PROPAGANDA INFLUENCERS
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Influencers as emerging actors in global digital propaganda
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2025, European Journal of Cultural Studieshttps://doi.org/10.1177/13675494251351221
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Abstract
This article conceptualizes the emerging phenomenon of ‘influencer propaganda’, which we define as the various persuasive, strategic communicative actions by social media influencers that promote political and ideological agendas through popular content and emotional appeals, with the intent to affect behaviour and belief among their followers. The current discussion of such practices frequently reproduces a dichotomy of ‘illegitimate’ vs ‘legitimate’ political communication. In contrast to this, we propose viewing influencer propaganda as a near-global political activity that can be found in both domestic and external spheres, regardless of political system and national context. By illustrating this phenomenon with observations from China, we argue that influencer propaganda in China and beyond is not solely dictated by traditional political actors but is instead negotiated through the interplay of political, corporate, and personal interests, all mediated by the affordances of digital platforms and embodied in the influencers’ digital performances.
Key takeaways
AI
- Influencer propaganda emerges as a global phenomenon affecting political communication across various regimes.
- The article critiques the dichotomy of ‘illegitimate’ vs ‘legitimate’ political communication within influencer contexts.
- China exemplifies the complex interplay of influencers, state interests, and digital platforms in propaganda.
- Influencer propaganda leverages emotional appeals and personal connections to shape beliefs and behaviors.
- The text encourages further research on the ethical implications of influencer propaganda in both authoritarian and democratic contexts.
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2 European Journal of Cultural Studies 00(0) China and Russia’s manipulation of influencers to target liberal democracies. The New York Times was among the first to cover the foreign social media personalities sponsored by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) who spread pro-Beijing messages on foreign social media platforms (Mozur et al., 2021). China is also accused of using ethnic-minor- ity influencers to whitewash human rights abuses in Xinjiang on YouTube (Ryan et al., 2022). Similarly, Russia’s state-funded news outlet was reported to have hired American social media influencers to interfere in the 2024 US election and hype anti-Ukraine nar- ratives (Roth, 2024). Such influencers are widely criticized as part of China and Russia’s disinformation campaigns and influence operations against the liberal democracies. However, the use of influencers for influence operation is not a patent of authoritarian states. Liberal democratic governments, such as the United States, have also harnessed influencers for achieving their goals. For example, in early 2022, the White House and National Security Council briefed TikTok influencers on the Ukraine crisis to help sway public opinion over Russia’s invasion among global young TikTok users (Kelly, 2022). Moreover, the Global Engagement Centre (GEC) within the Bureau of Global Public Affairs at the US State Department also collaborates with local influencers, such as in Africa, in countering China and Russia’s disinformation campaigns targeting these regions (Gedeon, 2024). However, these actions have received much less media cover- age and are usually framed as counterattacks in self-defence. Only rarely do reports examine the connection between influencers and political actors within domestic con- texts, for instance the role that influencers played in promoting partisan agendas during the 2024 US election (Zakrzewski, 2024). In this article, we go beyond the ‘illegitimate’ vs ‘legitimate’ dichotomy and examine influencer propaganda as a global phenomenon with common characteristics. In this, we follow earlier attempts to complicate and deepen understandings of ‘propaganda’. As Cunningham (2002) wrote at the turn of the millennium, ‘we need to find the most theo- retically instructive ways to talk about or describe the phenomenon of propaganda, ways of describing that will also do justice to its epistemic complexity, its obvious symbolic texture, and its broad, cultural scope’ (p. 156). We take up this ‘epistemic complexity’ by contributing to the scholarship that asks how political influence morphs when it goes digital (see, for example, Benkler et al., 2018; Lin, 2024; Surowiec-Capell, 2024 and the contributions in MacLeod, 2019). Moreover, we also draw attention to the domestic dimension of influencer propaganda to comprehensively understand influencer politics across different political systems. In the following, we first explain and define the concept of ‘influencer propaganda’, which is so far missing in academic research. Second, we will use China as an example to demonstrate how multiple players co-create influencer propaganda. Last but not least, we will point out future directions for research on influencer propaganda in the global context, and we will reflect on the normative implications of placing the propaganda concept on more neutral analytical footing, at a time of near-ubiquitous online manipula- tions and distortions. Understanding and defining ‘influencer propaganda’ Propaganda is usually understood as ‘the attempt to transmit social and political values in the hope of affecting people’s thinking, emotions, and behavior’ (Kenez, 1985: 4). As
Xu and Schneider 3 such, it is a form of strategic communication (Schneider, 2023). More specifically, politi- cal propaganda refers to various communicative actions conducted by political actors that aim at promoting a particular political agenda or ideology or influencing public opinion for the purpose of shaping the target audience’s point of view (Jowett and O’Donnell, 2015). Propaganda often carries negative connotations, predominantly describing the perva- sive information manipulation, control, and deception known from totalitarian regimes as they attempt to exploit the emotions and beliefs of audiences at home and abroad (Jowett and O’Donnell, 2015). Liberal democracies use more neutral terms, such as ‘public relations’ or ‘public diplomacy’ to refer to similar persuasive techniques and actions. This demonstrates the politics and ideology behind the terminology of classic propaganda studies, which has hindered holistic and comparative understandings of wider phenomena ranging from information dissemination to public persuasion (Cunningham, 2002). Therefore, we treat ‘influencer propaganda’ as a neutral term that describes communicative activities in both liberal-democratic and authoritarian contexts. We take it as a trend that has grown out of the evolving landscape of ‘digital propaganda’ in today’s platform society and influencer economy. Digital propaganda refers to the digitalization of propaganda, facilitated by the avail- ability and affordability of information and communication technologies (ICTs) (Surowiec-Capell, 2024). An equivalent term has been ‘computational propaganda’, which likewise refers to various digitally-enabled propaganda tactics, such as using bots and trolls, algorithms and deepfake, mainly to distribute false information through social media networks (Lin, 2024). As Surowiec-Capell (2024) argues, ‘the digitalization of propaganda shows a state of flux, namely its adaptability to evolving media landscapes’ (p. 214), and it keeps generating new ‘actants’ in ‘manufacturing consensus’. We take influencers as such a new ‘actant’ or ‘propagandist’ in an increasingly platformized media landscape. ‘Influencer propaganda’ essentially embodies influencer politics. Arnesson and Reinikainen (2024) point out that the idea of influencers as ‘political actors’ or ‘ideologi- cal intermediaries’ has become prominent in the 2020s and has accelerated the ‘politici- sation of influencers’. They argue that influencer politics represents ‘a specific form of convergence between the personal, political, and promotional in contemporary digital media and society’ and that studies on the topic should focus on ‘how the core ideas of influencer culture – authenticity, intimacy, commercialism, and self-branding – shape the ways in which politics are expressed and understood in this context, as well as opening up space for new ways of connecting with the public’ (Arnesson and Reinikainen, 2024: 7). For influencer propaganda, we are specifically interested in looking at how the core ideas of influencer culture (see Abidin, 2018; Craig et al., 2021) shape the ways propa- ganda is conducted. If we take traditional political propaganda as content that political actors produce and spread, using mass media, for the purpose of advancing their political agenda and ideology among target audiences, then influencer propaganda has trans- formed these traditional activities in five important ways. First, as individual influencers become propagandists, governments, official media and politicians are no longer the sole actors in propaganda. Influencers are at times employed by other political actors who reward them, turning them into agents of estab- lished interests. However, they also possess their own agency, either shaping traditional
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AIWhat defines ‘influencer propaganda’ in contemporary digital media?addHow has China leveraged influencers for political messaging?addWhat role do social media platforms play in influencer propaganda?addHow do influencers engage with political agendas in liberal democracies?addWhat methodological challenges exist in studying influencer propaganda?addAbout the author
Deakin University, Faculty MemberaddFollowmailMessage
Dr Jian Xu is an Associate Professor in Communication in the School of Communication and Creative Arts. He is a school-based member of Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI) and an Associate Investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. He co-leads the Faculty’s Asian Media, Culture and Society Research Group. Before joining Deakin University, he was an Endeavour Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the China Research Centre, University of Technology Sydney, and a Visiting Scholar in the Centre for Global Communication Studies and the Centre for the Study of Contemporary China, University of Pennsylvania. He received his PhD in Media and Communication from the University of New South Wales. Jian researches Chinese digital media and communication and celebrity studies with critical approaches. He has widely published on China’s digital activism, internet governance, digital youth cultures, cultural governance and celebrity politics. He is Editor-in-Chief of Communication Research and Practice, published on behalf of the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Communication Association (AANZCA). He is series editor of Asian Celebrity and Fandom Studies for Bloomsbury Academic. He received the Faculty Mid-Career Researcher Award for Career Excellence (2022), Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence (2024), and the Faculty Partnerships and International Award (2018, 2021).
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