Influencer culture

Sociological investigations of the operations of charismatic leadership (Weber 1922), the prevalence of ‘automaton conformity’ (Fromm 1941), the rise of the authoritarian personality (Adorno 1950), or of totalitarian persuasion (Arendt 1951), comprise an important intellectual history of influence and influencers in twentieth-century social and political thought.

Investigating the politics of influence today, one might easily track the substantive concerns of these twentieth-century theorists. For example secularism and the rise of fascism, the spread of misinformation, the commodification of selfhood, and explore their new formations.

This research project investigates the figure of the influencer as multifaceted in contemporary culture. Embodying variously the interests of multinational corporations, foreign state agencies as well as minority political movements, the figure of the influencer now demands new descriptive vocabularies and critical approaches.

Questions concerning our capacity to influence others, influence our life-worlds and better understand the influences to which we are subject are part of our digital-age vernacular.

Moreover, the digital commons facilitate both suspicion and embrace of influencer culture as it operates through computational algorithm (Zuboff 2019) as well as so-called ‘gesture politics’ and cultural identification based on body image.

In a careful exercise of sociological re-description, this research project investigates how the problems and promises of charismatic influence are central to the reflexive project of the self.