Lecture Notes in Education
Psychology and Public Media

Virtual Influencers: Walking Around the Boundary of Real and Virtual

Author

Jiang Mei * 1

1 Institute of Journalism and Communication, Wuhan University

Corresponding Author

Jiang Mei

Keywords

virtual influencer, real, virtual, social media

Abstract

As a new agent appearing on social network, virtual influencers are becoming a strong force to be reckoned with worldwide due to their hyper-realistic appearance and distinctive personality, which sparks hot discussion of real and virtual issues in social media. This paper take an Instagram virtual influencer, Imma as analysis object, explores her interaction with followers in light of parasocial theory. Case study and content analysis have been used as main methods. Through analysis, it can be proposed that the reality in social media should not be limited to physical form of entity, and the reality in psychological existence is also a type of reality.

Citation

Jiang Mei. Virtual Influencers: Walking Around the Boundary of Real and Virtual. LNEP (2021) LNEP ICEIPI 2021: 104-113. DOI: 10.54254/lnep.iceipi.2021175.

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