Future Trends in Social Media and Public Relations
Public relations (PR) focuses on storytelling by creating newsworthy content that will be communicated to target audiences. However, because social media has empowered individual consumers to an unprecedented level, we are no longer passive consumers of stories and some consumers have even reached influencer status where their opinions carry great authority. In the future, PR stories will shape global culture, but the Covid-19 pandemic has also alerted us to the damage caused by deliberate misinformation (e.g. the anti-vaccination movement). The digital environment — especially where PR now operates — is changing rapidly; artificial intelligence and machine learning are assisting corporatio…
Hope You’re Not Totally Commercial! : Toward a Better Understanding of Advertising Recognition's Impact on Influencer Marketing Effectiveness
Social media influencers (SMIs) have become an effective channel for reaching targeted customers. The present study explores the influence process of advertising recognition on consumer responses in the SMI marketing context. The authors examined an Instagram post featuring the endorsement of a brand and created an experimental design with four conditions related to advertising recognition and the parasocial relationship. Findings from a partial least squares structural equation modeling procedure indicate that advertising recognition results in overall negative consumer responses to SMI brand endorsements. The results also indicate parallel mediating effects of source credibility and atti…