The rise of influencers, as power-players in the social media landscape, is a defining feature of the digital era, one that has received much attention from a variety of social science disciplines. But despite the key role that language, along with other semiotic modes, plays in the construction and communication of influencer selves, discourse analytic and pragmatic research on the topic is lagging behind. This volume attempts to fill this void, by offering contextually sensitive insights into influencers’ multi-modal communication on a range of platforms. The contributions rework established modes and tools of discourse analysis and pragmatics to shed empirical light on influencer identities and tensions (e.g. doing authenticity vis-à-vis promoting brands). We specifically attend to (a) the interplay between media affordances and communication practices and (b) the co-constructional, interactive nature of influencer selves with networked audiences, ranging from ‘affect’ to ‘hate’.
In addition to linguists, we hope that the volume will be of interest to scholars and students of social media communication, from sociological, cultural studies, anthropological and/or social psychological perspectives.