Exploring Communication Practices of Influencers on Commerce-Focused Social Media

Abstract

Social commerce sites continue to rise in popularity due in large part to their ability to integrate content creation and selling. Platforms like Whatnot provide new avenues for public relations scholarship to explore the communication strategies and techniques used by influencers to engage with users to cultivate community during product promotions. Through the qualitative analysis of 10 livestream auctions across five categories, this study adds to the literature the concept of the strategic communication performance of selling, e.g., the ways in which influencers engage in strategic communication to put on a performance of selling products. Counter to the traditional digital culture recommendations that tout authenticity, this study presents the idea of explicit performance of selling that occurs among influencers which seeks to leverage social capital through transparency/vulnerability, the use of established norms, and the increase of engagement through the dispersion of power among users.