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Current Affairs

How "Influencing" Became an Industry (w/ Emily Hund)

Current Affairs

Current Affairs

Comedy, Government, News, Culture, Politics

4.4645 Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2024

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs

0:22.8

magazine. I am joined today by Emily Hunt. She is a research affiliate at the Center of Digital

0:30.9

Culture and Society at the University of Pennsylvania's Annaberg School for Communication.

0:36.1

But she is also a author of the new book, The Influencer Industry,

0:41.1

The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media, available from the Princeton University Press.

0:48.0

Emily Hunt, thank you so much for joining us on current affairs today. Thank you for having me.

0:51.9

So tell us who are the influencers. What is this

0:55.7

ecosystem of influencers that you are writing about in this book? So influencers are people who

1:03.0

create content on social media and look to cultivate audiences and have an impact on them in some way, you know, affect their beliefs or behaviors

1:14.6

about a certain thing. And influencers also critically collaborate with brands to make money.

1:20.7

So vehicles for commercial messages primarily, that was sort of one of the founding principles

1:25.9

of the influencer industry was as a vector for

1:28.8

commercial messages, this has changed a bit in the last few years and the industry has expanded

1:34.5

and sort of as it's rooted itself so deeply in our lives over the last decade plus, it has also

1:42.7

sort of expanded its reach and its power. And it's not

1:46.9

just about commercial messaging anymore, but it is also about sort of propagating worldviews

1:53.7

and propagating, you know, lessons and ways of thinking about things and things like that.

1:59.0

That's the basics of the industry. And the people

2:02.2

involved are not just influencers. I think it's important to note, too, they're sort of the

2:06.8

public face of the industry and they're who we, you know, most people are encountering their

2:11.5

content in their social media feeds. But there are a tremendous number of other people who work

2:16.4

in the industry as well at marketing

...

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