Social media influencers and 'click' farms
We've been talking about celebrity in class and how social media has changed how people become famous and how fans and followers can now keep up with the latest celebrity gossip very quickly. Part of this rapid change in technology and celebrity has been the growth of the social media influencer.
Listen to the BBC podcast to find out what a social media influencer is.
Choose the statements below that are TRUE
A social media influencer is:
a person with a lot of followers on social media
a person who has a lot of social media accounts
often paid by companies to promote their products.
a person who is an expert in a particular area (e.g. cookery).
But, as we have discussed, sometimes social media influencers are fake and their popularity has been created in a 'click farm'. These farms are factories where people are paid to click on 1000s of phones all day. These people create 10000s of likes and followers every day.
Also, there are now companies that sell 'likes' and 'followers'. Watch the video and see the journalist buy 10,000 views for his video for US$24.99
What do you think? Is this fair? Can you trust that it is true when you see someone on Facebook has 300000 followers? Or that a video has 200,000 views? Do you think the followers and views are real?