Legitimizing Religious Influencers: A Case Study of Evangelical Celebrities on Instagram

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Abstract Studies of social media influencers often focus on their ability to convey authenticity to their audiences. Influencer studies focused on individual influencers without acknowledging their belonging to larger collectives or how influencers are “legitimized” as belonging to that collective. This article argues that studying religious influencers is one way of exploring legitimacy on social media as distinct from authenticity; religious influencers implicitly belong to religious collectives that must legitimize these influencers as representatives of the collective. Using evangelical Christian celebrity influencers on Instagram as a case study, this article explores the heuristic of legitimacy and specific strategies these figures discursively and rhetorically employ to legitimize themselves within the collective. These tactics shed light on some of the social media operations of a fluctuating evangelical culture in the United States, and provide insights into the general processes of legitimation for influencers on social media today.