Top marketing influencers skew overwhelmingly male and white
Evidence
Already, the burgeoning influencer industry is drawing criticism for its lopsided nature—one that defies the egalitarian spirit that digital media companies endorse so vehemently. After noticing a staggering disparity in Entrepreneur’s list of “50 Online Marketing Influencers to Watch in 2016”—nearly three-quarters were male and 86 percent were white—social media consultant Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré penned an essay on “The Problem With Influencer Marketing.” Through such a narrowly defined version of “influence,” DeMeré argued, “the loud and privileged are even more amplified, to the point where they saturate the conversation and drown out voices from marginalized groups.” It’s a system that amounts to “the influencer version of ‘the rich get richer.’” — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love, 486
Categorization
- XREF: quantified confirmation of the ch3 ‘pipeline vs bias’ claim applied to influencer marketing rankings. — connects to: Only conventionally attractive young white or Asian women become top bloggers — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 491; Influencer marketing amplifies loud privileged voices disproportionately — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 486; Bloggers cultivate padded follower ratios through ritual unfollowing — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 389 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Influencer success requires tacit normativity of whiteness and racialized human worth.
#corroborates(0.90) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 33 - Algorithmic homophily makes moving from worker to capitalist harder for nonwhite influencers
#expands(0.85) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 41 - White influencers receive more pay and perks than nonwhite peers online
#corroborates(0.82) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 39 - Property ownership is a racialized, obscured basis of influencer success
#expands(0.80) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 42 - Diverse candidate pools shield colorblind picks that favor white men
#corroborates(0.78) - Top US magazine publishers’ executive teams are overwhelmingly male.
#exemplifies(0.72) — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love, 691