#SponsoredAd, #Influencer, #topaccounts, #algorithm, #brands, #companies, #personalized, #datacollection, #realphotos, #followers, #fashion, #smartphones, #real, #internet, #curves, #gender, #woman, #Instagram, #followers, #ideology, #subjects, #femaleInstagrammers, #beauty, #body, #online. #user, #Instagrammer, “Influencer
On [Instagram], there is an assumption that when an [Instagram] [“Influencer”] promotes a certain product, they genuinely like it and use it often. It also may appear ambiguous whether or not they have been paid for the promotion. Now, every other post on your [Instagram] timeline or on your stories is a [sponsored ad]. Highly followed [Instagram] [“Influencers”] are constantly being paid to promote different [companies] and [brands] to their millions of [followers]. [Companies] can select who they choose to sponsor, which are typically the most followed [accounts], since they want the most amount of global publicity for their [brand]. If [companies] mainly pay the top accounts on [Instagram], then whatever the [top accounts] support and look like becomes synonymous with what the company also endorses. As a result, the [Instagram] [algorithm] continues to push these highly followed [accounts] even more, since they want these [brands] to keep using their app to sell products and subsequently make money through [Instagram].
[Companies] contribute to the [ideology] of the “perfect [woman]” through paid promotions, making women into [subjects] ready to buy products promoted by their favorite, top followed, [accounts]. For example, many [companies] sponsor the most followed [female Instagrammers], who promote a specific female [beauty] standard and [body] type: curvy, white, long (typically brown) hair, big lips and butt, small waist, etc. When these women are sponsored by [brands] around the world, this beauty standard is reinforced and praised. As a result, girls around the world who look up to these women being sponsored by [companies], then begin to question their own body, lifestyle, clothing, etc, and aim to adhere to these unrealistic standards in order to achieve the same level of “success” as these [Instagram] models [online]. [Brands] capitalize on this [ideology] and make women believe that in order to achieve this same [beauty] promoted by [female Instagrammers], they need to purchase push-up bras, lip injections, cosmetic surgery, certain [brand]-name clothing, fitness and dieting plans, waist thinners, etc. Women as ideological [subjects] are trapped in this cycle of [Instagram] [ad]vertisements and the need to fit into this specific [beauty] standard.
The [internet] collapses the public and the private spheres and allows ideologies to spread into homes across the globe. Now with [smartphones] and apps like [Instagram], the use of [online] “cookies” tracks your search history, likes, and follows to [personalize] [ad]s for you. Instead of TV ads that are pre-planned and not [personalized], now [Instagram] ads on your timeline align with your recent searches and likes. [Instagram]’s tracking and data collection ultimately transforms its [user]s into [subjects] that are solely sought after as consumers to purchase products promoted by [companies] on the app. [Companies] also capitalize on [Instagram]’s [user]s in manipulative ways. If people see their favorite [Instagram] [“Influencer”] using a certain product, they may be more likely to purchase it since they “trust” that [Instagrammer] and “know” they would “never lie” about a product. Since [Instagrammers] seemingly post “real” photos of themselves and their lives, it creates this feeling of knowledge and intimacy between themselves and their [followers], which makes followers more likely to buy the [brands] that this “personable” [Instagrammer] is being paid to promote. However, sometimes it is unclear whether a post is [sponsored] or not, and in that case, millions of people, as [subjects] of ideologies, are manipulated into purchasing something without knowing that the [“Influencer”] did not actually like the product, they were just paid to endorse it.
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