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Cited by 268

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 44 of the 44 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Selling brands while staying “Authentic”: The professionalization of Instagram influencers

Open access
van Driel, Loes, Dumitrica, Delia·2021·Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
DOI 10.1177/1354856520902136
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Abstract

While Instagram influencers may have started out as ordinary people documenting their everyday life through a stream of photographs, they are increasingly emerging as an intermediary between advertisers and consumers. This study examines the professionalization of Instagram influencers, combining data from 11 interviews with travel influencers with a visual and textual content analysis of their 12 most recent Instagram posts ( N = 132). We show how the increasing professionalization of the influencer steers their relationship with their audience, the advertisers they work with, and the platform Instagram. We argue that, for the Instagram influencer to be perceived as successful, they need to negotiate a tension: they need to appear authentic, yet also approach their followers in a strategic way to remain appealing to advertisers. Although Instagram influencers are seen as more trustworthy than traditional forms of advertising, this tension ultimately leads to a standardization of the content shared by influencers.

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Cites

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Research works printed but not linked: 11

  1. Brake DR, 2012, International Journal of Communication, 6, 1056
  2. 10.1177/0002764211429359 · doi:10.1177/0002764211429359
  3. Duffy BE, 2017, International Journal of Communication, 11, 4652
  4. Fuchs C, 2013, Producing the Internet: Critical Perspectives of Social Media, 25
  5. Hearn A, 2016, A Companion to Celebrity, 194
  6. Hesmondhalgh D, 2010, Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization, 10, 267
  7. Holstein JA, 1999, Qualitative Research, 2, 105
  8. Hou M, 2018, Convergence: The International Research Journal into New Media Technologies, 1
  9. Kádeková Z, 2018, Communication Today, 9, 90
  10. Scolere L, 2018, Social Media + Society, 1
  11. Smythe DW, 1977, Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, 1, 1

Cited by

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Metadata

Authors
van Driel, L., & Dumitrica, D.
Venue
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2020-02-11
Volume
27
Issue
1
Pages
66-84
ISSN
  • 1354-8565 (ISSN-L)
  • 1748-7382
DOI
10.1177/1354856520902136
OpenAlex
W3006415558
Cited by
268
References
44
FWCI
43.96
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
hybrid
Licence
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ (unspecified)

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Selling brands while staying “Authentic”: The professionalization of Instagram influencers. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1177/1354856520902136
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van Driel, L., & Dumitrica, D. (2021). Selling brands while staying “Authentic”: The professionalization of Instagram influencers. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856520902136

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.