‘I’m Always Telling You My Honest Opinion’: Influencers and Gendered Authenticity Strategies on Instagram

Abstract

The author addresses the world of Instagram influencers but offers a very different perspective by focusing on the gendering of claims to authenticity on social media. The author observes how high-profile male and female Czech influencers are required to navigate an authenticity bind (Duffy & Hund, 2019) through two key strategies: the opinion-leader strategy and the community-building strategy. Men rely predominantly on the opinion-leader strategy while women position themselves as community builders. By focusing on the communicative strategies of the influencers, the author offers an analysis of authenticity as performative process, rather than a static concept, that gets negotiated in everyday interactions between influencers and their followers.

Citation

Heřmanová, M. (2022), "‘I’m Always Telling You My Honest Opinion’: Influencers and Gendered Authenticity Strategies on Instagram", Heřmanová, M., Skey, M. and Thurnell-Read, T. (Ed.) Cultures of Authenticity, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 231-245. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80117-936-220221017