Under the influencer: Participatory culture and the rise of the viratoid
研究普通消费者如何通过依附知名社交媒体网红来积累名人资本，提出“病毒式人物”这一新概念，并分析其对社交媒体网络、营销者和品牌管理的影响。
A participatory culture encourages followers of Social Media Influencers (SMIs) to engage with the constructed online identities of prominent SMIs. We explore how ordinary consumers amass celebrity capital by willingly and wittingly associating themselves with renowned SMIs. We propose that these consumers are viratoids, developing their own online persona based on more prominent SMIs. Building on Chris Rojek’s theorization of a celetoid, an individual who achieves media attention for an intense but brief timespan, we propose the viratoid as a new form of celetoid. The viratoid seeks to achieve “fame” and viral online attention by amassing their own celebrity capital by creating content that piggybacks off the celebrity capital and/or “drama” of a well-known SMI. This has implications for how social media networks, marketers, and brands promote and manage SMIs and viratoids, including the amplification of mischievous and increasingly incendiary online content.