Abstract
In an era of mass marketing and digital consumerism influencers stand out as noteworthy figures. Influencers have the potential to shape the opinions, behaviours, and purchasing decisions of their audiences. This begs the question what kinds of authorities and institutions influence influencers. This dissertation explores certain discursive representations and subject positions occupied by emerging influencers in “how-to become an influencer” blogs as one kind of authority and institution that influencers may encounter. These formations are explored through a discourse analysis informed by post-structuralist notions around language. This study utilised a novel sampling technique to draw blogs as samples for analysis from search engines. This technique utilised a combination of algorithms, analytics tools, virtual private networks, geolocations, and page rankings in order attain samples of texts that are more likely to be representative of the texts that emerging influencers may encounter. Based on the sampling technique 10 blogs that illustrate how one goes about becoming an influencer were selected for analysis. The analysis of the selected texts revealed, four salient discourses: strategic visibility, (media)tion, authenticity, and neoliberalism. An analysis of these salient discourses revealed five corresponding subject positions that discursively encourage emerging influencers into certain ways of being, namely: passionate agents of strategy, objects of information and subjects in communication, flawed experts, self-regulated lone creators, and pioneering creatives. The discourses and their respective subject positions revealed that much of the literature regarding influencers and their interactions requires further complexifying and investigation. In particular how influencers both participate and reproduce particular kinds of consumer capitalism with and through the contemporary social media landscape.
Word Count: 261
Keywords: Discourse Analysis, Post-Structuralism, Influencers, Mediatised Discourses, Discursive Formations, Blogs, Subject Positions