**
*Call for papers: /Nordic Journal of Media Studies/, Vol. 7 (2025)*
**
*Title: Influencers: Entertainment, Politics, and Strategic Online Culture *
*Editors:*
* Anne Jerslev (University of Copenhagen):
[log in to unmask]
* Mette Mortensen (University of Copenhagen):
[log in to unmask]
*Important dates:*
Deadline for extended abstracts: 3 April 2024
Deadline for full submissions: 1 September 2024
Peer review: October 2023–December 2024
Expected publication: Spring 2025
*Background and aim*
Influencers wield significant social, political, and economic influence,
as they have transformed from micro celebrities (Senft, 2008; Jerslev,
2016) and other Internet celebrities from the 2000s, operating at the
intersections of authenticity and performance, creativity and commerce.
Influencers navigate the realms of everyday life, entertainment, and
politics, cutting across mainstream cultures and subcultures, the
national, the Nordic, and the international (see, e.g., Abidin et al.,
2020). Over the past decade, influencers have taken a central stage on
YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and other social media, on which they “make
a living from being celebrities native to and on the Internet” (Abidin,
2018: 1). In their pursuit of sustained visibility, influencers
construct relatable narratives and project identities and sets of values
that are recognisable and desirable to followers. Most influencers adopt
commercial marketing strategies; they are managed by influencer agencies
and create themselves as brands by performing scenes from their
relatably ordinary or (more or less) admirably extraordinary lives. Some
influencers promote commodity goods to monetise on these self-branding
strategies (Jerslev & Mortensen, 2023: 336), or they receive
compensation from social media networks such as YouTube relative to the
number of likes and followers they generate. Meanwhile, other
influencers are driven by political objectives, functioning primarily as
content creators and using their platform visibility to gain political
impact (Lewis, 2020; Riedl et al., 2023). Influencers strategically
appeal to specific target audiences defined by demographics such as age,
life phase, gender, race, nationality, and more, or by shared interests
in areas like gaming, fashion, financial investments, lifestyle, health,
beauty, environment, sports, home handicraft, family life, food, pets,
religion, and so forth.
Influencers cover a great span: Far-right female influencers project
traditional family values as a form of empowerment and agency (Askanius,
2022) or advocate anti-establishment in the context of the Nordic
welfare state (Mortensen & Kristensen, 2023). Meanwhile, on the other
end of the spectrum, feminist influencers advocate pro-choice and other
women’s rights. Some influencers actively contribute to shaping
narratives and discourses on wars by reporting from their daily life in
conflict zones or propagate political opinions and calls for action.
Others, like migrants, document their fearful journey towards a distant
goal (Turkewitz, 2023). Others again use their popular cultural persona
to promote issues related to the environment and sustainability
(Schmuck, 2021). And many influencers perform catchy dances or dead-pan,
comical scenes for younger audiences, who consume entertainment and
information largely driven by promotional and commercial interests, but
are, perhaps, also able to seek out role models fine-tuned to the
formation of their own identities.
With this issue of /Nordic Journal of Media Studies/, we invite scholars
to explore the following questions: How can we understand and measure
the social, cultural, economical, and political power and impact exerted
on and by followers? What does it mean to “follow” an influencer? What
do online relationships and personal affective attachments to
influencers mean to people in their everyday lives? Is it possible to be
an influencer and, for example, an activist simultaneously in a digital
economy guided by algorithmic logics (cf. Scharff 2023)? Which
narratives of self are constructed by different influencer profiles?
Themes include but are not limited to the following:
* Influencers and performance of values in relation to, e.g., gender,
politics, culture, etc.
* Influencer economies and digital labor
* Influencers and marketing – business models, influencer agencies,
self-branding strategies
* Influencers and regulation, e.g., in a Nordic context
* Influencer culture and gender
* Children and TikTok – patterns of consumption, influencers as role
models
* Influencers as sources of news and information, e.g., in the context
of Nordic public service media
* Influencers and religion, e.g., in relation to worship and authority
* Influencers, politics, and politicians
* Influencers and cross-media communication (media, channels, genres)
* Influencers and followers – forms of communication, parasocial
interaction, and affect
* Influencers, celebrity, and fandom
* Influencers and the construction and commodification of authenticity
* Influencer engagement and engagement measurement
* Methodological approaches to the analysis of influencer accounts and
following
We welcome theoretical, empirical, analytical contributions, and so on,
just as we encourage interdisciplinary work and collaborative research
produced with non-academic partners.
*Literature*
Abidin, C. (2018). /Internet celebrity:/ /Understanding fame online.
/Emerald Publishing.
https://doi.org/10.1108/9781787560765
Abidin, C., Steenbjerg Hansen, K, Hogsnes, M., Newlands, G., Nielsen, M.
L., Nielsen, L. Y., & Sihvonen, T. (2020). A review of formal and
informal regulations in the Nordic influencer industry. /Nordic Journal
of Media Studies/, /2/(1), 71–83.
https://doi.org/10.2478/njms-2020-0007
Askanius, T. (2022). Women in the Nordic resistance movement//and their
online media practices: Between internalised misogyny and embedded
feminism. /Feminist Media Studies/, /22/(7), 1763–1780.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2021.1916772
Jerslev, A. (2016). In the time of the microcelebrity: Celebrification
and the YouTuber Zoella. /International Journal of Communication/, /10/,
5233–5251.
https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/5078
Jerslev, A., & Mortensen, M. (2023). Celebrity news online: Changing
media, actors, and stories. In S. Alle (Ed.), /The Routledge companion
to news and journalism/ (pp. 334–342). Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003174790
Lewis, R. (2020). “This is what the news won’t show you”: YouTube
creators and the reactionary politics of micro celebrity. /Television &
New Media/, /21/(2), 201–217.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476419879919
Mortensen, M., & Kristensen, N. N. (2023). At the boundaries of
authority and authoritarianism in the welfare state: News coverage of
alt. health influencers during the Covid-19 pandemic. /Javnost – The
Public/, /30/(1), 35–50.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2023.2168442
Riedl, M. J., Lukito, J., & Woolley, S. C. (2023). Political influencers
on social media: An introduction. /Social Media + Society/,/9/(2)/.
/https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231177938
Scharff, C. (2023). Are we all influencers now? Feminist activists
discuss the distinction between being an activist and an influencer.
/Feminist Theory/. OnlineFirst.
https://doi.org/10.1177/14647001231201062
Schmuck, D. (2021). Social media influencers and environmental
communication. In B. Takahashi, J. Metag, J. Thaker, & S. E. Comfort
(Eds.), /The handbook of international trends in environmental
communication /(pp. 373–387). Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367275204
Senft, T. (2008). /Camgirls: Celebrity and community in the age of
social networks. /Peter Lang.
Turkewitz, J. (2023, December 20). Live from the jungle: Migrants become
influencers on social media. /New York Times/.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/20/world/americas/migrants-tiktok-darien-gap.html#
**
*Procedure*
Those with an interest in contributing should write an extended abstract
(max. 750 words) where the main theme (or argument) of the
intended article is described. The abstract should contain the
preliminary title, five keywords, and a rationale for how
the article fits within the overall aim of the issue.
Send your extended abstract to Mette Mortensen ([log in to unmask]) and
Anne Jerslev ([log in to unmask]) by 3 April 2024.
Scholars invited to submit a full manuscript (6,000–8,000 words) will be
notified by e-mail after the extended abstracts have been
assessed. All submissions should be original works and must not be under
consideration by other publishers. All submissions are submitted to
Similarity Check – a Crossref service utilising iThenticate text
comparison software to detect text-recycling or plagiarism.
* Visit Crossref to learn more about Similarity Check
<https://www.crossref.org/services/similarity-check/>
After the initial submission and review process, manuscripts that are
accepted for publication must adhere to our guidelines upon
final manuscript delivery. You may choose to use our templates to assist
you in correctly formatting your manuscript.
* Download a manuscript template (docx, 32 kB)
<https://www.nordicom.gu.se/sites/default/files/nyheter-dokument/nordicom-manuscript-template-2023_1.docx>
* Read the full instructions for authors
<https://www.nordicom.gu.se/en/publications/publish-with-nordicom/instructions-authors>
*About /Nordic Journal of Media Studies/*
/Nordic Journal of Media Studies/ is a peer-reviewed international
publication dedicated to media research. The journal is a meeting place
for Nordic, European, and global perspectives on media studies. It is is
a thematic digital-only journal published once a year. The editors
stress the importance of innovative and interdisciplinary research, and
welcome contributions on both contemporary developments and historical
topics.
* Read the aims & scope of NJMS
<https://www.nordicom.gu.se/en/publications/nordic-journal-media-studies>
*About the publisher*
Nordicom is a centre for Nordic media research at the University of
Gothenburg, supported by the Nordic Council of
Ministers. Nordicom publishes all works under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
licence, which allows for non-commercial, non-derivative types
of reuse and sharing with proper attribution. All works are published
Open Access and are available to read free of charge and without
requirement for registration. There are no article processing charges
for authors, and authors retain copyright.
* Read our editorial policies
<https://www.nordicom.gu.se/en/publications/publish-with-nordicom/editorial-policies>
* Visit Creative Commons to learn more about our CC licence
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode>
Link to the call on Nordicom’s website:
https://www.nordicom.gu.se/en/latest/news/call-papers-influencers-entertainment-politics-and-strategic-online-culture
<https://www.nordicom.gu.se/en/latest/news/call-papers-influencers-entertainment-politics-and-strategic-online-culture>