phenomenon while looking at the rapidly developing market of virtual influencers. Concesenltty brings back into the factor that every post by an influencer is done with much more of a backstory then one might think, focusing on the small details that go into every one of these posts. This is what separates influencers from everyday people’s posts.
About the Author
Rachel Barryman
Rachel is a digital culture enthusiast from Aotearoa New Zealand. Now based in Boorloo Perth, Western Australia. Rachel got her Masters in Media, Film and Television with First Class Honours at the University of Auckland in 2017. After getting her masters she spent four years working as a digital media specialist at a leading full-service advertising agency in Aotearoa. Rachel then in 2021 began a PhD in Media, Creative Arts & Social Inquiry at Curtin University.
More of Rachels work
- Berryman, Rachel. “Virtual Influencer Marketing and the Halo of Innovation.” AoIR 2024: Industry, Sheffield University, United Kingdom. 30 October – 2 November, 2024. [Extended Abstract]
- Leaver, Tama, and Rachel Berryman. 31 Jan 2022. “‘Virtual influencers’ are here, but should Meta really be setting the ethical ground rules?” The Conversation.
- Berryman, Rachel, Crystal Abidin, and Tama Leaver. “The Inhabited Spaces of Virtual Influencers.” Urban-Digital Spectacle Workshop, London & Online. 8-9 June, 2022.
- Berryman, Rachel. “Always, Anywhere, with No Complaints: Idealising the Virtual Influencer Body.” CSAA 2021: Bodies in Flux, Edith Cowan University, Perth. 28-30 June, 2022.