Self-Presenting Virtually for Remote Social Influence

Abstract

On the Social Web, social influencers have outsized effects on their peer followers and can influence worldviews, political decisions, aspirations, lifestyles, and buying-and-selling behaviors for varying periods of time. Social influencers attain their influence based on various factors (or combinations): the sharing of insider knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) or information; entertainment; charisma, personality, appearance, communications; engaging storytelling; social identity building for the followers; and parasocial relationship building. This work explores how social influencers self-present to attract and maintain a mass-scale remote audience in a competitive virtual popularity game. This explores “peer lessons” about social influence by masters, based on observed strategic and tactical communications from social video, in a particular target domain, namely survival in the more remote reaches of Alaska.