A Cross-Country Comparison of Political (Mis-)information Provided by Social Media Influencers on YouTube and Youth’s Political Involvement

Social media influencers (SMI), defined as ordinary people who gain popularity on social media, are increasingly weaving political issues into their communication, which may be engaging for young followers, but also puts them at risk for misinformation. This thesis has provided important insights into political SMIs, their content, and consequences of exposure to their messages among youth: I delivered detailed and partly comparative (i.e., cross-country) insights into 1) characteristics of SMIs’ political messages, 2) the use and popularity of SMIs’ political content among youth, and 3) possible effects of their political posts on young people’s political involvement. In summary, this dissertation found that SMIs cover political topics rather infrequently, but that their political posts — especially those that contain infotainment and represent commentaries on political topics — are well-received by their audiences. Moreover, most SMIs are opinion-oriented and regularly employ intimacy techniques—such as direct address and community engagement—in their political messages, allowing them to develop an informal political influence. In addition, results showed that fact-oriented and female SMIs were especially likely to construct their content in ways that could be beneficial for young people’s political involvement. Meanwhile, across countries, young people’s reliance on SMIs for political information was associated with factors like male gender and high political participation. In Germany, results further suggest that young people may choose SMIs as important information sources due to intimacy that they experience with them. In addition, in this country, potentially underinformed young people can be reached via SMIs, which has important practical implications for political actors. In line with the parasocial opinion leader concept and the theoretical assumptions of social curation, SMIs also seem to exert a political influence on their followers, impacting young people in ways that are beneficial and others which can be considered damaging for democracy. Last, in this thesis, I evaluated the applicability of the opinion leader label to SMIs. Using an innovative typology, the concluding chapter of this thesis established SMIs as a specific opinion leader type, who is distinct from traditional opinion leaders and other but arguably more distant ‘mass opinion leaders’ (such as celebrities). This concluding article should be understood as an impetus for future research to keep studying SMIs through the lens of opinion leadership, but also serves as a reminder that scholars should account for the specificities of SMIs in their work: While SMIs have substantial reach which exceeds that of regular people, they are, unlike celebrities, closely engaged with their communities and embody a certain degree of ordinariness and attainability. These qualities are reminiscent of assets of traditional opinion leaders, who exert horizontal influence in tight-knit personal networks.