1st Edition

Influencer Marketing Interdisciplinary and Socio-Cultural Perspectives

Edited By Lauren Gurrieri, Jenna Drenten, Crystal Abidin Copyright 2025
268 Pages
by Routledge

268 Pages
by Routledge

268 Pages
by Routledge

Influencer marketing often gets touted as more authentic, democratised, credible, and relatable than traditional marketing tactics. But such hype glosses over its messy sociocultural dynamics and underlying disparities. This book discusses and debates the complexities of influencer marketing, casting a critical and interdisciplinary lens on its practices, consumption, and far-reaching societal... Read more

Introduction: symbiosis or parasitism? A framework for advancing interdisciplinary and socio-cultural perspectives in influencer marketing

Lauren Gurrieri, Jenna Drenten and Crystal Abidin

 

1. Influencer marketing: a scoping review and a look ahead

Kendra Fowler and Veronica L. Thomas

 

2. Influencers and the attention economy: the meaning and management of attention on Instagram

Kyle Kubler

 

3. Influencer marketing and the ‘gifted’ product: framing practices and market shaping

Johan Nilsson, Riikka Murto and Hans Kjellberg

 

4. Disability in influencer marketing: a complex model of disability representation

Jonatan Södergren and Niklas Vallström

 

5. ‘You need to change how you consume’: ethical influencers, their audiences and their linking strategies

Aya Aboelenien, Alex Baudet and Ai Ming Chow

 

6. Beyond the authenticity bind – Finstagram as an escape from the attention economy

Amy Goode, Victoria Rodner and Matilda Lawlor

 

7. No filter: navigating well-being in troubled times as social media influencers

Nataly Levesque, Alysha Hachey and Albena Pergelova

 

8. When parasocial relationships turn sour: social media influencers, eroded and exploitative intimacies, and anti-fan communities

Rebecca Mardon, Hayley Cocker and Kate Daunt

 

Biography

Lauren Gurrieri is Associate Professor in the School of Economics, Finance and Marketing at RMIT University, Australia. Her research examines gender, consumption and the marketplace, with a focus on gendered inequalities in consumer and digital cultures. This includes gendered representations in advertising and social media; body norms and beauty ideals in consumer culture; violence against women and marketing; and the strategies used by women to resist and challenge exclusion and marginalisation in the marketplace.

Jenna Drenten is Associate Professor of Marketing in the Quinlan School of Business, USA, where she studies digital consumer culture: the sociocultural role of social media platforms in everyday consumer life. Her research explains how digital culture—from social media algorithms to the influencer attention economy—structures social and cultural consumption ideologies and how consumers’ lived experiences are mediated, translated, and commodified through digital culture.

Crystal Abidin is a Digital Anthropologist and Ethnographer of Vernacular Internet Cultures. She researches influencer cultures, especially in the Asia Pacific region, and has published 6 books and over 80 articles and chapters. Crystal is Professor of Internet Studies at Curtin University, Australia, and Director of the influencer Ethnography Research Lab. Reach her at wishcrys.com.