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• Fiction / Writing
• Branding / Design
• Social Media / YouTube
• Influencers / Parasocial Relationships
• Psychology
• Physics / Space

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• YouTube / Online Content Creation
• Advertising
• Brand design
• Brand strategy

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Which of these can be researchable / debated?

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Which of these can be researchable / debated?

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• Strong connections to a variety of online content creators
• Strong connections to influencer production teams (Sidemen BTS, Beta Squad BTS, MrBeast BTS)
• Strong connections to influencer management (Waves, Colossal Influence, Upload Agency)
• Loose connections to people in the advertising branch (through lecturers)
• Contact with guest lecturer who specialises in running social media pages for brands

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• Sparks debate / interest
• Has a narrow focus
• Time period

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• Subjective terms such as 'good' or 'bad'
• Too broad
• Too niche to the point of no room for debate / research
• Can be answered just by reading the question

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How youtubers brand themselves now than before

How YouTube branding…

Branding yourself on youtube

How creators brand themselves on YouTube now than before

Self-branding and YouTube

YouTube creators and their influence on advertising: What effect have they had for advertisers over the last decade?

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Examining the rise of YouTuber original brands over the past decade

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Examining the rise of YouTuber original brands over the past decade

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• Explored initial thoughts on what areas we'd like to work in, in the future
• Reflect on topics we might be interested
• Overview on dissertation prep journey

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• Listed areas of interest as a group
• Worked together to turn them into possible research questions
• Tried narrowing focus

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• I want to look at previous student examples and see what made them successful
• I want to expand my topic of interest (YouTube / Content Creation) and see how I can turn this into a researchable piece
• What debates can come from my topic?

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• Identify who I can interview for my primary research

• Reach out to connections

• Find relevant books

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• Draft interview questions that I can use

• Thoroughly read through secondary sources

• Identify quotes from these

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Identify YouTuber brands to investigate and dissect

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• Write up 200-250 words for each chapter to practice writing

• Loosely outline essay

• Check with peers if the topic journey is understandable

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• Get lecturer feedback

• Finish chapter 3 and conclusion

• Submit

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• Write up introduction

• Write chapters 1-3

• Proof read / Check progress with lecturers

• Secure first draft

# data[].attributes.body
• Get feedback on first draft

• Write up finalised version

• Feedback with peers and lecturers

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A model of young people's decision-making in using the Web - Denise E. Agosto

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A model of young people's decision-making in using the Web - Denise E. Agosto

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0740818802001317?via%3Dihub

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Abstract

This article offers a theoretical model of the criteria young people use to evaluate websites. The model combines the concepts of personal preferences, object engagement characteristics, human processing constraints, and contextual constraints to predict a young person's evaluation decision. The qualitative methodology used to gather data for the development and testing of this model included website evaluation sessions and group interviews with 11 young female students. Data analysis took the form of iterative pattern coding using QSR NUD*IST Vivo qualitative data analysis software. Data analysis uncovered strong support for the theoretical and empirical models. Related implications for website designers are discussed, with an emphasis on the importance of enabling users to modify website design to satisfy their personal preferences. Related implications for librarians and teachers are also discussed, with an emphasis on the importance of teaching young people to become more critical users of the Web.

Introduction

Choosing a website involves selecting from a pool of available sites, or engaging in decision-making among sites. Evaluating an individual Web site involves deciding whether certain characteristics of the site meet expected quality requirements, or engaging in decision-making within a site. Agosto (2002) found that young people's Web site decision making is bounded by time and cognitive and physical constraints, and that young people "satisfice" (Newell & Simon, 1972) when making decisions among sites. This article builds on the findings of that study to present a model of the criteria that young people use to evaluate individual sites.

Section snippets

Bounded rationality and satisficing

Agosto (2002) presented a detailed discussion of Simon's (1955, 1956) theories of bounded rationality and satisficing. ¹ Simon argued that, because of time restraints and cognitive limitations, it is not possible for humans to consider all potential decision outcomes and then make fully reasoned, purely rational choices. He suggested that humans operate rationally within practical boundaries, or within the limits of bounded rationality.

Proposed models

The theoretical concepts discussed previously translate into four major determinants of young people's Web-based decision-making: personal preferences, object engagement characteristics, cognitive constraints, and search constraints. Figure 1 provides a model of the relationships among these four theoretical concepts. A set of empirical variables flows from each of these four theoretical concepts. Figure 2 shows this derivative empirical model.

Variables

To clarify discussion of the two levels of empirical variables in this model, the groups of theoretically tied variables are called "variable clusters" (e.g., the youth-specific variable cluster). The individual components of these groups are called "subvariables" (e.g., the subvariable level of interactivity). The subvariables comprising each variable cluster are listed in random order within each cluster as follows:

Youth-specific variable cluster (IV ₁):

The structure of the model

The proposed model is highly flexible; not all subvariables play roles in all website evaluations. Young people might apply some of these criteria to one site and others to another, a practice consistent with behavioral theory research: "During the search for information, decision makers hardly treat all choice alternatives the same way. Some are investigated quite thoroughly, others only superficially (or not at all)" (Tyszka, 1989, p. 185).

Again, the limits of bounded rationality come into

Independent variable clusters: youth-specific variable cluster

Most of the proposed relationships between the dependent variable and the subvariables in the youth-specific cluster (IV ₁) are positive relationships. As for perceived quality of graphic and multimedia content, the more attractive a young person perceives a site to be, the higher his or her evaluation will be. Past research supports the perceived quality of graphic and multimedia content as an evaluation criterion. To study how elementary school children can learn using the Internet, Kafai and

Methodology

To test the proposed models, the researcher largely replicated the study methodology described in Agosto (2002). For this second study, a pool of 11 ninth- and tenth-grade girls explored a different set of test sites and then freely surfed the Web. Next, they were divided into two groups for group interviews about their website design and use preferences as exhibited during the study's Web-surfing sessions and during any past experiences with the Web.

Data analysis of the interview transcripts

Data analysis

Data collection resulted in three types of data: questionnaire data, data from the website evaluation and surfing session logs (the participants' notes), and data contained in the group interview audio tapes. Thus, this was a "multimethod" (Morgan, 1997, p. 2) study, in which data from more than one collection method are gathered in examination of the same research questions. Comparison of data collected using different methods acts as a form of triangulation in qualitative research.

The data

Results

The unit of analysis was an individual conversation turn. As Van Someren, Barnard, and Sandberg (1994) explained in their discussion of transcript analysis for model verification/negation, it is difficult and therefore unreliable to compare data directly to a model, making the generation of a coding scheme necessary. Data analysis of the surfing sheets and interview transcripts resulted in the coding scheme represented in the Appendix. Comparison of the coding scheme to the proposed theoretical

Limitations

The most significant limitation of this study is that the participant groups were comprised exclusively of girls. It is likely that many of the results are applicable to boys, but an extension of the study to male populations remains for future examination. Similarly, the participant age range (14 to 16 years old) was relatively limited. Again, it is likely that many of the results can be extended to additional populations, but this is an area that requires further study.

A final limitation

Discussion

The most significant and lasting contribution of this study is the theoretical model (see Figure 3). Its application is not limited to young people's decision-making in the Web environment; it can also be applied to young people's decision-making in general. For example, deciding whether to join a high school basketball team can be a significant decision in a young person's life. To apply the model to this hypothetical situation, it is necessary to consider each of the concepts that comprises

Conclusion

There is a deeper reason for increasing the youth appeal of websites than merely seeking to appeal to young people's digital information preferences. Oliver and Oliver (1997) found that increased engagement with a query topic leads to increased student learning. Increasing the youth appeal of websites is likely to increase engagement with site content, leading to increased learning. Today's youth are the future of the nascent electronic information society. Understanding how young people behave

Teaching reflection: Information seeking and evaluation in a digital library environment

Internet Web-searching instruction in the elementary classroom: Building a foundation for information literacy

Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook

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A model of young people's decision-making in using the Web

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This article offers a theoretical model of the criteria young people use to evaluate websites. The model combines the concepts of personal preferences, object engagement characteristics, human processing constraints, and contextual constraints to predict a young person's evaluation decision.

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Adolescents’ self-reported level of dispositional advertising literacy: How do adolescents resist advertising in the current commercial media environment? - De Jans, S., Hudders, L., & Cauberghe, V. (2018)

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Adolescents’ self-reported level of dispositional advertising literacy: How do adolescents resist advertising in the current commercial media environment? - De Jans, S., Hudders, L., & Cauberghe, V. (2018)

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https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/YC-02-2018-00782/full/html

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To read the full version of this content please select one of the options below:

Liselot Hudders (Universiteit Gent Faculteit Politieke en Sociale Wetenschappen , Gent, Belgium)

Veroline Cauberghe (Universiteit Gent Faculteit Politieke en Sociale Wetenschappen , Gent, Belgium)

Young Consumers

ISSN: 1747-3616

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to examine adolescents' (between 12 and 18 years) perceptions of their knowledge and skills related to advertising (i.e. dispositional advertising literacy). More specifically, adolescents' beliefs about their recognition and understanding of advertising (cognitive facet), their emotional reaction to advertising (affective facet) and their moral evaluation of advertising (moral facet) were investigated together with their beliefs about the way they resist advertising.

Design/methodology/approach

A large-scale survey was conducted, taking information from 2,602 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 years.

Findings

The findings show that adolescents believe they can recognize advertising reasonably well and have a moderate understanding of it. They tend to be negative toward advertising, perceive it as an unfair practice and claim to resist it strongly. In addition, adolescents' self-reported moral and affective advertising literacy positively affect advertising resistance. Adolescents' cognitive advertising literacy increases with the number of different media device types owned, and cognitive and moral advertising literacy increase with age.

Originality/value

This study is one of the first to examine adolescents' beliefs about their dispositional advertising literacy. Most previous studies examined advertising literacy among young children (under 12 years) or adults after exposure to a specific advertising format (i.e. situational advertising literacy), while this study focuses on adolescents' self-reported levels of cognitive, moral and affective dispositional advertising literacy. In addition, the focus on resistance strategies to examine how adolescents resist advertising is unique.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Agentschap Innoveren en Ondernemen [grant number 130008] and Research Foundation - Flanders [grant number FWO.3E0.2015.0035.01].

Citation

De Jans, S., Hudders, L. and Cauberghe, V. (2018), "Adolescents' self-reported level of dispositional advertising literacy: how do adolescents resist advertising in the current commercial media environment?", Young Consumers, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 402-420. https://doi.org/10.1108/YC-02-2018-00782

Publisher
:
Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright

© 2022 Emerald Publishing Limited

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Adolescents' self-reported level of dispositional advertising literacy: how do adolescents resist advertising in the current commercial media environment?

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To read the full version of this content please select one of the options below: Liselot Hudders (Universiteit Gent Faculteit Politieke en Sociale Wetenschappen , Gent, Belgium) Veroline Cauberghe (Universiteit Gent Faculteit Politieke en Sociale Wetenschappen , Gent, Belgium) Young Consumers ISSN: 1747-3616 This study aims to examine adolescents' (between 12 and 18 years) perceptions of their knowledge and skills related to advertising (i.e.

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What Is Influencer Marketing and How Does It Target Children? A Review and Direction for Future Research - De Veirman, M., Hudders, L., & Nelson, M. R. (2019)

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What Is Influencer Marketing and How Does It Target Children? A Review and Direction for Future Research - De Veirman, M., Hudders, L., & Nelson, M. R. (2019)

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https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02685/full

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Department of Communication Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

Department of Marketing, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

Department of Advertising, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, United States

Children nowadays spend many hours online watching YouTube videos in which their favorite vloggers are playing games, unboxing toys, reviewing products, making jokes or just going about their daily activities. These vloggers regularly post attractive and entertaining content in the hope of building a large follower base. Although many of these vloggers are adults, the number of child vloggers is flourishing. The famous child vlogger Ryan of Ryan's World, for instance, has more than 19 million viewers and he is (at age seven) a social media influencer. The popularity of these vloggers incited advertisers to include them as a new marketing communication tool, also referred to as influencer marketing, in their marketing strategy. Accordingly, many influential vloggers now receive free products from brands in return for a mention in one of their videos and their other social media (e.g., TikTok or Instagram) and some are even paid to create a sponsored post or video and distribute it to their followers. This sponsored content appears to be highly influential and may affect young children's brand preferences. Given the limited advertising literacy skills (i.e., knowledge of advertising and skills to critically reflect on this advertising) of children under age 12, they are a vulnerable target group when it comes to persuasion. Therefore, caution is needed when implementing this marketing tactic to target them. However, research on how influencer marketing affects young children (under 12) is scarce and it is unclear how these young children can be empowered to critically cope with this fairly new form of persuasion. This paper therefore aims to shed light on why and how social media influencers have persuasive power over their young followers. The paper starts with providing insights into how and why social media influencers became a new source in advertising. We then discuss the few studies that have been conducted on influencer marketing among young children (under 12), based on a systematic literature review, and take these findings to formulate societal and policy implications and develop a future research agenda.

Introduction

Today, children have plenty of options for digital entertainment and social media. YouTube in particular, has emerged as a platform for children's screen time and an alternative for traditional television (TV) content ( Watson, 2019). As an illustration, 81% of U.S. parents let their children under 11 watch YouTube ( Pew Research Center, 2018), where they are exposed to advertising before they watch a video, and increasingly, brands are found within the videos, too ( Weiss, 2018). YouTube offers new possibilities for brands to engage with children and their parents, including embedded advertising formats containing subtle brand integrations in entertaining media content, making them less intrusive, and thus harder to recognize ( Hudders et al., 2017). For example, Ryan's World, which features a young boy reviewing branded toys and products, was the 6th most watched YouTube site for children, with more than 19 million viewers (April 2019; Clement, 2019). Given the popularity and potential to reach young viewers online, digital advertising spending for children reached 900 million U.S. dollars in 2018 and is forecast to increase in the future ( Guttmann, 2019).

The stars of social media, also referred to as vloggers on YouTube, have become important influencers for the consumption decisions of their young audiences. They give their followers an insight into the brands they love and use in their daily life and even give direct advice on the products their followers should use or not use ( De Jans et al., 2019). Because of their reach and the credibility they exude, many brands have added these influencers, who are often kids themselves (e.g., Stella and Blaise, The McClure Twins, AnnieLeblanc, or EvanTubeHD), to their marketing strategies. Although these endorsers may appear to be "ordinary" children, some are actually highly paid endorsers, for example, Ryan earning $22 million in 2018 ( Robehmed and Berg, 2018). This is because, in return for free promotional goods or payment, brands ask these influencers to endorse their products on their social media profiles (on their feed or in their stories on Instagram, videos on YouTube and TikTok, or Facebook updates, etc.) and their YouTube channels in turn earn advertising revenue as a result of their large audiences. This is a phenomenon which has been referred to as influencer marketing ( De Veirman et al., 2017). This form of marketing - the influencers' social media contributions - is regarded as a form of advertising when (1) influencers receive a compensation (free products or financial payment) and (2) advertisers have control over the content, which also includes simple final approval of the post or general instructions regarding the post (e.g., I want two posts about our product). This definition of influencer marketing can be found in the guidelines of some advertising self-regulatory bodies (e.g., EASA, 2018).

Brands appear within influencers' content as seamless implied endorsements. Hence, the branded content or advertising is fully integrated in the media content children are consuming ( Hudders et al., 2017; De Jans et al., 2019). Moreover, despite clear guidelines from governmental regulators for mandatory disclosures of these endorsements (e.g., Federal Trade Commission in the U.S.), influencers often do not appropriately disclose the commercial nature of their posts ( Children's Advertising Review Unit, 2017; De Veirman et al., 2019). Ryan's World, for example, was recently accused of deceiving children through "sponsored videos that often have the look and feel of organic content" in an official complaint by the watchdog group Truth in Advertising, filed with the Federal Trade Commission ( Hsu, 2019). As a result, children ( Folkvord et al., 2019) and even parents ( Evans et al., 2018) may not understand that the YouTube content they are viewing is, essentially, an advertisement. However, despite their increasing prevalence and importance in children's commercial media environment, research on how influencer marketing affects young children is still limited (for an exception, see De Jans et al., 2019). Most of the studies on influencer marketing focus on an adult audience and examine how influencers affect the purchase decisions of their followers (e.g., De Veirman et al., 2017; Lou and Yuan, 2019; Schouten et al., 2019).

Therefore, this paper aims to theoretically outlay how social media influencers, as a new source in advertising, target and affect young children. Children have always been an important target group for marketers, both because of their impact on their parents' buying decisions, but also as future adult consumers ( Calvert, 2018). We focus on children under age 12 as they are highly vulnerable to advertising. Their advertising literacy, all knowledge and skills related to advertising, is not yet fully developed ( Hudders et al., 2017). The cognitive abilities, emotion regulation, and moral development are still immature for children under 12 ( John, 1999; Rozendaal et al., 2011; Hudders et al., 2017). These abilities help them to understand the persuasive intent of advertising and strategies used to persuade them, control the emotions that advertisements may arouse, and evaluate the fairness and appropriateness of advertising (e.g., use of stereotypes). A strongly developed advertising literacy is indispensable to be able to critically reflect on advertising and avoid subconscious persuasion ( Hudders et al., 2017). Not surprisingly, several studies have shown that children under 12 have difficulties to cope with embedded advertising (e.g., Hudders et al., 2016; De Pauw et al., 2018a, b). Accordingly, specific corporate actions and self-regulations apply for children under 12 in order to protect them from advertising influence. For instance, several European food brands agreed not to advertise unhealthy food products to children under 12 in the EU Pledge agreement as they are aware of children's high susceptibility for their advertising messages. Since 2019, influencer marketing has been included in this agreement.

The purpose of this review is threefold. First, the research aims to provide insights into the importance of social media influencers as a source in advertising targeting children. In order to adopt a theoretical approach to children's processing of influencer marketing, we draw upon existing theoretical and empirical work regarding source effects in persuasion. During childhood, children encounter different advertising sources shaping their tastes and preferences, trying to turn them into brand loyalists as they grow older. Social media influencers can be perceived as a new type of real-life endorser affecting children's and their parents' consumption behavior. Second, this paper provides a review of the current (limited) academic research on influencer marketing targeted at children. Additionally, societal and policy implications of this tactic in the context of prior research are discussed. Third, a future research agenda that may foster academic research on the topic is included. This way, we hope our review may provide a basis for marketing-related regulation, policies, and parent intervention strategies and thus help ensure the protection of children.

Social Media Influencers as a New Source in Advertising Targeting Children

Source Effects in Persuasion

The importance of the source as sender of the object of information has been well recognized in the communication and advertising literature. Already in 1948, Laswell emphasized that every communication involves a message, a medium, a recipient, and a source ( Lasswell, 1948). In advertising, a distinction can be made between the one who bears financial and legal responsibility for the message and the one who communicates the brand's message ( Stern, 1994). As such, in the latter sense, brands may create or license a character or pay an endorser or spokesperson to influence consumers' attitudes and purchase intentions. The persuasiveness of advertising is strongly influenced by consumers' perception of these sources (see Wilson and Sherrell, 1993 for a meta-analysis). For instance, source credibility plays a critical role in how consumers evaluate brands and products, whereby a positive evaluation of the credibility of the source is likely to translate into positive advertising outcomes ( Sternthal et al., 1978; Ohanian, 1991). Source credibility consists of two dimensions: trustworthiness and expertise. Trustworthiness refers to the honesty, believability, and morality of the endorser, while expertise refers to the endorser's competence, knowledge, and skills ( Hovland et al., 1953; Sternthal et al., 1978; Erdogan, 1999; Flanagin and Metzger, 2007). Both trustworthiness and expertise have been found to enhance advertising effectiveness ( Amos et al., 2008). Furthermore, the physical appearance or attractiveness of the source plays a major role in the endorsers' credibility and, consequently, persuasiveness ( Kahle and Homer, 1985; Kamins, 1989; McCracken, 1989; Ohanian, 1991). Even among children, using attractive peer models has been shown to increase advertising effectiveness (e.g., Van de Sompel and Vermeir, 2016). Source attractiveness is driven by factors such as perceived similarity, familiarity, and likeability of the source. Familiarity refers to the extent to which one knows the source through exposure; likability is defined as affection for the source as a result of the source's physical appearance and behavior, while similarity is the supposed resemblance between the source and receiver of the message ( McGuire, 1985). According to McGuire (1985), sources who are known to, liked by, and/ or similar to the consumer are found to be attractive and, as a result, are persuasive. Moreover, these source factors contribute to consumers' identification with the source, which increases the likelihood they will adopt their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors ( Kelman, 1961; Basil, 1996).

When consumers identify with the source, they will likely imitate his/her behavior, including the products he/she uses ( Kelman, 1961), also referred to as social learning ( Bandura et al., 1961). Indeed, as sources in advertising usually show the usefulness of the product they endorse and how to use it, this action may lead to observational learning and modeling of their behavior accordingly ( Bandura et al., 1966). Moreover, next to family and friends, sources used in advertising may serve as role models they refer to in their identity formation ( Lloyd, 2002; Hoffner and Buchanan, 2005). As a result, when advertising sources are paired with products, the positive affective responses toward those sources may transfer onto the products ( Acuff and Reiher, 1999; McNeal, 2007; de Droog et al., 2012), which has been referred to as a meaning transfer ( McCracken, 1989). Importantly, crucial to the effectiveness of endorsement marketing is a good fit between the source and the product he/she endorses, which has been referred to as the match-up hypothesis in celebrity research ( Kamins, 1990). To conclude, the likelihood of the former process to occur increases when consumers develop a parasocial relationship (parasocial interaction; PSI) with the source ( Tsay-Vogel and Schwartz, 2014). PSI, as introduced by Horton and Wohl (1956), refers to the relationships consumers develop with media characters, making them important sources of information ( Rubin et al., 1985). Accordingly, when consumers identify with a source and their brand-usage behavior, they will likely adopt this behavior ( Naderer et al., 2018). As the need for companionship, which is the main driver for relationship formation, emerges in childhood ( Hoffner, 2008), children typically engage in the formation of PSI's ( de Droog et al., 2012).

The above theoretical insights explain the success of sources used in advertising in general. As such, this robust body of literature has demonstrated that the source in the message is important for persuasion effects. These processes may also apply to social media influencers. Before discussing how influencers may affect children, we will first provide an overview of the different sources that are used in advertising targeting children and discuss how influencers evolved as a new source in advertising.

Insights Into the Persuasiveness of Different Types of Sources Targeting Children

Brand and Licensed Characters

Brands often display anthropomorphized or fantasy characters in their advertising and on their product packaging. These cartoon-like figures can be created by the brand with the sole purpose of promoting their products and services (i.e., brand mascots, brand icons, and non-celebrity spokes-characters). Famous examples of brand mascots are Tony the Tiger (Kellogg's Frosted Flakes breakfast cereal), Chester Cheetah (Frito-Lay's Cheetos), Ronald McDonald (McDonalds), and Mr. Peanut (Planters). These characters are in full ownership of the brand, which implies a very high level of control over the source and its message. However, as it takes a lot of development and marketing efforts to build awareness and affinity for these characters, brands may also opt to license a character from media companies [i.e., licensed (media) characters, also called celebrity spokes-character] ( Kraak and Story, 2015). Examples of licensed characters that are used by brands are numerous. For instance, Spongebob Squarepants endorses Yoplait GoGurt and Disney's Cars figures endorse Hot Wheels toys. McDonalds licensed different characters over time to endorse their happy meals (e.g., The Incredibles, My Little Pony, and Transformers Cyberverse). Spider Man endorses everything from Pop-Tarts to Cheez-it crackers to Fruit Snacks to Fudge Stripe cookies (for more examples, see licenseglobal.com). Contractual agreements allow them to use the characters for merchandizing and cross-promotions ( Kraak and Story, 2015; Smits et al., 2015). As a result, popular media characters are highly present in children's daily lives, not only through television and other media, but also through merchandising (e.g., books, toys, and clothes featuring characters; Atkinson et al., 2015) and on product packages and in advertising.

Brands profit from these characters' fame and popularity among children. For instance, in the fourth quarter of 2018, U.S. consumers spent approximately 21.6 billion dollars on licensed merchandise products for children ( O'Connell, 2019). Apart from the fact that they are effective advertising sources, brand and licensed characters hold the advantage that, since they are "fictional" (and therefore more "controllable"), they are less likely to be embroiled in a scandal as compared to real-life endorsers, which might negatively affect the brand image as negative associations people make with a celebrity can be transferred to the brand (e.g., Till and Shimp, 1998; Stafford et al., 2002). Furthermore, these characters do not age or change much over time, which makes their employability less timely as compared to human endorsers.

Research on the use of brand mascots and licensed characters on children's attitudes and behaviors has mainly focused on food with findings suggesting that the presence of cartoon media characters positively affects children's food preferences, choices, and intake, especially for energy-dense and nutrient-poor foods as compared to fruits or vegetables (see Kraak and Story, 2015 for a review). The presence of brand mascots and licensed characters draws children's attention ( Ogle et al., 2017), helps them recognize and recall the products and brands they endorse, and has been found effective in improving attitudes about the advertised product (e.g., Neeley and Schumann, 2004; Lapierre et al., 2011) and increasing product choice (e.g., Nelson et al., 2015).

There are multiple reasons why these sorts of sources are attractive for children. First, these simply drawn, colorful and funny characters appeal to them and are easy to remember, which is helpful given the limited cognitive abilities of young children ( de Droog et al., 2011; Lapierre et al., 2011). Second, children easily form parasocial relationships with these likeable and fun characters ( de Droog et al., 2012), which may result in a preference for the products they endorse ( Lagomarsino and Suggs, 2018). Moreover, as these characters are now finding their way onto social media (e.g., Chester Cheetah has 191k followers on Instagram), the perceived distance between (child) consumers and their favorite characters is reduced, which may even increase feelings of parasocial interaction. Third, the pairing of brands with popular cartoon media characters is not only limited to packaging and traditional advertising, but also takes on more integrated forms. For instance, likeable characters may interact with and consume branded products in children's movies ( Naderer et al., 2018, 2019), or brands may be integrated in highly interactive and engaging (adver)games featuring likeable and even customizable avatars ( Bailey et al., 2009). As these placements are embedded in the media content, children may experience extra difficulties recognizing the persuasive intent of these placements (see De Jans et al., 2019c for an overview).

Given their persuasiveness, European food brands have agreed not to use licensed characters (e.g., Spongebob Squarepants and Spiderman) to promote unhealthy food products to children under 12 as a part of the European Pledge agreement ( EU Pledge, 2019). Company-owned, brand mascots (e.g., Tony the Tiger and Chester Cheetah) do not fall under this agreement; however, implying that brand characters can still be widely used to endorse unhealthy food products.

Real-Life Endorsers: Celebrity and Peer Endorsers

Next to highly engaging and fun characters, real-life endorsers are also frequently used to mold children's consumption. For instance, brands may tie (child) celebrities to their products and use them as endorsers. Children look up to these publicly recognized figures who may serve as role-models to them ( Read, 2011; Power and Smith, 2017). Brands aim for an image-transfer, hoping that positive associations attached to celebrities will transfer to the brands those celebrities endorse ( McCracken, 1989), and children will wish to identify with them as they aspire to be like the celebrity ( Kamins et al., 1989). Celebrity endorsement as an advertising strategy has been widely researched among adult populations (see Knoll and Matthes, 2017 for a review), but has also been found a valuable strategy to target children as it may impact their attitudes, preferences, and behaviors (e.g., Ross et al., 1984; Jain et al., 2011). Research on the impact of celebrity endorsement on children has mainly focused on food marketing and has found that celebrities and athletes who are popular among minors typically endorse energy-dense and nutrient-poor products (e.g., Bragg et al., 2013, 2016), which may increase children's intake of these less-healthy foods (e.g., Boyland et al., 2013; Dixon et al., 2014). On the other hand, despite their presumed lower advertising literacy, children do have a fairly good understanding of celebrity endorsement, which they develop at an earlier age compared to their understanding of other advertising techniques ( Rozendaal et al., 2011).

As an alternative to using celebrities as endorsers, advertising aimed at children typically presents (unknown) actors and models interacting with or consuming branded products. For instance, a recent content analysis of 506 food and beverage advertisements aired on the Nickelodeon channel found that most of the ad endorsers were "general people," either alone ( N = 232, 45.8%) or paired with brand mascots and licensed characters ( N = 82, 16.2%), while advertisements with celebrity endorsers accounted for 7.5% ( N = 38) ( Ahn et al., 2019). Next to adults, these actors typically appear as "regular" children and teenagers with whom their young audience can easily identify. Accordingly, the purpose of these ads is to evoke peer modeling or social learning, which implies that children will copy the peer's behavior, including their consumption patterns ( Bandura, 2002). Indeed, gaining peer acceptance and approval is important to children ( Mangleburg et al., 2004; Devlin et al., 2007). Particularly from the age of 6-7 years, peers become important agents for consumer socialization and children start modeling peers' behavior ( John, 1999). Even pre-school children's behaviors and consumption may already be influenced by their friends ( Ahn and Nelson, 2015; Atkinson et al., 2015). This has shown to be particularly effective when the peer is of the same age or slightly older than themselves ( Brody and Stoneman, 1981). Moreover, children are more likely to engage in peer modeling, when the peer's behavior is being rewarded, which is mostly the case in advertising ( Flanders, 1968). For instance, a content analysis of food marketing targeted at children found that these children are typically depicted as happy, playing with friends and enjoying the foods offered to them, thus conveying the indirect message that children will be happier when they consume these foods ( Hebden et al., 2011).

The rise of social media introduced a new type of peer endorsement, namely social media influencers. In the following section, we will describe the rise of these social media influencers as a new source in advertising to target young children.

Conceptualizing Social Media Influencers as a New Advertising Source

The Emergence of Social Media Influencers as Credible Advertising Sources

The proliferation of social network sites has extended the reach of word-of-mouth and amplified the impact of peer recommendations, which can now be shared one-to-many ( Lyons and Henderson, 2005; Boyd and Ellison, 2007; Knoll, 2016). Children today are audiences and creators of media. Children can easily generate electronic word of mouth (eWOM) themselves, which increases the brand's visibility and awareness and has been shown to positively affect children's products' sales ( Bao et al., 2019). For instance, children are able to share online reviews (e.g., Amazon enables children under 13 to upload their own reviews which are marked as "A kid's review"), engage with brands on social media (e.g., despite the age-limit of 13 years, children can easily create a Facebook or Instagram account with false information), and create and share their own videos, including showing their ownership of and experiences with products (e.g., YouTube Kids allow children under 13 to create an own account). As peers are believed to have no commercial interest, they are perceived as authentic and credible sources of information. As a result, children and their parents may be less resistant toward their endorsements compared to brand-originated marketing communication and sources ( de Vries et al., 2012; van Noort et al., 2012). Accordingly, brands aim to encourage and reward eWOM (e.g., free gift in return for a review or online check-in, like and share contests), resulting in (minor) consumers becoming advertising sources rather than merely targets ( Chu and Kim, 2011). However, the high credibility and impact of these real-world endorsers may be offset by their uncontrollability ( Yang, 2017).

Recognizing the impact of eWOM on consumers' attitudes and decisions, brands have started approaching social media influencers (i.e., influential social media users who managed to build a large audience of followers or subscribers), and incentivizing them to create and distribute relevant, authentic-looking brand-related content, a practice that is called influencer marketing ( De Veirman et al., 2017). This way, brands may leverage the power of word-of-mouth while re-gaining control as official agreements between brands and the influencers are made. Influencers will likely be positive as they wish to remain loyal toward the brands they receive incentives from ( De Veirman et al., 2019).

Social influencers do not only attract minors' attention, the child audiences also aspire to become influencers themselves ( Chambers et al., 2018). Some children indeed managed to build a large audience of followers or subscribers on their media channels, which are often run by their parents ( Novacic, 2019). They mostly maintain multiple social media accounts, with Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube as the most important ones on which they post entertaining and inspiring content ( De Veirman et al., 2019). There are even a number of very young child influencers or "kidfluencers," who post a variety of videos on YouTube, including toy reviews, fun challenges and tutorials [e.g., EvanTubeHD (age 13); Ryan's World (age 7)], or who maintain a successful Instagram channel [e.g., Call Me Sparkle (age 5); Zoooey in the City (age 7)]. Different than, for instance, child actors, the influencer does not pretend to play and have fun with toys, he/she really does, increasing their relatability to the audience and blurring any persuasive or selling intent.

As a high number of followers and likes are likely to result in a wide reach of the (commercial) message, these remain key metrics for brands, influencer agencies, and platforms aiming to identify and select appropriate influencers for their campaigns. This unfortunately also contributes to malicious practices of influencers buying fake followers and likes, for instance, through bots and clickfarms, to artificially inflate their perceived influencer status. On the one hand, this may lead to disappointing results for brands as their influencer marketing campaigns do not achieve objectives. On the other hand, when the public finds out their favorite influencer bought fake followers and likes, they may think of him/her as a fraud, resulting in negative reactions and unfollowing ( De Veirman et al., 2017). Moreover, influencers risk punishment, for instance, by the FTC who has the authority to bring enforcement actions against deceptive or unfair marketing practices (Section 5 of the FTC Act). Recently (October 2019), the FTC halted deceptive online marketing practices related to influencer marketing. The regulatory body showed evidence of a company (Devumi) that sold fake accounts and indicators of social engagement and influence to various influencers. Specifically, the FTC complaint suggests that the company: "Devumi filled more than 58,000 orders for fake Twitter followers, enabling the buyers to deceive potential clients about their social media influence. The complaint cites over 4,000 sales of fake YouTube subscribers and over 32,000 sales of fake YouTube views." ( Fair, 2019b). The option to buy fake followers and likes through a single click is particularly worrying when it comes to minors, both because of the financial burden and the legal consequences they risk.

Social Media Influencers as Relatable Role Models

Similar to traditional celebrities, influencers with a lot of followers on one or more platforms (e.g., so-called macro influencers have between 100,000 and 1 million followers; Ismail, 2018) have a large reach; however, the origin of their fame and nature of their influence is different. While traditional celebrities gained public recognition because of their extraordinary beauty (e.g., supermodels) or talent (e.g., actors and athletes), social media influencers branded themselves on social media through posting highly appealing self-generated content, either on a specific topic in which they present themselves as an expert (e.g., food, beauty...), or more generally, showcasing their lifestyles as a whole ( Khamis et al., 2017; De Jans et al., 2019). Children merely watch influencers' videos for entertainment purposes. However, the content can also become informative for children's consumption decisions as the influencers often let them know which brands they like and dislike and overtly display these brands in their videos ( Martínez and Olsson, 2019). Different than traditional celebrities, who are nowadays also present on social media and extended their fame online, social media influencers have built their fame on social media, without being known to the public beforehand ( De Veirman et al., 2017; Schouten et al., 2019). A distinction can be made between different types of influencers, depending on their number of followers. As such, social media influencers may start out with a small audience of engaged followers (less than 1,000) with whom they have a real-life relationship, resulting in high perceptions of authenticity. As they profile themselves as opinion leader in a specific niche, resulting in a growing audience, they are referred to as micro-influencers (1,000-100,000 followers). Some influencers even manage to build very large audiences (1,000,000-1 million followers) on social media and gain celebrity status ( Ismail, 2018; Alassani and Göretz, 2019).

Children look up to (child) influencers, but at the same time, they believe they are highly similar to them as they share the same interests and activities and they seem to be ordinary children just like them ( van Dam and van Reijmersdal, 2019). Despite their online celebrity-status, influencers tend to be perceived as very relatable and approachable, due to the highly personal content they post and the interactions they have with their followers. Their social media posts provide their followers a glimpse into their personal lives, resulting in perceptions that they have a lot in common with the influencer and he/she is a peer ( Abidin, 2015; Gannon and Prothero, 2018; Schouten et al., 2019). Therefore, children are likely to build a relationship with their favorite influencers, which can be referred to as parasocial interaction (cfr. supra), which implies that they become influential sources of information and inspiration that may impact consumption-related decisions ( Rubin et al., 1985; De Jans et al., 2019). Lee and Watkins (2016) for instance showed that developing parasocial relationships with a vlogger may positively affect brand perceptions, and De Jans et al. (2019) found it to be positively related with purchase intentions. Moreover, as influencers show the usefulness of the products they endorse, children may learn and model their behavior ( Akers et al., 1979; Lagomarsino and Suggs, 2018), which has been referred to as peer modeling or social learning, which can be particularly effective for persuasion when the child likes or admires the model ( Bandura, 1977). For instance, Ryan (of Ryan's World), today's most popular child influencer with 21 million subscribers to the YouTube channel, shows his daily routines, including the type of cereal he eats, the toys he plays with, and the places he goes to in his vlogs. Accordingly, it is likely that children will perceive child influencers such as Ryan as peers, who are an important source of influence in their consumer socialization process ( Bachmann et al., 1993). As a result, children may be very willing to identify with popular child influencers and take on their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, including those related to brands and products ( Kelman, 2006; Pilgrim and Bohnet-Joschko, 2019; Schouten et al., 2019).

Social Media Influencers as Hidden Persuaders

Influencers have become an important asset for advertisers, as they directly address their target audience and include brand and product recommendations in highly relevant and entertaining content. The practice of "influencer marketing" refers to advertisers closing deals with influencers, which entail promotion in exchange for payment, free products or invitations to exclusive events ( De Veirman et al., 2017). Doing so, advertisers wish to create a meaning transfer ( Russell, 1998) and reach their target audience in an authentic way. Influencers usually hold a lot of creative freedom in content creation, as they know their audience best. They incorporate branded content in reviews, recommendations, and tutorials in real-life settings, which increases their trustworthiness as they have tried the products themselves and promote them in an authentic manner ( Uzunoglu and Kip, 2014; Schouten et al., 2019). Influencers' so-called sponsored posts or videos mimic and blend with organic content in users' feeds without disturbing their mindless scrolling of social media ( Abidin, 2016; Wojdynski and Evans, 2016; De Veirman et al., 2017). Accordingly, the practice of influencer marketing can be considered a form of native advertising, defined as "any paid advertising that takes the specific form and appearance of editorial content from the publisher itself" ( Wojdynski and Evans, 2016). Moreover, although today there are clear guidelines and regulations on disclosing sponsored content, influencers are hesitant to transparently disclose the commercial nature of their posts, either because they are not aware of the rules or because they want to avoid irritation among their followers ( De Veirman et al., 2019).

Therefore, children may fail to recognize influencer content as advertising and cope with such persuasion tactics critically ( Friestad and Wright, 1994; De Veirman et al., 2019). As a result, instead of advertising, influencers' brand-initiated endorsements are likely to be perceived as highly credible electronic word-of-mouth the influencer shares out of genuine liking of the brand ( Phelps et al., 2004; Cheung et al., 2009). Moreover, due to the correspondence bias, people (and children in particular) tend to believe that although the influencer was compensated for endorsing a brand, he/she would not do this if he/she would not truly like the brand. This bias is the tendency to believe that a person's behavior is a true reflection of their true underlying dispositions when in fact, their behavior could be explained by situational factors, i.e., the influencer was compensated by the brand ( Gilbert and Malone, 1995; O'Sullivan, 2003). Interviews with teenage influencers recently revealed that they indeed only wish to endorse brands they fully support; however, when dissatisfied with a received product, a dilemma between being truthful toward their followers and being loyal to the brand arises ( De Veirman et al., 2019).

Children are extra vulnerable when it comes to this type of native advertising, as their advertising literacy is not fully developed yet. Advertising literacy refers to an individual's knowledge of and skills related to advertising (i.e., dispositional advertising literacy) and to their ability to recognize and critically evaluate it (i.e., situational advertising literacy) ( Friestad and Wright, 1994; Hudders et al., 2017). The embedded nature of influencer marketing lowers both children's ability and motivation to recognize it as advertising and critically reflect on it ( Nairn and Fine, 2008). Their ability is lowered as influencers' sponsored posts and videos appear between non-sponsored content in their feeds, which results in the simultaneous exposure of editorial and commercial messages. This content overload makes it hard for children to focus their attention and discern relevant from irrelevant information, resulting in a depletion of self-regulatory resources and difficulties to critically reflect on commercial messages. Second, their motivation is lowered as the commercial messages are integrated in fun and engaging posts and videos ( Hudders et al., 2017). Remarkably, influencers' videos are available on YouTube Kids (e.g., Ryan's World, today's most popular child influencer channel), which parents perceive as a safe media environment. Indeed, while YouTube states that the limited ads on YouTube Kids undergo a rigorous review process for compliance with their policies ( YouTube, 2019a), these covert advertising practices slip through the net.

Current Knowledge on Influencer Marketing Targeting Children

Selection of Empirical Studies on Influencer Marketing Focusing Among a Child Sample

A literature search was done employing a "title-abstract-keywords" search in the Scopus database using the keywords (influencer OR blog* OR vlog* OR microcelebrit* OR unboxing) AND (child* OR kid* OR minor* OR youth) AND (marketing OR advertis* OR commercial*) to get an insight into the literature that specifically focuses on social media influencers as an advertising source targeting children. At the time of our research (August 2019), this search process yielded 55 academic articles. The papers were screened to exclude those not relevant to the limited research overview. Papers were only included if they met the following predefined criteria: (1) only peer-reviewed articles, (2) articles examining children up to 12 years old, and (3) articles published in English. All articles were inspected by reading titles and abstracts to determine if they met the proposed criteria. After screening, seven academic articles that matched our criteria were found. However, we also decided to include one article ( Evans et al., 2018), which examined young children's parents, rather than children directly. Furthermore, we checked the lists of "latest articles" of 25 SSCI-ranked journals from the domains of communication, media, marketing, and advertising, including two journals that specifically focus on children (see Table 1). No additional articles that comply with the inclusion criteria were detected. Below, we will briefly discuss the eight included articles. Given the small sample, we briefly summarize each of the articles below and then we compare and synthesize what is known about influencers and children in this nascent body of literature.

Table 1. List of 25 selected SSCI-ranked journals.

Overview of Empirical Studies

Eight empirical studies examined the practice of influencer marketing among a young audience (see Table 2). One study reports the results of a content analysis of branded vlogs and three studies (one survey study, one focus group study, and one ethnographic study) focused on how children think about this sponsored vlogging. Three studies experimentally examined the effectiveness of sponsored vlogging, with two studies focusing on its effect on children's food intake and one study focusing on the effect of an educational vlog on children's susceptibility to vlog advertising. To conclude, one study examined how parents cope with sponsored vlogs. Remarkably, all studies focus on YouTube as the main channel for influencer marketing. Below, we discuss the studies in more detail.

Table 2. List of the eight included articles.

What Content Is Featured in Sponsored Vlogs and how Is It Perceived by Children?

One study performed a quantitative content analysis of branded vlogs. Nicoll and Nansen (2018) examined the content of 100 recent toy unboxing videos. They collected the videos by applying the "most recent" filter to the search term "toy unboxing" and analyzed the first 50 results on 2 days. They made a comparison between the vlogs of children (53%) and adults (47%) and analyzed variations of expertise, professionalism, and promotion across the vlogs. The age of the child unboxers ranged from toddler (2-4 years; 9%) to adolescent (12-18 years; 5%), with the majority (39%) being primary school age (4-11 years). Concerning their gender, 36% of endorsers were female and 52% male, while gender was undecided in 11% of the videos (e.g., only hands were visible, no commentary). Boys mostly unboxed (and assembled) toy cars and Legos, whereas girls tended to unbox toys like Shopkins (tiny collectable toys). Their main conclusion was that the toy unboxing videos of children tended to be much more varied and used more everyday language compared to professional (e.g., EvanTubeHD) or adult's videos, yet they seek to mimic adult and professional videos, including their production and branding strategies. On the other hand, well-known professional channels try to produce a semblance of amateur authenticity by imitating the playful qualities of children's videos ( Nicoll and Nansen, 2018).

Next, three studies examined what children think about sponsored vlogs. Marsh (2016) took an ethnographic approach to observe how a 4-year-old child engages with unboxing videos on YouTube. According to this study, the young child took the position of cyberflȃneur who seemed to enjoy the mere act of viewing, while not engaging in nagging behavior, asking his parent to purchase the products.

Martínez and Olsson (2019) conducted a focus group study to examine how the practice of sponsored vlogging is perceived among 9- and 12-year old Swedish children where 12 focus groups with 46 children were conducted. Participants were shown a video (make-up tutorial) of the popular YouTuber Misslisibell as an illustrative example of advertising in vlogs. They had normative discussions around her vlogging practices and YouTube celebrity status related to her young age and had various interpretations of the video as advertising. The study shows the importance of YouTubers to children in their construction of identity and as a role model that guides their consumption ( Martínez and Olsson, 2019).

The study of Folkvord et al. (2019) is an exploratory survey study among pre-teens/teens (10-13 years) in which they examined the amount of time children spend on viewing vlogs, their awareness and understanding of the endorsed brand in vlogs and their self-perceived susceptibility to the potential persuasive effects of these vlogs. Their conclusion was that the majority of children frequently watch vlogs and that their degree of bonding with the vlogger predicted the time they spend on watching vlogs. Moreover, they could easily recall products and brands displayed in the vlogs (mostly food and beverages) and believed that they themselves and others were affected by endorsements in vlogs.

Effectiveness of Influencer Marketing

Three experimental studies examined how children are affected by sponsored vlogs and one study focused on how parents of children between the ages of four and 11 react to sponsored vlogs. First, two studies examined the impact of social media influencer marketing on children's food intake ( Coates et al., 2019a, b). The first study is a randomized trial with a between-subjects design in which 176 children (9-11 years) were exposed to mock-Instagram profiles of two popular vloggers, either promoting healthy or unhealthy snacks. Results showed that influencer marketing of unhealthy foods increased children's immediate food intake, whereas the equivalent marketing of healthy foods had no effect. In their second study, an advertising disclosure was included to alert children on the inclusion of advertising. In a between-subjects design, 151 children (9-11 years) were exposed to popular YouTubers' vlogs including a non-food product, or an unhealthy snack with or without an advertising disclosure. Participants' intake of the marketed snack and an alternative brand of the same snack were measured. In line with their first study, influencer marketing increased children's immediate intake of the promoted snack relative to an alternative non-food brand (control condition). Remarkably, the inclusion of an advertising disclosure increased the effect, as children who viewed food marketing with a disclosure (and not those without) consumed 41% more of the promoted snack compared to the control group.

The study of De Jans et al. (2019) examined how an educational vlog can help children (11-14 years) cope with advertising. In an experimental study ( N = 160), using a two (advertising disclosure: no disclosure versus disclosure) by two (peer-based advertising literacy intervention) between-subjects design, they examined how an advertising disclosure can reduce the persuasiveness of sponsored vlogs and how watching an educational vlog moderates these effects. The results show that an advertising disclosure increased their recognition of advertising and their affective advertising literacy for sponsored vlogs, and that only affective advertising literacy negatively affected influencer trustworthiness and PSI and purchase intention accordingly. Moreover, when young adolescents were informed about advertising through an informational vlog (i.e., peer-based advertising literacy intervention), positive effects on the influencer and subsequently on advertising effects were found of an advertising disclosure.

Evans et al. (2018) examined how parents of young children cope with sponsored vlogging on YouTube. They gauged parents' understanding of and responses to sponsored child influencer unboxing videos. Through an experimental design among 418 parents, they assessed the influence of sponsorship text disclosure (present or absent) and sponsor pre-roll (sponsor pre-roll, nonsponsor pre-roll, and no pre-roll) for a toy on conceptual persuasion knowledge, perceptions of sponsorship transparency, and different outcome measures. Moreover, they explored how parental mediation influences the outcomes. They found that sponsor variations in pre-roll advertising (sponsor versus nonsponsor versus none) and sponsor text disclosure (present versus absent) conditions did not affect parents' conceptual persuasion knowledge of the unboxing video. However, if a sponsor pre-roll ad was included, parents reported higher levels of sponsorship transparency of the unboxing video compared to parents who saw no pre-roll ad or a nonsponsor pre-roll ad. There was no additional effect on sponsorship transparency or conceptual persuasion knowledge when a sponsor text disclosure was included. Moreover, high levels of parental mediation conditionally impacted the indirect effect of a sponsor pre-roll advertisement via sponsorship transparency on perceptions of the unboxing video and attitudes toward the sponsor.

Conclusions

Four observations can be made based on this thorough review of academic literature. First, all of the included articles focus on YouTube as a platform, which is not surprising as it is frequently used among children ( Pew Research Center, 2018; Ofcom, 2019). Only one study ( Coates et al., 2019a) used mock-Instagram profiles in a randomized trial; however, these profiles represented popular YouTubers among children. No studies yet focused on TikTok, a social media platform which has become very popular among young children. Second, all the above studies except for one were conducted among teenagers with ages between 9 and 14 years old. Only one study ( Marsh, 2016) focused on preschool children (4-year-old children) and no studies yet focused on children between 6 and 8 years when examining influencer marketing. Third, most articles take a consumer perspective and examine influencer practices and how minors perceive the persuasion tactic, while specifically focusing on persuasive content and perceptions of transparency, including the use of advertising disclosures, using different methods. Only one study conducted a content analysis of (child) influencers' vlogs ( Nicoll and Nansen, 2018). A final minor observation is the focus on (unhealthy) food products ( Coates et al., 2019a, b), beverages ( De Jans et al., 2019), and toys ( Evans et al., 2018) in the experimental studies gauging for influencer marketing effects on children.

Implications

A number of societal and policy implications arise from the findings of prior research discussed above. More specifically, they may be important for policy aimed at protecting children's interests. Most prior research focused on children's exposure to and perception of influencer marketing. The above studies show that children spend a lot of time watching videos of their favorite influencers, in which they also encounter influencer marketing practices (e.g., Marsh, 2016; Folkvord et al., 2019; Martínez and Olsson, 2019). Moreover, they are also influenced by the content these influencers post and susceptible to the commercial messages incorporated in it (e.g., Folkvord et al., 2019; Martínez and Olsson, 2019), specifically those on (unhealthy) foods and beverages (e.g., De Jans et al., 2019; Coates et al., 2019a, b). Considering children's susceptibility to influencer marketing practices, the findings of the above discussed prior research support the importance of existing guidelines and regulations stressing the fact that advertising should be recognizable as such, in particular for minor audiences. Two studies ( De Jans et al., 2019; Coates et al., 2019b) tested the impact of an advertising disclosure on minors' recognition of and susceptibility to influencer marketing. While both studies have shown that the inclusion of an advertising disclosure helps children recognize advertising, the study of Coates et al. (2019b) found that this increased recognition actually increased the effectiveness of influencer marketing, resulting in a higher intake of the promoted snack. Moreover, De Jans et al. (2019) found that the inclusion of an advertising disclosure may have positive effects on the influencer and subsequently on advertising effectiveness when minors were informed about advertising through an advertising literacy intervention in the format of an informational vlog. These studies suggest that a disclosure indeed helps children recognize influencer marketing practices as advertising and thus protects children from subconscious persuasion, without necessarily having a negative impact on the influencer and advertising effectiveness. In addition, Evans et al. (2018) found that sponsorship transparency in child-directed content is also appreciated by parents and has a positive effect on parents' perceptions of unboxing videos, attitude toward the brand, and attitude toward the sponsor.

While attempts have been made, for instance in the EU (EASA) and the US (FTC), to formulate clear guidelines on the disclosure of influencer marketing, thus far an international, coordinated approach is lacking ( De Jans et al., 2019). As a result of all these well-intended regulatory attempts, today there is a plethora of disclosures and wordings (moreover in different languages) pointing out the presence of a material connection between the influencer and the brand. Moreover, these guidelines do not mention anything about children, neither as a target audience, nor as a source (i.e., child influencers). In the EU, in 2018 the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA), Europe's co-ordination point for best practice in the implementation of self-regulation, has launched its Best Practice Recommendation on Influencer Marketing, as a point of reference for national guidance by self-regulatory organizations (SROs). EASA states that, "subject to local parameters, SROs may vary in their national practices and choose to go beyond what is suggested in this document to ensure that influencer marketing abides by the national advertising codes and is honest, decent and truthful and can be thus trusted by consumers" ( EASA, 2018). Thus, these overarching European guidelines leave a lot of room for interpretation and implementation. In the US, the FTC provides detailed endorsement guides to instruct influencers and advertisers on what sorts of endorsements constitute advertising and where and how disclosures should be made to comply with Truth in Advertising laws in the United States (The FTC Endorsement Guides). These Guides do not offer any specific information regarding children. However, the use of influencers within online platforms - such as on YouTube - necessitates additional guidelines for targeting children. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act or COPPA, enacted in 1998 to protect children under the age of 13, "prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in connection with the collection, use, and/or disclosure of personal information from and about children on the Internet" ( Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, 2019). Unboxing videos and child-influencer channels on YouTube represent one such site where young children are the audience. Recently, Google/YouTube was accused of violating COPPA by the FTC and the State of New York for collecting personal information (i.e., using personal identifiers or cookies) without parental consent and then delivering targeted advertising to the children, sometimes for products viewed within the video content (i.e., an advertisement for toys was served before the video that featured unboxing of toys; Min, 2019). Google was both claiming to toy brands such as Hasbro that their content attracted young audiences and also claiming (for regulatory purposes) that it did not have audiences under 13 so they need not worry about COPPA. In the end, Google agreed to pay a fine of $170 million and to change some of its policies and practices, including now assuming the audience to these child-targeted sites are children and halting the delivery of personalized ads there ( YouTube, 2019a). Further modifications may include hiding "popularity metrics" such as the number of likes on the YouTube videos, including those of child Influencers. The measures are expected to be in place by January 2020. Some of these actions will undoubtedly influence the practice and popularity of the sites for advertisers.

Furthermore, although social media platforms include the disclosure of influencer marketing in their policies, they do not strictly enforce or control for proper disclosure. Instagram and Facebook have a branded content tool and ask users to use it when content "features or is influenced by a business partner for an exchange of value" and tag the products and brands featured. However, it is questionable whether this tagging is sufficient to help users recognize content as advertising. Furthermore, they mention that the influencers themselves are responsible for complying with legal obligations on disclosure of advertising ( Facebook, 2018). YouTube also offers a "paid promotion" feature. However, including these words in their video takes some effort. Influencers should not only check the "video contains paid promotion" box in the advanced settings, they should also check the box "Help me inform viewers of paid promotion by adding a disclosure to this video. Additional disclosures for this video may be required under applicable laws" ( YouTube, 2019b). This way, they actually shift the responsibility to check regulations to the influencer, without enforcing disclosure in their policy. Even YouTube Kids, YouTube's recently launched child-friendly platform, currently has no specific rules on the proper disclosure of sponsored content. They rather merely mention that advertisements should "comply with applicable laws and regulations (including any relevant self-regulatory or industry guidelines)" ( YouTube, 2019c).

Next to the protection of minor audiences, it should be noted that today influencers are often children themselves. For instance, while the FTC stresses that influencers, "shouldn't assume legal compliance is someone else's job" ( Fair, 2019a), it is unclear to what extent minor influencers are considered responsible for the content they post, including the proper disclosure of sponsored content. Moreover, as parents or other adults such as agencies or marketers gain from children's performances, policy makers should consider child influencers' protection, too. For instance, it is unclear to what extent these children are protected by traditional workplace standards, such as Child Labor Laws and the California Child Actor's Bill, which ensures that children's earnings remain their property. Specific regulations on child labor on social media are currently lacking, while social media channels including YouTube merely inform users about the existence of labor laws, without having a clear policy ( Wong, 2019).

Furthermore, ethical questions concerning these children's privacy and possible psychological consequences of their online fame arise. Moreover, while YouTube and Instagram have an age limit of 13 years to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), these age restrictions are easy to circumvent, resulting in children lying about their age and accounts created by their parents. In addition, children are often featured and even used for influencer marketing purposes in their parents' social media outlets, such as mommy blogs, which raises questions about whether children should be protected from their parents publishing intimate or private details of their lives without consent.

To conclude, both child audiences and child influencers need protection, both through updating laws and guidelines to be applicable in the current digital times, and through translating them into clear, universal guidelines that take into account the vulnerability of minors.

Future Research Agenda

Social media influencers' advertising practices blur the boundaries between commercial and entertainment content. This implies that their young audience may have difficulties recognizing sponsored content such as unboxing videos as advertising, leading to subconscious persuasion ( Hudders et al., 2017). Given that this persuasion tactic is relatively new, there are a number of interesting areas for future research related to influencers and children.

Influencer Marketing Strategies

First of all, content analysis could render insights into which content strategies (child) influencers use on which platforms and how they combine different strategies and platforms. In addition, specific insights on sponsored content, including which type of brands and sectors they endorse, the branding strategies they use, the ratio between sponsored and non-sponsored posts and their use of advertising disclosures (#ad, #sponsored) could be valuable. Moreover, comments on (sponsored) posts could be analyzed (e.g., through sentiment analysis) and provide insights into children's' appraisal and/or criticism toward these different content strategies and the interactions between influencers and their followers. Furthermore, social network analysis could enhance our understanding of collaborations between influencers and brands and connections between influencers. Which accounts do child influencers follow (age, gender, nationality...), do they connect with other influencers and how do they engage with each other's posts (i.e., likes, comments, views, shares...)?

Third, qualitative research could gauge for how influencers and brands feel about the strategies they use and how these may affect young children. Do they have any ethical concerns and how do they deal with those? How do they perceive their role in children's consumer socialization? Today, influencers' and brands' perspectives on the practices they engage in are underexplored.

The Impact of Influencer Marketing on Minor Audiences

To gain insights into the persuasiveness of influencers among children, scholars could examine children's actual media use and engagement with social media platforms and influencers. Although some of the famous vloggers noted here (e. g. Ryan and Evan) have huge followers and audiences, presumably children, it is unknown if and how children under 12 years old engage with other influencers and platforms. From what age are children starting to follow vloggers? Which social media platforms are mostly used?

Additionally, little is known about how different content strategies used by influencers can differentially affect children. For instance, the prominence (subtle vs. prominent) and modality (visual vs. auditory) of a product placement can be a valuable aspect to examine. Moreover, different strategies may be exuded on different social media platforms (e.g., TikTok vs. YouTube) and also the type of brand or product (known vs. unknown, low vs. high involvement) may impact influencer marketing effects. Furthermore, there are several types of influencers - macro, micro, nano - that vary along several characteristics including number and types of followers ( Ismail, 2018; Alassani and Göretz, 2019). To what extent do different kinds of influencers reach child audiences and what are the ramifications for advertising effectiveness? For example, would nano influencers look more authentic and therefore less like "slick advertising"?

Future research could probe into different kinds of influencers as important sources. Research could also examine the characteristics of these sources. To what extent do brands and consumers regard them as likeable, credible, and trustworthy? Does the strength of the parasocial interaction children feel with these influencers affect their persuasiveness? As the form and function of influencers change, scholars could try to map out conceptual similarities or differences in strategy and effects of various kinds of influencers. In addition, the possible (undesirable) longer-term effects of watching hundreds of "unboxing" videos of toys and products could be assessed. To what extent do these vloggers (unintentionally) contribute to materialism and affect children's psychological well-being?

To answer the above research questions, it might be interesting to perform observatory or participatory research to see how children cope with social media influencers' content in their daily life. Experimental approaches can also be valuable, although questions concerning generalizability may arise. For instance, some scholars using an experimental approach have created "fake" influencer content for stimuli in their research in an effort to enhance internal validity ( Coates et al., 2019a, b). While the research has uncovered some interesting findings, it is not known to what extent the findings are generalizable to real-world influencers. Future research should work to enhance external validity as it is the very fame of the influencer that drives influence in the marketplace. On the other hand, when using existing content as stimulus material, the question may rise whether findings would be the same when using different material from different influencers. Moreover, effects may differ depending on how familiar participants are with the influencer and how they perceive him / her.

Empowering Children to Deal With Influencer Marketing

An important issue concerning influencer marketing targeting children is how children can be empowered to cope with this contemporary advertising technique. How can we help them recognize influencer marketing and make well-informed, conscious choices?

First, an understandable advertising disclosure may help children recognize sponsored content as advertising ( De Jans et al., 2018). However, up to now, research on how the inclusion of advertising disclosures may help children cope with influencer marketing has yielded mixed findings (cf. § 2.4.2.2). More research on the impact of advertising disclosures on advertising effects and source evaluations could render valuable insights that may serve as a basis for (self-)regulatory initiatives (cf. §3.4).

Second, educating children about non-traditional advertising formats, including influencer marketing could help children cope with these persuasion tactics. This could be done in a school context through an advertising literacy training (e.g., Hudders et al., 2016; Nelson, 2016; De Jans et al., 2017), which has shown to enhance children's situational advertising literacy in some school districts in Belgium and the United States. However, there is no standard advertising literacy curriculum and it is difficult for interventions to be included within the school setting given the other curricular requirements. Moreover, the implementation of such curriculum requires specific knowledge and skills from teachers, who may have difficulties themselves in recognizing new and embedded advertising formats. Therefore, they may need to adjust or refine their own advertising literacy first ( Boerman et al., 2017). In fact, children are mainly extrinsically motivated to interact with traditional learning materials as they feel under pressure from school or parents. Therefore, alternatives such as informational vlogs (e.g., De Jans et al., 2019a) or educational games (e.g., De Jans et al., 2019b) could be promising ways to include into didactic packages, as they do not take much time and can be used both in class or as a homework assignment on digital learning platforms. Moreover, as these formats are fun and entertaining, they may motivate children intrinsically to learn about new persuasion tactics ( De Jans et al., 2019b). Third, training parents and encouraging them to talk with their children may present another way to instill advertising literacy. However, research suggests that the children may be watching the YouTube videos by themselves and parents may not be aware of the commercial implications of these videos ( Evans et al., 2018). Moreover, it is known from literature on other embedded formats (e.g., Hudders and Cauberghe, 2018) that parental mediation is not always helpful in helping young children cope with advertising. How can parents be empowered to help their children more critically cope with influencer marketing? Research on these topics is still limited.

Protecting Children From Influencer Marketing

Finally, although existing (self-)regulatory initiatives stress the importance of advertising being recognizable as such, especially when targeting children, a coordinated international approach on influencer marketing specifically, is non-existent today. Whereas the Federal Trade Commission in the United States requires that influencers disclose any sponsorship, the actual enforcement of this ruling is unclear in practice ( Federal Trade Commission, 2017). Also in the European Union, the regulatory framework leaves room for interpretation and implementation, which led to a plethora of guidelines for disclosing sponsored content at a national level ( De Jans et al., 2019a). This resulted in different types of disclosures used across influencers, platforms, and countries, which may be tricky given that the platforms transcend cultural borders and children may follow influencers from all over the world. Thus, the question arises to what extent children understand the meaning of these different disclosures and whether they help them to gain advertising literacy and enhance coping skills.

Furthermore, the question may arise whether there should be an age limit, both on targeting minors through influencer marketing as on engaging in influencer marketing activities. Concerning the latter, whereas formal guidelines to protect (child) influencers are lacking (e.g., on labor conditions and compensation) influencers are considered responsible for the content they post and are expected to comply with influencer marketing guidelines concerning the disclosure of sponsored posts ( De Veirman et al., 2019). To conclude, both the practice of child influencers engaging in paid partnerships, and the targeting of children through influencer marketing raises ethical and legal concerns.

Conclusion

The current study aimed to situate and conceptualize social media influencers as a new type of advertising source targeting children. In short, influencers can be regarded as highly popular and admired peers. While watching YouTube or scrolling through their social media apps, children are increasingly exposed to embedded advertising practices, emerging in the entertaining content social media influencers post. Influencer marketing combines the merits of eWOM and celebrity endorsement. Due to their perceived authenticity (i.e., they have no commercial interests), the (marketing) messages they spread are perceived as highly credible word of mouth, rather than as advertising. On the other hand, children look up to popular influencers who have gained a certain celebrity status and are willing to identify with them while taking on their lifestyles, attitudes and beliefs, including those on the products appearing in their social media outlets.

Prior research has shown that children indeed frequently encounter influencer marketing practices, foremost while watching YouTube (e.g., Marsh, 2016; Folkvord et al., 2019; Martínez and Olsson, 2019). The commercial content these influencers post affects children's attitudes and behaviors, for instance their snack intake (e.g., Folkvord et al., 2019; Martínez and Olsson, 2019; Coates et al., 2019a, b; De Jans et al., 2019a). Taking into account children's underdeveloped advertising literacy and consequently vulnerability to embedded advertising practices, such as influencer marketing, some research has searched for ways to help children recognize and cope with influencer marketing practices, for instance through the implementation of disclosures and advertising literacy interventions, such as informational vlogs ( Coates et al., 2019a, b; De Jans et al., 2019a). These studies provide preliminary evidence that the implementation of a visual disclosure indeed helps children recognize influencer marketing practices as advertising, while they do not necessarily negatively impact the influencer and advertising effectiveness. Moreover, transparency is also appreciated by parents and has a positive effect on their perceptions and attitudes of both the format and the products and brands featured ( Evans et al., 2018). Furthermore, three major observations arise from the (limited) literature review that aimed to gather empirical insights on the persuasiveness of influencer marketing among children. First, research primarily focuses on one particular platform, i.e., YouTube, despite the popularity of other platforms among minors and influencers accordingly (e.g., TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat). Second, today, research on influencer marketing aimed at children is limited and mainly focusses on children between 9 and 12, while younger and thus more vulnerable children are neglected. Third, most research takes a consumer perspective and examines how children perceive influencer marketing practices, while insights on the influencer perspective and the type of content they post are lacking. A future research agenda has been set out that focuses on four potential research tracks: first, insights into influencers' content strategies and how they perceive their role in children's consumer socialization. Second, the impact of influencer marketing on children. Third, how to empower children to deal with influencer marketing, and fourth protecting children from influencer marketing through guidelines and regulations.

Author Contributions

MD and LH developed the idea and outline for the article with input from MN. MD wrote the first draft of the article and MN wrote the first draft of the future research agenda. LH and MN extensively commented on the different drafts of this article. All authors have read and approved the final version of the article.

Funding

This work was financially supported by Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Grant FWO3E02015003501 and K209119N).

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Footnotes

References

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What Is Influencer Marketing and How Does It Target Children? A Review and Direction for Future Research

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Children nowadays spend many hours online watching YouTube videos in which their favorite vloggers are playing games, unboxing toys, reviewing products, making jokes or just going about their daily activities. These vloggers regularly post attractive and entertaining content in the hope of building a large follower base.

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Exploring the credibility of online celebrities' Instagram profiles in influencing the purchase decisions of young female users - Djafarova, E., & Rushworth, C. (2017)

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Exploring the credibility of online celebrities' Instagram profiles in influencing the purchase decisions of young female users - Djafarova, E., & Rushworth, C. (2017)

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Evaluating the influence of YouTube advertising for attraction of young customers - Dehghani, M., Niaki, M. K., Ramezani, I., & Sali, R. (2016)

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Evaluating the influence of YouTube advertising for attraction of young customers - Dehghani, M., Niaki, M. K., Ramezani, I., & Sali, R. (2016)

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563216300450?via%3Dihub

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Highlights

*

A novel model for the advertisement effectiveness analysis through social media.

*

Brands are advised to note the massive potential for YouTube advertising can provide.

*

Consumers' perception on YouTube advertising has been linked to purchase intention.

*

Customization through YouTube advertising plays a main role on advertisement value.

Abstract

Nowadays, we have been faced with an increasing number of people who are spending tremendous amounts of time all around the world on YouTube. To date, the factors that persuade customers to accept YouTube advertising as an advertising medium are not yet fully understood. The present paper identified four dimensions towards YouTube advertising (i.e., entertainment, Informativeness, Customization and irritation) which may be affected on advertising value as well as brand awareness, and accordingly on purchase intention of consumers. The conceptual model hypothesizes that ad value strategies are positively associated with brand awareness, which in turn influence perceived usefulness of You Tube and continued purchase behavior. For this study, data were collected from students studying at the Sapienza University of Rome. In total, 315 usable questionnaires were chosen in order to analysis of data for the variables. The results show that entertainment, informativeness and customization are the strongest positive drivers, while irritation is negatively related to YouTube advertising. On the other hand, advertising value through YouTube affects both brand awareness and purchase intention of consumers accordingly.

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Evaluating the influence of YouTube advertising for attraction of young customers

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A novel model for the advertisement effectiveness analysis through social media. * Brands are advised to note the massive potential for YouTube advertising can provide. * Consumers' perception on YouTube advertising has been linked to purchase intention. * Customization through YouTube advertising plays a main role on advertisement value.

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With whom do consumers interact?: Effects of online comments and perceived similarity on source credibility, content credibility, and personal risk perception. - Duong, H., Nguyen, L., & Vu, H. (2020)

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With whom do consumers interact?: Effects of online comments and perceived similarity on source credibility, content credibility, and personal risk perception. - Duong, H., Nguyen, L., & Vu, H. (2020)

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https://doi.org/10.1108/JSOCM-02-2019-0023

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To read the full version of this content please select one of the options below:

Hue Trong Duong (Department of Communication Studies, University of Georgia , Athens, Georgia, USA)

Long Thang Van Nguyen (School of Communication and Design, RMIT Vietnam University , Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam)

Hong Tien Vu (William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of Kansas , Lawrence, Kansas, USA)

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of congruent and incongruent anonymous comments posted to an online health news article on personal risk perception. This association is examined through testing the moderating roles of perceived similarity and approval ratings, and the mediating roles of source credibility and content credibility.

Design/methodology/approach

Hypotheses regarding the impact of comments on personal risk perception were tested experimentally using a news article, comments and approval ratings about the ear picking behavior. Data were collected from 391 young Vietnamese respondents.

Findings

The influence of online comments (congruent vs incongruent) on personal risk perception was mediated by source credibility and content credibility. Further, data showed a direct effect of online comments on personal risk perception. Interestingly, the direct and indirect effects of online comments on personal risk perception were observed among participants who perceived that anonymous commenters were similar to them. Approval ratings had neither a main nor interaction effect with comments on the dependent variables.

Practical implications

The results indicate that marketers should consider online comments as a powerful form of social influence, which may alter consumers' personal risk perception.

Originality/value

The present study adds to social marketing literature by showing how consumers' online comments influence personal risk perception in the context of changing media ecosystem.

Keywords

Citation

Duong, H.T., Nguyen, L.T.V. and Vu, H.T. (2020), "With whom do consumers interact? Effects of online comments and perceived similarity on source credibility, content credibility, and personal risk perception", Journal of Social Marketing, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 18-37. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSOCM-02-2019-0023

Publisher
:
Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright

© 2022 Emerald Publishing Limited

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
With whom do consumers interact? Effects of online comments and perceived similarity on source credibility, content credibility, and personal risk perception

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
To read the full version of this content please select one of the options below: Hue Trong Duong (Department of Communication Studies, University of Georgia , Athens, Georgia, USA) Long Thang Van Nguyen (School of Communication and Design, RMIT Vietnam University , Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) Hong Tien Vu (William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of Kansas , Lawrence, Kansas, USA) The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of congruent and incongruent anonymous comments posted to an online health news article on personal risk perception.

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Understanding the extent of and factors involved in the use of YouTube as an informal learning tool by 11-to 13-year-old children - Dyosi, N., & Hattingh, M. (2018)

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Understanding the extent of and factors involved in the use of YouTube as an informal learning tool by 11-to 13-year-old children - Dyosi, N., & Hattingh, M. (2018)

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https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99737-7_38

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Abstract

Web 2.0 technology has changed the way and setting where learning takes place. This study has attempted to contribute to the understanding of how children, aged 11 to 13 can use YouTube as an informal learning tool. This was accomplished by conducting four focused groups consisting of children aged 11 to 13. Thematic content analysis was used to analyse the interview data. The data has revealed that children use YouTube as home and at school (limited). They had multiple methods of access, although was constrained by parental control and limited by restricted data. The children further experienced two types of informal learning, self-directed and incidental. Interestingly, they did distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate content. Cognitively, they displayed low levels of self-regulation but were extremely self-efficient. Children had high expectations that there is entertainment on YouTube, and that resulted in them constantly using YouTube to entertain themselves. Finally, through observational learning, the children not only learnt how to use YouTube but they also acquired different skills from watching YouTube videos. These findings enhance the current understanding of the role YouTube can play in learning.

Keywords

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield, 0028, South Africa

Neliswa Dyosi & Marie Hattingh

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Neliswa Dyosi or Marie Hattingh .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

1. National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Yunlin, Taiwan

Ting-Ting Wu

2. Kun Shan University, Tainan City, Taiwan

Yueh-Min Huang

3. Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China

Rustam Shadiev

4. University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA

Lin Lin

5. University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Andreja Istenič Starčič

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Dyosi, N., Hattingh, M. (2018). Understanding the Extent of and Factors Involved in the Use of YouTube as an Informal Learning Tool by 11- to 13-Year-Old Children. In: Wu, TT., Huang, YM., Shadiev, R., Lin, L., Starčič, A. (eds) Innovative Technologies and Learning. ICITL 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11003. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99737-7_38

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Understanding the Extent of and Factors Involved in the Use of YouTube as an Informal Learning Tool by 11- to 13-Year-Old Children

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Web 2.0 technology has changed the way and setting where learning takes place. This study has attempted to contribute to the understanding of how children, aged 11 to 13 can use YouTube as an informal learning tool. This was accomplished by conducting four focused...

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Can trust in traditional news media explain cross-national differences in news exposure of young people online? A comparative study of Israel, Norway and the United Kingdom - Elvestad, E., Phillips, A., & Feuerstein, M. (2017)

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Can trust in traditional news media explain cross-national differences in news exposure of young people online? A comparative study of Israel, Norway and the United Kingdom - Elvestad, E., Phillips, A., & Feuerstein, M. (2017)

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https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1332484

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Using data from a cross-national survey (N = 940) and from in-depth interviews with 37 students in Israel, Norway and the United Kingdom, we discuss how in different political and news media environments young people's trust in traditional media can explain their news exposure online. This study shows there are some similarities, but also major cross-national differences, between young people in how they trust, are exposed to and find different news sources usable for information about their society. Students from all these countries have higher trust in traditional news media than in social media. However, young people in Norway living in high-trust environments tend to be exposed to a wider variety of news sources than the UK and Israeli students. They also tend to be more skeptical about social media as a useful source of information. Furthermore, this study suggests that in a national context of conflict and low trust in media, such as Israel, distrust in traditional news media can explain foreign news exposure online. However, the effect of trust in national media is not significant in the Norwegian and the UK sample, which highlights the importance of discussing online news exposure in different national political and media environments.

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Can Trust in Traditional News Media Explain Cross-National Differences in News Exposure of Young People Online?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Using data from a cross-national survey (N = 940) and from in-depth interviews with 37 students in Israel, Norway and the United Kingdom, we discuss how in different political and news media environments young people's trust in traditional media can explain their news exposure online.

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Perceptions of internet information credibility - Flanagin, A. J., & Metzger, M. J. (2000)

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Perceptions of internet information credibility - Flanagin, A. J., & Metzger, M. J. (2000)

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David Dobrik & SeatGeek (PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH SEATGEEK MARKETER)

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David Dobrik & SeatGeek (PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH SEATGEEK MARKETER)

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0:00 / 11:27•Watch full video

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David Dobrik and SeatGeek (15 CARS LATER)

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Influencers on YouTube: a quantitative study on young people’s use and perception of videos about political and societal topics - Daniel Zimmermann (2020)

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Influencers on YouTube: a quantitative study on young people’s use and perception of videos about political and societal topics - Daniel Zimmermann (2020)

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https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-020-01164-7#Abs1

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Introduction

Social media is an important information source for young people (Gangadharbatla, Bright, & Logan, 2014; Kaspar & Müller-Jensen, 2019), and YouTube seems to be especially relevant. Young people consume YouTube-videos to obtain new information and forming their own opinion (Schmidt, Hölig, Merten, & Hasebrink, 2017). In this context, the role of YouTube creators and their videos on political and societal topics become gradually more important (Lewis, 2020). However, research on how young people use and perceive such videos and how they perceive the potential effects of such videos on their opinion formation is sparse, primarily quantitative approaches. The present study aims to fill this empirical gap by exploring (1) how intensively young people watch YouTuber videos about political and societal topics (YTPS-videos), (2) how young people evaluate YouTube creators (YouTubers) and the content of their videos, (3) how young people perceive their influenceability by YTPS-videos, (4) with whom and via which channels they communicate about the content of YTPS-videos, and (5) how these aspects are affected by young people's age and gender. Importantly, in the present study, YTPS-videos are not restricted to a specific format (e.g., commentary, interview, report) and cover any kind of news about political or societal events being of potential interest to the audience.

Intensity of YouTube Usage

In April 2020, YouTube had the second-highest number of active users worldwide after Facebook, making it the most popular and most important online video platform to date (Statista, 2020). Nearly two-thirds of 12- to 19-year-old German teenagers indicated YouTube as their favourite online platform in 2019 (MPFS, 2020), with 90% of them watched videos on YouTube regularly. Similar results were found in Britain (Jiménez, García, & de Ayala, 2016) and Israel (Zilka, 2018). Also, Zilka ( 2018) found significant gender and age effects regarding preferred media content. Consequently, and concerning the present study, the question arises how intensively young people watch YTPS-videos and how this is related to their general YouTube usage intensity, visiting frequency of YouTuber channels as well as gender and age:

Evaluation of YouTubers and YTPS-Videos

When it comes to the evaluation of YouTubers and the content of YTPS-videos, credibility is one central aspect. Beyond a positive relationship between the perception of media credibility and news consumption (Nelson & Kim, 2020), credibility affects the persuasiveness of media content. The Source Credibility Model (cf. Lowry, Wilson, & Haig, 2013) emphasises that the source of a message and its perceived expertise and trustworthiness are determinants of the message's persuasiveness and perceived usefulness, as shown for various scenarios in the context of social media (e.g., Djafarova & Rushworth, 2017; Lou & Yuan, 2019). Besides, credibility was also found to be positively related to the general liking of YouTuber videos (Xiao, Wang, & Chan-Olmsted, 2018). Moreover, the evaluation of the credibility of online information depends on the recipient's age. For example, college students perceived online information as more credible and verified them more rarely than older adults did (Metzger, Flanagin, & Zwarun, 2003). Hence, we examined the following research question concerning YTPS-videos:

The Source Credibility Model stresses the importance of the message's source for its persuasiveness. However, the 'source' can refer to both the video and the YouTuber who produces and promotes the video. The question arises which characteristics of YTPS-videos and YouTubers young people use when evaluating credibility aspects and when checking for fake news. This question is particularly important in the context of videos about political and societal topics. Some studies have already examined (non-)credibility in terms of fake news during periods of a political election. Grinberg, Joseph, Friedland, Swire-Thompson, and Lazer ( 2019) and Guess, Nagler, and Tucker ( 2019) examined the sharing of and exposure to fake news on Twitter and Facebook, respectively, during the 2016 United States presidential campaign. The authors found that mostly conservative, older people were most likely to be engaged in fake news sources.

When it comes to the detection of fake news on social media, previous research often examined characteristics of news content which might be indicative of fake news, such as linguistic- and visual-based content features of news (Shu, Sliva, Wang, Tang, & Liu, 2017). However, young people's strategy to detect fake news is still unclear. A first qualitative study delivered some hints: Hugger et al. ( 2019) found that young people's credibility evaluation of the content of YTPS-videos appears to be strongly interlinked with perceived authenticity of the YouTubers; the perceived authenticity seems to be promoted by perceived individuality and autonomy of the YouTuber but is compromised by an increasing professionality of editorial work and news presentation. The present study hence further explored the characteristics of YTPS-videos that young people use to assess the news' validity:

Additionally, young people seem to use traditional TV news as a reference to evaluate the credibility and the news value of YTPS-videos. Hugger et al. ( 2019) found that in order to assess the credibility of YouTubers and YTPS-videos, young people at the age of 15 to 16 reported that they compare YouTube with traditional mass media such as TV news, which are perceived as more objective and reliable. The authors speculate that this result may indicate a relatively low ability of young adolescents to analyse and reflect media content critically. In contrast, young adults explicitly perceived the mixing of personal opinions and objective information in mass media more strongly, indicating a significant role of the user's age on media criticism. Though, it is unclear how this result pattern is quantitatively represented:

Besides the video itself, its producer plays a vital role as an information source. Recent research supports this claim: Lou and Yuan ( 2019) found influencer's trustworthiness, attractiveness, and similarity to their followers being factors that positively affect followers' trust in the messages and postings. Xiao et al. ( 2018) found that the trustworthiness and the social influence of YouTubers affect the perceived information credibility on YouTube. Furthermore, Balaban and Mustățea ( 2019) showed that attractiveness, trustworthiness, expertise, and similarity are essential factors affecting the perceived information credibility, at least in Romania and Germany. The evaluation of these factors may be additionally moderated by the gender of both the media user and the influencer (Todd & Melancon, 2018).

Moreover, recent studies shifted their focus to the perceived role model function of influencers. To put it briefly, recipients tend to identify more with, feel more similar to, and trust influencers more than celebrities (Schouten, Janssen, & Verspaget, 2020). In a recent literature review, De Veirman, Hudders, and Nelson ( 2019) stressed the importance of influencers as relatable and approachable role models, as children are willing to build (parasocial) relationships and to identify with them, which in turn can lead to the adoption of the influencers' behaviour and opinion. In contrast, Martínez and Olsson ( 2019) showed in their qualitative study that children are capable of critically reflecting upon YouTubers, regarding their celebrity status and commercialisation especially. Interestingly, the degree of reflexivity differed between children. Thus, children do not seem to be a homogenous group when it comes to critical perceptions of YouTubers. Moreover, young people and women tend to have more trust in other people on social media, as compared to older people and men, respectively (Warner-Søderholm et al., 2018). Consequently, with regard to young people's capability of media criticism in the context of YTPS-videos, we asked the following question:

Learning with and Perceived Influenceability by YTPS-Videos

According to the core idea of uses-and-gratification models, people use media to satisfy particular needs such as the need for information and they hence actively link need gratification to media choice. Kaspar and Müller-Jensen ( 2019) summarised that uses-and-gratification models "usually assume that media recipients have certain psychological and societal needs (and associated motives), eliciting specific expectations about how mass media can fulfil these needs and leading to corresponding behavioural patterns of media use in order to obtain the desired gratifications at the end" (p. 2). So, it can be assumed that users might watch YTPS-videos specifically for acquiring new information and expand content-specific knowledge. Several studies highlighted the use of YouTube for learning purposes concerning students' academic learning (Moghavvemi, Sulaiman, Jaafar, & Kasem, 2018), teenagers' knowledge and skill acquisition (Pires, Masanet, & Scolari, 2019), and as an informal learning tool for children (Dyosi & Hattingh, 2018). Use motives also seem to differ between genders, with men showing more information-seeking intentions when using social networks than women (Krasnova, Veltri, Eling, & Buxmann, 2017). Accordingly, we examined the following research question:

In addition to the purposeful and intentional use of YouTube for knowledge acquisition (RQ3a), it is unclear as yet how young people assess the general potential of YTPS-videos to (unintentionally) influence their opinion formation. In recent years, a similar realm of this process was frequently examined under the terms of dispositional and situational advertising literacy in the field of marketing (Hudders, Cauberghe, & Panic, 2016): The ability to critically reflect upon advertising depends on the recipients' coping skills. These skills thereby include recognising, analysing, and evaluating persuasion attempts as well as choosing an effective coping strategy against them. Interestingly, media literacy seems to improve with age (De Jans, Hudders, & Cauberghe, 2018), because older children (ten to eleven years) are better in detecting commercial attempts and brand placements than younger children (seven to eight years) (Hudders & Cauberghe, 2018). Besides, eight- to twelve-year-old children did not show the same level of media literacy as 18- to 30-year-old adults (Rozendaal, Buijzen, & Valkenburg, 2010). In contrast, results of previous studies show that even older adolescents show engagement in the activities of influencers instead of critically reflecting upon them (van Dam & van Reijmersdal, 2019). However, they perceive themselves as capable of understanding advertising and being somewhat resistant to it (De Jans et al., 2018).

Furthermore, psychological research in several domains revealed that one's influenceability by mass media is often perceived as less pronounced than the influenceability of other peers. This phenomenon has been labelled the third-person effect in communication (Davison, 1983). The third-person effect describes the persistent phenomenon that people perceive communication effects on others as stronger than on oneself. This phenomenon applies to a variety of communication forms, including social media effects and online news perception (e.g., Banning & Sweetser, 2007; Houston, Hansen, & Nisbett, 2011; Schweisberger, Billinson, & Chock, 2014). We thus expected similar results with respect to YTPS-videos and explored the following question:

Communication about the Content of YTPS-Videos

Finally, seeking the advice of others is a vital strategy to verify, evaluate and validate online information (Metzger et al., 2003). People use interpersonal communication via social media to confirm their own opinion, to obtain personal recommendations, or to orientate themselves by feedback systems (Metzger, Flanagin, & Medders, 2010). Thereby, some sources are perceived as more trustworthy than others: People prefer the recommendations and opinions of friends and family. Indeed, online comments of users affect news processing and credibility perception of news content and sources (Duong, Nguyen, & Vu, 2020; Waddell, 2018a, 2018b). Referring to the communication channels, the use of a particular communication channel apparently depends on the type of friend (strong versus weak ties) and the communication subject (school subject versus no school subject) (Van Cleemput, 2010). In line with that, when sharing emotions, Flemish adolescents were found to prefer talking face-to-face, followed by texting, calling, and posting on social networks (Vermeulen, Vandebosch, & Heirman, 2018). Additionally, males seem to tend to communicate more frequently via public comments on YouTube videos but show less video-sharing behaviour with others than females do (Khan, 2017). Therefore, concerning YTPS-videos, we examined with whom and via which channels young people of different age and gender talk about the content of such videos.

1. RQ4a.
With whom do young people of different age and gender communicate about the content of YTPS-videos?

2. RQ4b.
Which channels do young people of different age and gender use to communicate with others about YTPS-videos?

Methods

Sample

We created both a pencil-paper and an online version of the survey with the software Unipark (Questback, 2017). The pencil-paper version was distributed among pupils of cooperating schools and students of a large German university. Written informed consent to participate was provided by the pupils' legal guardians/next of kin, and all of them participated voluntarily in this study in the context of formal school teaching. An online version of the questionnaire was additionally distributed via specific participant recruitment groups on Facebook in order to reach groups of older people with a serious interest in participating in scientific research. After clicking on the link to open the study, we pointed out that participation in the online survey required a minimum age of 16 years, following the guidelines of the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Parliament (GDPR, 2016). We also informed the participants that they could stop the study whenever they want, and that completion of the survey would indicate informed consent. We did not collect any identifying personal data.

Overall 739 participants (577 pencil-paper, 162 online) took part in the survey. We initially excluded 135 participants (18.27%) from the analyses as they reported neither using YouTube in general nor consuming YouTuber videos about political or societal issues (YTPS-videos), further 7 participants (0.95%) for not completing the survey, further 11 participants (1.49%) due to missing data regarding age or gender, further 9 participants (1.22%) for defining their gender as 'others', which was an insufficient subsample for the gender-related statistical analyses, and further 15 participants (2.03%) for reporting being older than 35 years. Therefore, the data of 562 participants (440 pencil-paper, 122 online) with 59.07% females were included in the analyses. The mean age was M age = 18.87 ( SD age = 4.86). The number of subscribed YouTube channels reported by these participants showed a median of 10. At the time of the survey, 55.0% of the participants were pupils of secondary schools, 40.2% were students of a University, and 4.8% attended neither of these. We divided participants into three different age groups to examine age effects: Participants who were under the age of 16 and therefore not authorized by law to vote in Germany ( n = 205, 48.29% female; M age = 14.39, SD age = 0.64), young people from 16 to 20 years of age ( n = 156, 62.18% female; M age = 17.64, SD age = 1.66), and participants older than 20 years of age (range from 21 to 35 years) and therefore legally get full criminal responsibility as an adult in Germany ( n = 201, 67.66% female; M age = 24.39, SD age = 3.34). The number of participants slightly varied across the analyses due to occasional missing data.

Questionnaire

The introduction of the survey included our definitions of the terms "YouTuber" and their "YTPS-videos". We defined YouTubers as people who run their own YouTube channel and upload regularly or irregularly self-produced videos on YouTube. Thus, we clarified that the survey is not about videos produced by professional news broadcasters that additionally disseminate their news via YouTube. We defined YTPS-videos as videos of any kind of format addressing political or societal topics.

We initially asked the participants to indicate a few demographical information: age, gender, school, previous graduation (if they already had one), and their occupational status (if they were not attending any school). If not stated otherwise, each of the following questions was answered on a 5-point rating scale ranging from 1 ("not at all" or "never") to 5 ("very much" or "very often").

First, we assessed participants' YouTube usage intensity. We asked them how intensively they use YouTube in general, how frequently they watch YTPS-videos, and how frequently they visit YouTuber channels on a 6-point scale (1 = "every day", 2 = "every week, but not every day", 3 = "every month, but not every week", 4 = "every year, but not every month", 5 = "less than once a year", 6 = "never"), see Table 1.

Second, we assessed participants' evaluation of the credibility of YouTubers and their videos. As shown in Table 1, we asked them to estimate the credibility of YTPS-videos in general, how much they appreciate it when YouTubers present their own opinion in their YTPS-videos, and to evaluate their personal liking of YTPS-videos in general (−2 = "very negative", 0 = "neutral", +2 = "very positive"). Furthermore, the participants rated several characteristics of YouTubers and their videos they potentially regard as indicative of Fake News (1 = "no indicator at all", 3 = "medium indicator", 5 = "very strong indicator"). The full list of evaluated characteristics can be seen in Table 1.

Third, participants compared YTPS-videos with classic TV news. To do so, they assessed 20 characteristics whether these apply rather to YTPS-videos or to TV news (1 = "applies much more to YTPS-videos", 3 = "applies equally to both formats", 5 = "applies much more to TV news"). Importantly, numeric markers were introduced for the analyses but were not shown to the participants in order not to bias their ratings. We only presented the verbal markers to the participants. The full list of evaluated characteristics is presented in Table 2.

Fourth, we assessed participants' learning and perceived influenceability by YTPS-videos. On the one hand, participants rated the importance of YTPS-videos for their learning about politics and societal topics. We asked them how important YTPS-videos are to them as a source of information, how much they learn by watching such videos, and how strongly they use the content of YTPS-videos for their opinion formation. We calculated a mean score across these items (Cronbach's α = .811). On the other hand, participants assessed how strongly they let themselves be influenced by YTPS-videos and to what extent other people of the same age, younger people, and older people are influenced by such videos.

Fifth, we assessed the extent to which YouTubers are perceived as role models. Participants rated several items regarding their perception of YouTubers' role model function. The full list of items is presented in Table 3.

Finally, we examined participants' communication about the content of YTPS-videos. Participants rated the frequency of talking with certain communication partners and the communication channels they use. The full list of communication partners and channels is presented in Table 4.

Analyses

All analyses were conducted using SPSS 27. In order to quantify the extent of participants' evaluations of YouTubers and YTPS-videos as below-average, average, or above-average compared to the scale's midpoint, we conducted one-sample t-tests. We analysed possible main and interaction effects of age group (< 16 years, 16-20 years, > 20) and gender using 3 × 2 ANOVAs. In case of a significant main effect of age group, we performed pairwise comparisons (Bonferroni-corrected familywise error rate). All tables display the means and standard deviations for age and gender groups, indicate the results of the one-sample t-tests, and present the results of the ANOVAs including pairwise comparisons for age groups. Moreover, due to multiple testing and accumulated Type I error, we further report Bonferroni-adjusted significance levels for each set of t-tests and each set of ANOVAs associated with a research question. However, due to the explorative nature of the present study and because several authors have already pointed out that the Bonferroni method is unnecessarily conservative in case of many tests and hence increases the false-negative rate (e.g., Jafari & Ansari-Pour, 2019; Lee & Lee, 2018), we also discuss effects being significant only in the case of unadjusted significance levels. As the results are the first of its kind, applying a stricter criterion could otherwise obscure essential effects. Nevertheless, we additionally indicate the more conservative (adjusted) significance levels in the tables and figure for transparency reasons.

Results

YouTube Watching Habits (RQ1)

As shown by Table 1, the general YouTube usage intensity was consistently rated as above average across age groups and genders. Visiting frequency of YouTuber channels was consistently under the scale's midpoint, indicating an above-average frequency due to reversed item coding (1 = "every day", 6 = "never"). The watching frequency of YTPS-videos was stated to be either average or below average across groups. Besides, males reported a higher general usage intensity of YouTube, a higher visiting frequency of YouTube channels, and a higher watching frequency of YTPS-videos. The 16- to 20-year-old participants stated a higher usage intensity of YouTube compared to the other two age groups. The over-20-years-old group stated a lower visiting frequency of YouTuber channels than the other two groups (reversed coding) but reported to watch YTPS-videos more frequently than the under-16-year-old group. Since the scale measuring the visiting frequency of YouTuber channels was rather ordinal level, we also performed non-parametric analyses that verified the parametric results reported in Table 1.

Evaluation of YTPS-Videos and Fake News Indicators (RQ2a, RQ2b)

Only the under-16-year-old males evaluated the credibility of YTPS-videos above average (see Table 1), whereas each of the other groups rated the credibility as either average or below average (RQ2a). The appreciation of the presentation of YouTubers' own opinion in YTPS-videos was average or above average, while the liking of YTPS-videos was rated as above average (scale's midpoint was zero). The over-20-year-old evaluated YTPS-videos as less credible and reported a lower appreciation of YouTubers' own opinion than both younger age groups. Further, they stated a lower liking of YTPS-videos than the 16- to 20-year-old group. There was no effect of gender. Additionally, we found significant positive correlations between the credibility evaluation and the watching frequency of YTPS-videos for over-20-year-old males, r = .283, p = .023, and females, r = .287, p < .001. There were no significant correlations in the other age groups regardless of gender, all rs ≤ .194, ps ≥ .057. Besides, we found significant positive correlations between the credibility evaluation and the appreciation of the presentation of YouTubers' own opinion in all groups, with the highest values for over-20-year-old males, r = .406, p < .001, and females, r = .331, p < .001. Except for 16- to 20-year-old males, we also found significant positive correlations between the credibility evaluation and liking of YTPS-videos in all groups, with the highest expression for over-20-year-old males, r = .374, p = .002, and females, r = .480, p  < .001.

Regarding characteristics of YouTubers and their videos considered as potentially indicative of fake news (RQ2b), most mean ratings were average or below average (see Table 1). As an exception, the citation of information sources was considered as indicative above average by over-20-year-old males and females. The extent of visible commercialisation of YTPS-videos was considered as indicative above average by under-16-year-old males as well as by 16- to 20-year-old and over-20-year-old females. The ANOVAs did not find differences between males and females, but some main effects of age group: The under-16-year-old group rated the YouTubers' language style as a less strong indicator than the 16- to 20-year-old group. Concerning the citation of information sources, YouTubers' attempt to be a role model, and the extent of personal advice given by the YouTubers, the under-16-year-old group perceived them as less strong indicators of fake news than the over-20-year-old group did. Furthermore, we found an interaction between age and gender regarding the extent to which YouTubers' express their own opinion in YTPS-videos: Females showed a higher rating than males in the group of the under-16-year-old group, t(202) = 2.76, p = .006, d = 0.386, whereas no gender difference was found in the other two age groups. There was also an interaction effect between age and gender relating to the extent of visible commercialisation in YTPS-videos, as females showed a higher rating than males only in the 16- to 20-year-old group, t(149) = 2.03, p = .044, d  = 0.343.

YTPS-Videos Versus TV News (RQ2c)

Participants rated whether several characteristics apply rather to YTPS-videos or traditional TV news (RQ2c), see Table 2. Ratings that significantly differed from 3 indicate that the corresponding characteristic was attributed more to YouTuber news (below 3) or more to TV news (above 3). Overall, TV news was seen as more objective, facts-oriented, informative, boring, credible, neutral, reputable, and professional, independently of participants' age and gender. In contrast, YTPS-videos were generally seen as more subjective, opinion-oriented, entertaining, emotional, funny, exciting, modern, motivating, and manipulative. Both formats were rated as equally interesting. The characteristics "compact" and "exhausting" were equally attributed to both news formats or rather to TV news, depending on age and gender. Moreover, the ANOVAs revealed some main effects of gender and age group: In contrast to male participants, female participants rated TV news as more objective, facts-oriented, informative, exciting, credible, neutral, reputable, and compact, but they rated YTPS-videos as more subjective, opinion-oriented, emotional and manipulative. Regarding age, the over-20-year-old group rated YTPS-videos as less opinion-oriented, entertaining, and motivating than the other two age groups, but they also rated TV news as less neutral. Besides, they also perceived YTPS-videos as less exciting than the 16-20-year-old group, and as less manipulative than the under-16-year-old group. At last, they rated TV news as less exhausting compared to the under-16-year-old group. There was no interaction effect between age and gender on any of the characteristic ratings.

YouTubers as Role Models (RQ2d)

According to participants' perception, YouTubers have a role model function, are important as role models, are aware of their role model function and their influence on viewers, and they are similar to music and movie stars regarding their role model function (see Table 3). Corresponding ratings showed an at least average mean value in all genders and age groups (with one exception). In contrast, participants rather denied that YouTubers show responsible handling of their role model function. Moreover, females perceived a greater role model function of YouTubers than males did. Regarding age effects, the under-16-year-old group perceived a weaker role model function but better responsible handling than the 16- to 20-year-old group. Finally, the perceived importance of YouTubers as role models and their similarity to music and movie stars significantly increased from age group to age group.

Learning and Influenceability (RQ3a, RQ3b)

Regarding the importance of YTPS-videos for participants' learning about politics and societal topics (RQ3a), we found below-average ratings independently of age and gender, all ts ≤ −2.72, ps ≤ .009, ds ≤ −.354 (adjusted significance level p = .0083). However, YTPS-videos were rated as more important for learning by male participants ( M = 2.56, SD = 0.91) than by female participants ( M = 2.33, SD = 0.93), F(1, 556) = 7.28, p = .007, η p ² = .013. There were no further main or interaction effects, all Fs ≤ 2.59, ps ≥ .076, η p ² ≤ .009.

Regarding the perceived influenceability by YTPS-videos (RQ3b), Fig. 1 shows participants' assessments of how strongly they let themselves be influenced and to what extent other people of the same age, younger people, and older people are presumed to be influenceable by such videos. Males and females in all age groups consistently perceived their own and older people's influenceability as below average, whereas younger persons' influenceability was consistently rated as above average. In contrast, the three age groups perceived a different influenceability of other people of the same age (i.e., other peers): The under-16-year-old males, the over-20-years-old males, and 16- to 20-years-old females rated them as averagely influenceable. The over-20-year-old females reported a below-average rating, and the other two groups an above-average rating. Next, we extended our usual two-way ANOVA to a 3 (age group) × 2 (gender) × 4 (valuation subject) ANOVA with valuation subject as a within-subject factor (self vs. other people of same age vs. younger people vs. older people) and perceived influenceability by YTPS-videos as dependent variable. We also calculated Bonferroni-adjusted pairwise comparisons in case of a significant main effect of valuation subject. We found a main effect of valuation subject, F(2.64, 1459.50) = 894.23, p < .001, η p ² = .618: The participants perceived themselves and older people as less influenceable than younger people and people of the same age. Besides, the influenceability of younger people was rated higher than that of people of the same age. We found a main effect of age group, F(2, 552) = 5.32, p = .005, η p ² = .019: The over-20-year-old group estimated people's influenceability lower than the other two age groups. However, we also found an interaction between age group and valuation subject, F(5.29, 1459.50) = 4.17, p < .001, η p ² = .015: The effect of age group was only significant regarding the evaluation of other people of the same age, F(2, 556) = 14.50, p < .001, η p ² = .050.

Participants' assessments of the influenceability of themselves, other peers, younger persons, and older persons by YTPS-videos. Vertical lines indicate the standard error of the mean. Asterisks indicate the results of one-sample t-tests against the scales' midpoint of 3. ¹The respective test result is not significant when applying the Bonferroni-adjusted significance level ( p = .002) to the set of t-tests

Communication about YTPS-Videos (RQ4a, RQ4b)

Concerning the participants' communication partners regarding the content of YTPS-videos (RQ4a), we found that participants of both genders and all age groups reported a below-average communication frequency with the presented communication partners, but preferred communicating with their friends instead of teachers, see Table 4. The ANOVAs revealed that males communicated more often with friends and classmates. Furthermore, the over-20-year-old group talked with their family members (including parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents) less often about the content of YTPS-videos than the younger age groups did. We additionally found two interactions between age group and gender: In the 16- to 20-year-old group, males communicated more often with their family than females did, t(153) = 2.35, p = .020, d = .390. Furthermore, males communicated more often with their friends than females in the under-16-year-old group, t(192.31) = 2.36, p = .019, d = .328, and in the 16-20-year-old group, t(154) = 22.19, p = .030, d = .362.

In terms of the communication channels the participants use when communicating about the content of YTPS-videos (RQ4b), face-to-face communication was the most preferred modus, see Table 4. All other channels were used relatively rarely. We found several main effects of gender and age group, but no interactions: Males, compared to females, communicated more frequently via YouTube comments, Facebook's news feed, E-Mail, Skype, and face-to-face. The over-20-year-old group used the Facebook's news feed and phone calls more often, but they communicated via Snapchat and Instagram less frequently about the content of YTPS-videos than the other two age groups. Also, the over-20-year-old group communicated via E-Mail and Skype more often than the under-16-year-old group. Additionally, the 16- to 20-year-old group talked face-to-face more frequently compared to the other two age groups.

Discussion

The present study examined the role of YTPS-videos and YouTubers for young people's opinion formation on political and societal topics.

First, we found that young people reported a generally high YouTube usage intensity and a moderate watching frequency of YTPS-videos (RQ1), indicating that YouTube was an important information source in our sample. While general usage intensity was exceptionally high in the 16- to 20-year-old group, the over-20-year-old group less often visited YouTube channels but showed an even higher watching frequency of YTPS-videos compared to the under-16-year-old group. Notably, males reported an overall higher YouTube consumption.

Second, participants' responses reflected some critical perceptions of YTPS-videos and YouTubers, as already found in other subject areas (Martínez & Olsson, 2019). Though the liking of YTPS-videos was relatively high, participants perceived them as only moderately credible (RQ2a). The over-20-year-old evaluated YTPS-videos as less credible and reported a lower appreciation of YouTubers' own opinion than both younger age groups. Further, they stated a lower liking of YTPS-videos than the 16- to 20-year-old group. These results indicate that young people's critical perception of YTPS-videos increases with age, while there was no effect of gender. Interestingly, credibility evaluation was positively correlated with viewing frequency in the oldest age group. Also, we found positive correlations between the credibility evaluation and the appreciation of the presentation of YouTubers' own opinion in all groups, but the highest correlations were found in the over-20-year-old group. Hence, credibility seems to become a more critical factor for consumption frequency and media acceptance with increasing age, supporting previous findings (Nelson & Kim, 2020).

Third, participants moderately agreed to all characteristics of YTPS-videos and their producers as being indicative of fake news (RQ2b). This result also considerably varied between age groups. Again, the over-20-year-old group appeared to be more critical than the under-16-year-old group regarding the citation of information sources, YouTubers' attempt to be a role model, and the extent of personal advice given by the YouTubers. Gender differences were negligible. Very young people may struggle with the evaluation of online news as already observed in previous studies (Flanagin & Metzger, 2000; McGrew, Breakstone, Ortega, Smith, & Wineburg, 2018; Metzger et al., 2003; Nee, 2019). This would also underline the importance of a tool for reconnaissance to improve media criticism in the context of fake news on YouTube, as it was suggested by McGrew et al. ( 2018). Young people could also refer to other characteristics than those addressed in the present study and previously reported by Hugger et al. ( 2019), for example design, graphics, and multimedia content (Agosto, 2002; Shenton & Dixon, 2004; Wobbrock, Hsu, Burger, & Magee, 2019).

Fourth, we found a very pronounced difference in participants' evaluation of YTPS-videos compared to traditional TV news (RQ2c). The latter was perceived as more objective, facts-oriented, informative, credible, neutral, reputable, and professional but also more boring, independently of participants' age and gender. In contrast, YTPS-videos were generally seen as more entertaining, emotional, funny, exciting, modern, motivating, but also more subjective, opinion-oriented, and manipulative than traditional TV news, independently of age and gender. This result pattern is compatible with the findings of Elvestad, Phillips, and Feuerstein ( 2017) who surveyed students from Israel, Norway, and the United Kingdom, all reporting higher trust in traditional news media than in social media. Such results may reflect a critical perception or even scepticism of YTPS-news on the one hand. On the other hand, it also indicates a rather uncritical perception of TV news and only a little critical reflection on traditional journalism processes. With respect to age, we found that the over-20-year-old group showed a more balanced comparison between traditional TV news and YTPS-news. Surprisingly, female participants, compared to male participants, rated TV news as more objective, facts-oriented, informative, exciting, credible, neutral, reputable, and compact, and they rated YTPS-videos as more subjective, opinion-oriented, emotional, and manipulative. We may speculate that this result pattern either shows a higher capacity for media criticism in young females or a greater orientation towards supposedly valid media standards. Future research should disentangle these possibilities in more detail.

Fifth, participants ascribed YouTubers an important role model function and a high awareness of their influence, independently of gender and age (RQ2d). In addition, they criticised YouTubers' rather irresponsible handling of their role model function. The perceived importance of YouTubers as role models and their similarity to music and movie stars increased from age group to age group. De Veirman et al. ( 2019) already stressed the importance of influencers as relatable and approachable role models as children are willing to build (parasocial) relationships and to identify with them. Thus, this is a critical mixture. On the one hand, YouTubers are vital role models, but in contrast to traditional celebrities, the perceived distance is less pronounced, increasing their potential effects on the young audience. As found by Schouten et al. ( 2020), recipients tend to identify more with, feel more similar to, and trust influencers more compared to celebrities. Interestingly, participants of the present study, independently of age and gender, also assumed that YouTubers would be only moderately aware of their role model function. To sum up, the participants seem to (partially) understand and critically reflect on the YouTubers' roles and potential effects.

Sixth, the participants reported that YTPS-videos are relatively unimportant for their learning about politics and societal topics, but YTPS-videos were rated as more important for learning by male participants than by female participants (RQ3a). Therefore, purposeful and intentional use of YouTube for the acquisition of political and societal knowledge appears not prevalent. It would be interesting to see whether there are nonetheless learning gains by consumption. Indeed, unintentional learning has already been shown in experimental settings (e.g., Schmidt & De Houwer, 2012). Also, are there differences in knowledge between males versus females? It would be an interesting direction for future research to combine YouTube consumption with objective measures of knowledge performance.

Seventh, young people consistently perceived themselves as less influenceable than younger people and same-aged people, and as influenceable as older people (RQ3b). Young people seem to perceive themselves as relatively resistant to the influences of YTPS-video content, although they are aware of the YTPS-videos' manipulative potential. This finding is supported by previous research focusing on influencer marketing on YouTube, which came to similar results (Coates, Hardman, Halford, Christiansen, & Boyland, 2020). Also, the fact that participants perceived themselves as significantly less influenceable by mass media than younger and same-aged people is consistent with the well-known third-person effect (Davison, 1983) and previous findings in the context of social media and online news (Houston et al., 2011; Schweisberger et al., 2014). Consequently, they overestimate their resistance or underestimate that of other people.

Finally, we found that participants of both genders and all age groups reported a below-average communication frequency about the content of YTPS-videos with usual communication partners, but preferred communicating with their friends instead of teachers (RQ4a). That result is crucial as it indicates that a critical debriefing and analysis of the consumed content elude the formal educational contexts in school, which might have a corrective effect on political education processes. A possible explanation could be that the roles of parents and teachers concerning online activities decrease with age during adolescence, while the one of peers increases. This circumstance has already been shown by previous studies in the context of teenagers' engagement in online risks (Shin & Lwin, 2017). Another reason could be that parents and teachers do not provide the appropriate room for discussions about YTPS-videos. At the same time, face-to-face communication was the most preferred modus when communicating about the content of YTPS-videos (RQ4b). This result may be interpreted as promising because this form of communication provides an appropriate basis for discussing complex issues. In contrast, some communication technologies suffer from information transfer capacities (Daft, Lengel, & Trevino, 1987) and may additionally be associated with critical data security issues.

Practical Implications and Future Research

The results allow us to conclude about media education of young people at school. Young people do not seem to discuss the topics of YTPS-videos with their teachers in school often. One possible question which arises in this context is whether school plays a role at all when it comes to the consumption of, discussion about, and critical reflection on YTPS-videos. It could be difficult for schools and teachers to address such private and niched consumption adequately. Media psychological research may help to disentangle the situational and personal obstacles counteracting the desirable discussion and comparison of individual standpoints. Importantly, social media platforms such as YouTube and the topic of fake news have already been included in course syllabi and are nothing new to be inserted into classroom teaching. However, the critical question is how these topics can be addressed in formal education in an appropriate and target group-oriented manner. The present results indicate that formats focusing on peer-to-peer communication might be the key to success. It is also unclear to what extent teachers actually make this content the subject of instruction and whether students are willing to talk about such content. Content of YTPS-videos might be considered sensitive and thus requires specific methods facilitating the discussion of sensitive topics with young people (e.g., Hoppe, Wells, Morrison, Gillmore, & Wilsdon, 1995). It should be noted that nowadays school curricula already include media literacy as a learning aim, but the approaches vary a lot between different schools and countries (Zhang, Zhang, & Wang, 2020). For example, in Germany, where the present study took place, no centralised, standardised policy for media literacy exist. Thus, the critical question is how specific content of new media, such as YTPS-videos, can be integrated into formal education settings so that this creates added value for students. Psychological research can help to systematically examine the effects of media-based learning formats, as recently shown in the context of commercial video games (e.g., Rüth & Kaspar, 2020).

Besides, the implications of the third-person effect could be addressed pedagogically. From a user-oriented perspective, an underestimation of one's own influenceability appears more problematic than an overestimation of other people's influenceability by mass media. Because persuasive effects of influencers on young people are evident (e.g., De Veirman et al., 2019; Dehghani, Niaki, Ramezani, & Sali, 2016; Sokolova & Kefi, 2020), such an underestimation could increase young people's vulnerability to persuasive attempts of YTPS-videos. One possible countermeasure could be the discussion with teachers in class. Teachers could help to pinpoint the relevance of political and societal topics presented in the YTPS-videos for the young people. As Schweisberger et al. ( 2014) showed, the perceived effects of news stories on oneself are higher for relevant news compared to non-relevant ones. Additionally, the authors found that the third-person effect seems to be smaller for high-relevant topics. Thus, pinpointing the relevance of news for young people could raise awareness for the persuasive effects of YTPS-video content. Furthermore, teachers could explain the effects of social media and influencers on young people as well as the implications of the third-person-effect. Such educational measures might significantly improve young people's media literacy. However, we have to emphasise that our results do not provide any information on whether the third-person effect reflects young people's underestimation of their influenceability. Davison ( 1983) alternatively stated, "that people will tend to overestimate the influence that mass communications have on the attitudes and behavior of others" (p. 3). In accordance, Sun, Pan, and Shen ( 2008) showed that third-person effects in terms of the perceived self-other asymmetry are larger when others are perceived as particularly vulnerable. This finding could indicate that the third-person effect instead represents an overestimation of the influenceability of others. Also, only small and inconsistent relations between the third-person effect and behavioural intentions were found (Xu & Gonzenbach, 2008). As a result, the question arises whether the third-person effect found in the present study is of practical relevance at all. This question should be clarified by future research before addressing the third-person effect pedagogically in school. Alarming claims of effects that do not exist should be avoided in the context of media literacy education.

Our findings also form the basis for future quantitative studies. We provide first quantitative results about young people's use and critical reflection of YTPS-videos. These results may facilitate deriving and testing concrete hypotheses, but our results also open new directions for further research topics. Indeed, research on the role of YTPS-videos on young people's opinion formation regarding political and societal topics has been widely neglected so far but appears very important given the high relevance of this medium for the young generation. Besides, we found first and strong evidence for gender and age differences in the use and evaluation of YTPS-videos. Future research should consider such differential effects and may also include personality traits. Also, what are the antecedents and consequences of such gender effects regarding media consumption, education, and political orientation? Temporal changes in media literacy are also conceivable. Up to now, no longitudinal studies are addressing this. Such studies could clarify whether the age differences found in the present study represent truly longitudinal changes or indicate cohort effects. Finally, the findings also deliver first implications and relevant aspects for the development and testing of educational programmes. Based on our results, such educational programmes could address, for example, methods to verify YTPS-news and online information, persuasive attempts of such videos, as well as the critical reflection of users' behaviour and attitudes regarding YTPS-videos to foster media literacy.

Limitations and Prospects for Future Research

There are some more limitations of the present study which should be considered when interpreting the results above. First, we developed our research topics mainly based on research from other subject areas and several older studies due to a lack of thematically more specific research. As a consequence, this study was mainly explorative. In addition, we were also not able to use established and validated instruments. As YouTube and YTPS-videos as a platform for information gathering become more and more important, it would be desirable to develop validated multi-item scales to assess the specific aspects examined here. In this way, the constructs, their relationships, their factorial structure, and their construct validity can be researched in more detail. The present study may provide the first basis for such projects. It should also be noted that few results become not significant when applying a more conservative, Bonferroni-adjusted significant level.

Moreover, we investigated pupils from a high school and university students with a relatively high educational background in Germany. Besides, as participation in this study was voluntary and the online version was distributed via specific social media groups, the degree of a potential sample bias cannot be finally estimated. In each case, the sample was rather homogenous. There is evidence that the ability for media criticism varies between schools: For example, Hu and Kurokami ( 2017) found differences in media literacy between pupils of an urban and of a rural middle school in China. Pupils of the urban middle school showed, among other things, higher critical thinking skills. The authors mainly attributed this to the missing curriculum and opportunities to explore and learn the appropriate media use in rural middle schools. A further aspect of this context of learning opportunities is that media criticism seems to be taught mainly within higher education. Schmidt ( 2013) examined how media literacy is addressed in different levels of the educational system in the US. The author found that media literacy is most often addressed in higher education like university and college compared to earlier school forms like Middle or High School. Consequently, the results in the present study could be different when investigating young people who attend a school form at another educational level. Further, as media literacy issues are mainly addressed in higher education, the higher media literacy skills of our older age group could simply reflect a higher number of passed learning opportunities. Consequently, future research on media literacy regarding YTPS-videos has to take school form and educational background into account.

Finally, in contrast to other accounts (e.g., Martínez & Olsson, 2019), the present study did not focus on the perception of a specific YouTuber and their videos. We did not specify the source of the YTPS-videos consumed by the participants. As the reported number of subscribed channels showed a median of 10 in the present study, participants' responses refer to a rather general impression of YouTubers and YTPS-videos. The present data thus provide a generalised picture that lays the foundation for more differentiated studies in the future. For example, as Lewis ( 2020) showed, some YouTubers rather represent more extreme and reactionary political standpoints by sensationalising mainstream news. As a result, the perception and evaluation of YouTubers and YTPS-videos could vary, depending on how the YouTubers' political orientations are perceived and how they match with the orientation of the individual consumer. Indeed, perceived similarity with an influencer can have positive effects on consumers' trust in influencer postings and on behavioural intentions (e.g., Lou & Yuan, 2019). Additionally, the political orientation could be more pronounced with increasing age. As a consequence, political orientations of both the consumer and the YouTuber become more relevant with increasing age. Also, the specific attributes of the videos might act as a moderator on perception effects. In the present study, we purposefully covered a vast range of YTPS-videos that was neither limited to specific political or societal topics nor to a specific video format. In general, it is conceivable that the perception of YTPS-videos varies across topics, genres, contents, stylistic choices, viewer groups, report types, and commercial ties of the YouTubers. For example, we found that commercialisation seems to be a relevant aspect for young people when evaluating YTPS-videos. This could in turn influence the persuasiveness of the video content. Future research should disentangle the contribution of specific attributes of YTPS-videos on young people's perception.

To conclude, the present study was one first attempt to bridge a vital research gap regarding young people's analytic-critical perception and evaluation of YouTubers and YTPS-videos. We found significant age and gender effects and a complex result pattern highlighting implications for both future research and educational measures. This study provides a substantial basis for a better understanding of how young people perceive and evaluate media content, media producers, and their role in the media consumption process.

Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study, as well as the used materials, are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Funding

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. This work was partly funded by the Federal State Government of North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW, Germany) via the Grimme Research College (Project: YouTuber and Peers/2017-2018).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

1. Department of Psychology, University of Cologne, Richard-Strauss-Str. 2, 50931, Cologne, Germany

Daniel Zimmermann & Kai Kaspar

2. Department of Educational and Social Sciences, University of Cologne, Gronewaldstr. 2, 50931, Cologne, Germany

Christian Noll, Kai-Uwe Hugger, Lea Marie Braun & Tine Nowak

3. Grimme-Institut, Eduard-Weitsch-Weg 25, 45768, Marl, Germany

Lars Gräßer

Contributions

LG, KUW and KK acquired the funding; LG, KUH and KK administered the project; DZ, CN, LG, KUH and KK designed the study; DZ, CN, LG, LMB, TN and KK collected the data; DZ and KK analysed the data; DZ and KK wrote the manuscript; KK supervised the study; CN, LG, KUH, LMB and TN approved submission.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel Zimmermann.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Ethics Approval

All procedures performed in the study were in accordance with the ethical guidelines of the German Psychological Society (DGPs) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration. According to the guidelines of the German Research Association, no ethical approval was needed because the research did not pose any threats or risks to the respondents, it was not associated with high physical or emotional stress, and the respondents were informed about the objectives of the study ( http://www.dfg.de/foerderung/faq/geistes_sozialwissenschaften/index.html).

Consent to Participate/for Publication

Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the students or (if younger than 18 years) by their legal guardians/next of kin, and all students voluntarily participated in this study.

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Zimmermann, D., Noll, C., Gräßer, L. et al. Influencers on YouTube: a quantitative study on young people's use and perception of videos about political and societal topics. Curr Psychol (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01164-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01164-7

Keywords

YouTube

Politics

Fake news

News perception

Gender differences

Age differences

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Influencers on YouTube: a quantitative study on young people's use and perception of videos about political and societal topics - Current Psychology

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The roles of YouTube videos and YouTubers for getting information about political and societal topics are becoming gradually more important to young people. Quantitative research about young people's use and perception of YouTube-videos and their potential effects on opinion formation is sparse though. This cross-sectional quantitative study addresses this empirical gap.

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Outline possible questions

Who can I interview??

Will I use primary sources?

Are there secondary sources available

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Google Scholar

YouTubers Academic Journal (google search)

Podcasts
DD seatgeek
MrBeast Honey

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Interview Tom Sharman (Waves CEO)

Interview BambinoBecky (Footasylum brand partnership)

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1 YouTuber
1 YouTube manager
1 Brand marketer

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Prepare focus group questions

Contact people for interview + focus group

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The Nearly Impossible Job of Managing MrBeast

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The Sidemen Reveal KSI’s Problem, Jake Paul Diss Track, UK vs. American Women - IMPAULSIVE EP. 333

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Successful brands, influencers, social media, parasocial relationships, branding, advertising, YouTube, social media creators, audience building, audience relationships, mr beast, sidemen, traditional media, adaptive media

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Introduction

Background behind YouTube culture

Dedicated audiences

Creators X Original Brands

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1.      Lorinc, John. (2015). Your Kids, The Influencers. Corporate Knights. 14(No.2), pp.50-53. [Online]. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44149841 [Accessed 29 November 2022].

-        Young people turning away from facebook and moving to Instagram, twitter and snapchat

-        Marketers are looking at more stealthier methods of advertising rather than facebook’s “in your face” methods

-        According to Toronto social media marketer, Steve Tam, brands have sought to establish marketing relationships with so-called “teen influencers” – young people who aren’t celebrities but have nonetheless built up such large social media followings that their feeds become interesting to marketers looking to reach specific audiences

-        According to a survey of 7,200 students by U.S. investment bank Piper Jaffray: teen interest in facebook has been falling precipitously. 45% of surveyed teens were using facebook as of autumn 2014 – down dramatically from 72% six months previously – the drop was so steep, according to Bloomberg, that facebook stopped discussing teen usage on its earnings calls

-        Young people with a large following understand that social media relies on clever, funny and ironic content – memes, gifs or the tsunami of photos and short form content. With highly engaged followers, their feeds are perfect environments for promotional pitches.

-        Others [social media influencers] have such huge followings that they hire agents to negotiate fees and arrange appearances

-        Not just about reaching young consumers, but its also about getting the most bang for their marketing bucks

-        Its one thing to pay a supermodel or star athlete millions of dollars to promote a product, and quite another to avoid those outlays by offering a few dollars or t shirts to a student with lots of social media followers

-        Jack Harding, director of user engagement for Poolhouse (Toronto advertising agency), says innovative marketers are establishing direct online relationships with social media users who’ve posted positive messages or images about a client’s brands. They constantly scour social media networks for favourable mentions then reach out to unsuspecting teens with offers of discounts or gifts.

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2.      Gault, Grace. (2022). Authenticity's "TikTok"-ing Clock: Exploring the Implications of Sophisticated T. [Online]. Muhlenberg College. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.33037100 [Accessed 29 November 2022].

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3.      Vaske, Hermann. (2001). Standing on the shoulders of giants. Berlin: Medialis Offset. p.1.

-        Page 178 “you cant break a window and expect people to look at it and get something from this. But if you have, lets say, ten windows and you break each second window there is a reaction” – Neville Brody – “you have to meet the person you are communicating to halfway. You have to use a shared language in order to take someone to a further point.”

-        Page 179 – Brody talks about how the language we use to speak to each other was born 300 years ago – talks about how we cover it, same traditions, with new ways of communication, says “I’m trying to find ways to communicate that which is relevant to know.”

-        Page 184 “what advertising does, it steals language from people that it doesn’t understand, and it feeds it back. And it’s saying: we speak your language. We are your mate. We are your friend. Buy our product.” – Neville Brody

-        Page 193 “everybody can sell nowadays” – Marcello Serpa , when talking about how Hollywood stars can sell.

-        Page 193 – “There is no idea without any execution. The execution is very important. I think that’s what it’s all about. I think that execution is very, very important. If you have an idea, without execution its just a poor idea.” – Marcello Serpa

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5.      Colin and Samir. (2022). “The Nearly Impossible Job of Managing MrBeast”. The Colin and Samir Show. 15th August. [Podcast]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5YW4JB07-8. [Accessed 11th December 2022].

-        Reed Duchscher is Mr Beast’s manager

-        14:28 they opened 300 beast burger restaurants in a day + Beast Burger was on door dash

-        “The sheer amount of orders on that first night was so wild”

-        “We had like 100 cars outside restaurants, waiting for their orders – and there wasn’t enough delivery drivers to order the amount of hamburgers being ordered.” And then every place was running out of buns and hamburgers ….. “it was just utter circus”

-        15:42 “we’re just trying to break barriers and kind of like set the bar … we want to show other creators what’s possible.”

-        17:49 “we wanted to create a product that was really good that we thought his fan base could really gravitate towards.”

-        They hired separate teams of people to run these businesses. Jimmy is not the CEO of beast burger or feastables. They hired a really good CEO for that (Jim Murray- was president of RXBAR) https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-murray-a950135

-        18:55 “go find people that can help you run that business” “you need good people in these business to last and have success.”

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6.      Logan paul podcast with simon, tobi and ethan “we do so many drinking videos” – simon, Ethan: “the people who were watching us when they were 13,14 are now [in their] twenties.” Tobi: “our biggest demographic is 18-25 as well”. Logans friend says people build brands on what their content dictates

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Google Inc. is snapping up YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion in a deal that catapults the Internet search leader to a starring role in the online video revolution.

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·        According to Toronto social media marketer, Steve Tam, brands have sought to establish marketing relationships with so-called “teen influencers” – young people who aren’t celebrities but have nonetheless built up such large social media followings that their feeds become interesting to marketers looking to reach specific audiences

·        Page 184 “what advertising does, it steals language from people that it doesn’t understand, and it feeds it back. And it’s saying: we speak your language. We are your mate. We are your friend. Buy our product.” – Neville Brody

·        PRIME

·        BEAST BURGER

·           “We had like 100 cars outside restaurants, waiting for their orders – and there wasn’t enough delivery drivers to order the amount of hamburgers being ordered.” And then every place was running out of buns and hamburgers ….. “it was just utter circus”

·         Logan paul podcast with simon, tobi and ethan “we do so many drinking videos” – simon, Ethan: “the people who were watching us when they were 13,14 are now [in their] twenties.” Tobi: “our biggest demographic is 18-25 as well”. Logans friend says people build brands on what their content dictates