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Performed Persona Scams: Deceptive Personal Branding and Shifting Concepts of Fraud on Social Media Platforms

Sat, September 7, 1:00 to 2:30pm, Sheraton New Orleans Hotel, Floor: Eight, Bacchus

Abstract

The affordances of social media technologies have led to the emergence of powerful online individuals known as influencers. On platforms such as YouTube and Instagram, influencers build trust with online audiences and frequently capitalize on that trust by marketing products and services to them. As previous scholarship has shown, influencers cultivate trust with their audiences, and simultaneously construct personal brands, through performed authenticity.

In this paper, I introduce the concept of the “performed persona scam,” in which influencers or micro-celebrities mislead their audiences about a key part of their performed persona (including their personal history, personality traits, or ideology), thus betraying the perceived authenticity built with their audiences. While a certain level of performativity and even fallacy is expected of influencers, scams that betray fundamental elements of their personal brands can cause significant reputational damage.

I use a case study approach to highlight recent examples of the performed persona scam and develop a framework to compare it against traditional scam techniques and responses, as well as against other forms of digital scams. Using this framework, I also argue that the performed persona scam is viewed as a more serious trust violation for an influencers’ fans than other kinds of scams influencers may partake in. Ultimately, I argue that the values embedded in social media technologies – and the affordances of those technologies leveraged by influencers – are shifting the very concept of fraud for audiences and influencers alike.

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