How do influencers use falsehoods to establish credibility on social media?

Bahar, Varqa and Hasan, Mahmudul (2023) How do influencers use falsehoods to establish credibility on social media? In Proceedings of the UK Academy for Information Systems. UK Academy for Information Systems. 11 pp . (doi:10.2139/ssrn.4426613).

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Credible influencers play a key role in shaping people’s views, preferences, and purchase decisions. However, many influencers use falsehoods to gain followers’ trust. This can have serious repercussions not only for firms but also consumers. To this end, the purpose of this developmental paper is to explore how do influencers use falsehoods to establish credibility on social media. Drawing on self-presentation theory, we use a qualitative case study to address our research purpose. Our preliminary findings suggest three categories (i.e., backstage, experimentation, and frontstage) of self-presentation strategies that establish credibility based on falsehoods. We contribute to self-presentation theory by adding the experimentation stage as the critical link for self-presentation to work.

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