The decision on what my senior thesis topic should be was rather easier; I was fascinated with influencers, and would you believe I still am even after my year long in depth dive into them. A few things about me: I'm a photography minor, I live on social media, I've always wanted to be a model, and I thrive by expressing myself through fashion. All of these aspects culminated when it came time to choosing my senior thesis topic. I even chose this topic for my junior year Communication Research Methods so it's something I'm very passionate about.

 

I was intrigued to begin searching for scholarly articles to view influencers and influencer marketing from a new perspective. As a Marketing Communication major I was excited to be able to explore and research such a new and relevant part of this industry. All my articles were only a few years old and new articles were being published every day. I knew influencers were important to research because companies were turning to them as new way to promote their brands and products. I wanted to learn the whole anatomy of an influencer and how they were turning the idea of traditional celebrity advertising on its head.

 

I always had this assumption that some influencers might be benefitting off of prior money or connections, and once I read this briefly in the literature I knew it was something that needed to be investigated more deeply. While I was only able to gather perspectives and experiences from influencers with followings between 5K and 43K, I believe further research would benefit from added perspectives provided by influencers with 50K followers and above, as they are the mega influencers. 

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