Browsing by Author "Hachey, Alysha"
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Item No filter: navigating well-being in troubled times as social media influencers(2023) Levesque, Nataly; Hachey, Alysha; Pergelova, AlbenaSocial media influencers have the ability to impact the behaviours and attitudes of others (i.e., their followers), affecting people’s feelings of connectedness, and well-being. This has become particularly apparent during troubled times such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which has highlighted the importance of relationships and social interactions for people’s well-being. However, less attention has been paid to influencers’ own well-being in a monetised attention economy, which imposes tensions between the desire for authenticity and the self-presentations of influencers in online interactions. Using in-depth interviews and netnography as methodology, in this study we examine how the decision to engage with the topic of COVID-19 on social media impacted influencers’ well-being during the pandemic. We build on self-determination theory to reveal how the contentious nature of the subject led to internal struggles of influencers’ self-presentation, and elucidate how influencers navigated the boundaries of autonomy, competence, and relatedness in a quest for well-being.Item #Sponsored: understanding the boundary conditions of resistance coping activation in influencer advertising(2023) Pergelova, Albena; Hachey, AlyshaInfluencer advertising has sparked controversy among both consumers and regulators, in that influencer advertising’s very effectiveness is built on deceit, since consumers are often unaware of the persuasive intent. Empirical evidence on influencer advertising is built largely on the premise that disclosure will activate consumers’ reactance since consumers will recognize the persuasive intent. Using a mixed-method approach (focus groups and survey), we contribute to the growing body of research on influencer advertising by demonstrating the role of three important boundary conditions in the relationship between knowledge of persuasive intent and activation of “resistant coping” mechanisms: trust, overconfidence, and transparency. Based on our focus group results, we propose that two groups of outcome variables need further research attention: (1) consumers’ moral and affective advertising literacy and (2) other individual-level psychological outcomes, such as cognitive dissonance and reduced control over one’s time and productivity. In our further empirical test, we focus more specifically on perceptions of moral appropriateness of advertising, and we illustrate its importance for understanding how influencer advertising works.