INFLUENCERS AND MEDIA: INFLUENCER-GENERATED CONTENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS AS A JOURNALISTIC SOURCE

Abstract

The growing popularity of social media platforms, especially YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, has enabled online influencers to appear in addition to previously known celebrities, representing a new global phenomenon and new role models for young people. Biran and his associates in the paper “Detecting influencers in written online conversations” state that influencers are the participants in online communication who have credibility in the group, who persevere in order to convince others and who introduce ideas that others accept or support (Biran et al., 2012: 38-39). Research on journalistic sources, especially research on content created by influencers on social media services, is a significant contribution to research in the field of media pluralism. Research on social network platforms as a source of information in Serbian literature is rare, which contributes to the significance of this research. The purposes of the research are to determine whether the content created and published by influencers on social network platforms in Serbia is a source of information for online editions of Serbian daily newspapers, the type of content in question, as well as whether the media gain new audiences that follow influencers. Qualitative-quantitative content analysis and web surveys were used for the research. Based on the qualitative-quantitative analysis of domestic daily newspapers (Danas, Politika, Večernje novosti, Blic, Kurir, Alo, Telegraf, Informer), we can conclude that the media use the profile content that influencers publish on social network sites as a source for texts which are soft news. According to the web survey in which 175 respondents participated, we can conclude that texts about influencers in the media are followed by 38 respondents and that the media are gaining new audiences who follow influencers on social network sites.