Contamination Via Fake News
Celebrity Ethos and the Spread of Misinformation on Social Media
On social media, a façade of subjective opinion and information neutrality is masked behind a notion of deliberative freedom. Platforms like Twitter and Instagram interpellate users to formulate opinions and brand subjective beliefs on their social feeds. Often times, however, these beliefs are not original nor reflective of personal opinions, but rather reiterations of preferred perspectives of popular social figures and paid advertisements. Information capitalism persists on the fact that the high speed and quantity at which information is disseminated makes it hard for users to evaluate its veracity. Opinions held by popular social actors with recognized ethos are granted preference and visibility online, making it easy for users to selectively confirm biased beliefs and internalize uniform worldviews. This paper will conduct a contextual and rhetorical media analysis to gauge how misinformation is spread online via the ethos of popular celebrities and influencers with high cultural capital. With reference to the widespread and continuous contamination of social media spaces like Twitter and Instagram by misinformation, this paper argues that the ethos, subjective opinions and ideologies communicated by popular celebrities and influencers encourage users and fans to accept and adopt the same or similar worldviews instead of engaging actively with information to devise personal conclusions. First, this paper will outline the history of influencer culture and spread of fake news online. Then, it will examine the popularization of standardized health, fitness and eating routines via the rhetoric of popular online celebrities. Finally, it will investigate the spread of fake news about the coronavirus via the proliferation of healthcare and vaccine misinformation by influencers. Ultimately, this paper will consider how trusting celebrity rhetoric contaminates media spaces, risks the integrity of news and leaves users misinformed and socially disconnected.
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The complex politics of the internet celebrity cultivates a newfound basis upon which influence and authenticity is constructed and commodified online. The increased prevalence of fake news reflects the historic demise or regression of news veracity. Though the quantity of information available online continues to increase significantly, its quality is often compromised. Today, a new communicative ecosystem exists: one where contemporary information possesses a greater potential for ‘contamination’ via political influence, biased perspectives and unilateral perceptions about what constitutes the truth. The influencer industry has trivialized and redefined the ways in which information, ideologies and personal opinions are weaponized and used as tools for emotional expression online (Baker and Rojek, 2020). The quiet coercion, implied by celebrity ethos and issued over mass audiences, allows for the cultivation of online communities around celebrity governance. Celebrities filter, based on their personal ideologies about world issues, information and vocalize their preferred worldviews to their followings. This promotes the copying and internalization of popular opinions and news interpretations which is especially concerning for users whose primary medium for retrieving news is social media (O’Neill, 2020).
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The design of social media platforms encourages the spread of influencer-facilitated fake news by indirectly forcing users into filter bubbles and down digital rabbit holes. Because social media sites like Instagram and Twitter flourish from the commodification of users’ attention, interaction and engagement, visibility of controversial or provoking information is prioritized. Communities of like-minded individuals online - like feminist, anti-semitist and BLM advocacy groups, for example - demonstrate how the infrastructural design of social media sites allow individuals in these groups to find and connect with one another to confirm ideological biases. The communal reinforcement of subjective perspectives makes social media an ideal space for influential personalities to vocalize opinions and create tailored niche bubbles. The hybridization of social and mainstream media drives the continuation of a “vicious cycle of news reporting,” as Wheeler (2018) suggests, whereby ideals are constructed on the basis of popularity.
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Wheeler (2018) defines the mediated celebrity influencer as a social figure that makes use of their high cultural capital, recognition and visibility to exploit information, “leverage pre-existing public recognition and notoriety and deploy it across novel platforms” (31). Celebrity endorsements - especially false endorsements - threaten the authenticity of news and quality of influence uprooted online. Likewise, trusted endorsements, as Mena et al. (2020) note, “increase the credibility of misleading content online” (1). Social media’s interactive nature permits the manipulation of information in favour of popular opinions. Influencers with large followings, for example, are attributed social validation in result of bandwagon heuristics and the illusion of trust garnered via the products they endorse (Mena et al., 2020). For example, while widely recognized as the celebrity face of Aveeno, Jennifer Aniston has been falsely endorsing Aveeno skin products for decades. Aniston also does not use Aveeno products on her skin to achieve the youthful visage and flawless skin flaunted in Aveeno advertisements (Wheeler, 2018).
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Moreover, fitness influencers, lifestyle bloggers and diet cultures on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube promote standardized health approaches by popularizing strict diet, exercise and lifestyle regimes. Content from these accounts often suggest lifestyle modifications that uplift the popular ‘effortlessly fit, healthy and happy’ narrative (Rousseau, 2015). Posted content also often encourages unhealthy and extremist approaches to achieving health goals like detox and fasting diets, flash, fad and crash diets like Keto and juice cleanses like celery or ginger cleanses (Duplaga, 2020). Dieting and health has become a deeply political industry and the promotion of skinny teas, weight loss subscriptions, new appearance expectations and beauty standards have gained traction in media spaces. Thinness and fitness are often conflated in the realm of health online; this is often implied by influencer rhetoric that polices ‘clean’ diets and self-management (Rodney, 2018). Pilgrim and Sabine (2019) suggest that influencers are prime spreaders of misinformation on social media about dieting, eating and nutrition. Influencers shape modern perspectives surrounding selections of nutritious foods; this is displayed via content that markets ‘drastic’ physique and wellness changes alongside routines that work for them (Baker and Rojek, 2020). The array of conflicting and contradictory information online about what and how often to eat as well as instilled fear surrounding sweets, desserts and snacking make it challenging for users to know what or whose advice to follow (Rousseau, 2015). However, following the diets and routines of their celebrity idols makes it easy for users to decide how to proceed. Thus, by promoting diet and exercise tips to achieve pictured perfection, “influencers promise a simplified way of optimizing one’s appearance as the key to happiness” (Pilgrim and Sabine, 2019, 1).
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Fitness junkies and popular body-conscious influencers often glorify restrictive health and eating regimes by attaching hashtags like “#fitspiration” and “#thinspiration.” In doing so, users are indirectly oriented to compare the adequacy (or lack thereof) of their bodies and lifestyles to those flaunted in the visual posts of influencers and implicitly obliging them to implement similar eating routines (Baker and Rojek, 2020). By popularizing diet plans and posting aesthetically pleasing images of low-calorie meals and “What I Eat in a Day” stories and videos, influencers actively contradict any advocation in the way of healthy living and instead sell unsustainable nutrition approaches (Rousseau, 2015). Essentially, influencers endorse what Crawford names, “healthism”, which is implicitly modelled by content that frames health as a “highly-valued pursuit” (qtd. in Rodney, 2018, 39). By associating some foods with weight gain and others with weight loss, diet culture rhetoric commends unsustainable eating. Fad diets, as Rousseau (2015) notes, are often sold as healthy ‘quick-fixes’ by influencers with little expertise on how to substantially implement macronutrient restrictive diets. Likewise, content that features popular personalities endorsing meal replacement supplements, protein powders and flat tummy teas display the branding of unhealthy and unproductive means of achieving ‘good’ health. Thus, by prioritizing the presentation of achieved physique goals via “staged images of celebrities in the gym,” (Pilgrim and Sabine, 2019, 4) influencers democratize healthy-eating discourses.
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The current reality imposed by the global coronavirus pandemic demonstrates an era of increasing health uncertainty and information skepticism. Influencers often sell ‘inconvenient truths’ or those that Abidin et al. (2020) suggest, contradict mainstream advocacy and legislative advice from healthcare professionals. This parallels the common tendency of some influencers and political figures to undermine the virus and its severity and entertain conspiracies around its motives and origins. While definitions of healthy living are continually contorted online, it becomes destructive and wholly unproductive when popular opinions counter those of industry professionals like doctors and scientists with reason, advice and direction backed by science. This demonstrates how information - or, rather, misinformation - and bandwagon media spins can be used destructively to threaten the health and safety of individuals. The World Health Organization labelled the pandemic an “infodemic” due to the rapid spread of the virus and disinformation, misinformation and scams about it online (qtd in. O’Brien, 2020). O’Brien (2020) also finds that “prominent public figures generated 69% of the social media engagement around coronavirus misinformation” (1) which compliments O’Neill’s (2020) reference to celebrities as ‘super-spreaders’ of fake news. The rhetoric of popular social actors actively shapes the virus’ representation and the spread of conspiracies such as the pandemic being a tactic for economic ‘rest’ or the virus being laboratory manufactured (O’Neill, 2020).
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The amplification of conspiracies and hesitations surrounding urgency for preventative action, enforced by celebrities, threatens the health and safety of their online followings. O’Neill (2020) notes that “spikes in the circulation of Covid-19-related misinformation online [are] almost always linked to celebrity or media endorsements” (1). Moreover, Abidin et al. (2020) find that “while some influencers use their social platforms to communicate hope and educate and urge publics to practice positive behaviours like social distancing and good hygiene,” (123) others undermine these efforts altogether. Celebrities like Woody Harrelson and Wiz Khalifa, for example, promote negative rhetoric about the virus and encourage the spread of origin conspiracies; namely, 5G technology and anti-capitalist groups online (O’Neill, 2020). Another example of celebrity misinformation-spreading is the case of Amanda Micallef, Australian reality TV star and influencer who encouraged her followers to ‘ignore lockdown restrictions’ while “sharing unverified information about the pandemic being ‘a ruse to get rid of physical money’” (Abidin et al., 2020, 124). Conversely, influencers like Oprah Winfrey, Selena Gomez and Robert DeNiro frequently team up with health agencies to create campaigns that promote and normalize positive Covid-19 etiquette (“Who are the”). In doing so, these popular social icons help establish a sense of urgency for positive health and safety precautionary action.
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Furthermore, several contrasting opinions have surfaced online with respect to the topic of vaccinations. Speculations about vaccines causing autism or being a means of governmental control facilitated by Bill gates have been supported by celebrities like Lewis Hamilton, Derick Lewis and comedian, Cedric the Entertainer (Abidin et al., 2020, 124). Conversely, celebrities like Joe Jonas and his wife Sophie Turner use their social channels to encourage people to get vaccinated; “Lets (NOT) Get It!” the caption read under an Instagram post of the couple showing off their vaccinated arms (@joejonas). Instead of sowing doubt and fear around vaccinations, these celebrities document their vaccination experiences and share it positively with publics online. Thus, in a sense, influencers act as digital public relations agents with the freedom to communicate their own Covid-19 and vaccine perspectives (Abidin et al., 2020, 116).
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The ways in which information is framed by famous personalities online plays a quintessential role in its reception and interpretation by media audiences. The spread of misinformation is facilitated, in large part, by a lack of critical questioning of its veracity and authenticity. The cognitive authority employed by influential personalities online govern the thought patters of users and reinforce perceptions of credibility. In this way, celebrities and their large followings benefit from using “social media as a form of electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM), where users place importance on social ties and trust in the flow of information” (Mena et al., 2020, 6). The technological possibilities and infrastructural design of social media sites accelerates the spread of fake news. The rhetoric of popular personalities and micro-celebrities works to commodify health and fetishize physical appearance, eating and lifestyle routines. With respect to the pandemic, influencers manage the information landscape by encouraging misinformation and deceptive advertising about the virus (Abidin et al., 2020, 116).
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References
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