Abstract:

The revolution of information that is available on the Web, has led to an increasing number of people searching and learning things from the internet. Pauler et al (2001) in their research found out that a considerable number of patients used the Internet to obtain health information before their visit to the doctor and a lot of times, based their choices for therapy on the information they had acquired on the internet. But it was way before that, that a lot of people were based on their own “skills” in order to self-educate themselves in some topics, such as foreign languages.

Distant learning though is an aspect of self-education that skyrocketed in recent years due to the advance of the Web 2.0. But, at the same time, the rise of Web 2.0 gave learning a new aspect, the one that a tutor does not necessarily have to be qualified in what he or she is teaching. A prominent example of such cases are the so-called influencers, people who have gained popularity through social media. This paper has as an aim to study influencers as tutors regarding their credibility. Our research will focus on nutrition influencers in YouTube and Instagram. For this we will analyze the profiles of the top 20 most popular influencers on YouTube and their supplementary presence on Instagram.

The influencers will be selected based on their popularity in terms of subscribers. The aspects that our research will try to shed light on are their credibility and their knowledge. Merriam Webster defines “credibility” as the quality or power of inspiring belief. Since influencers have a high level of influence to their audience, it is more likely that they will be credible. But do they have the knowledge? Before the “influencer” era, someone in order to follow the advice or enroll in an activity would take into account the adviser’s status. Have this practice been transferred to the influencer era, when someone can easily learn skills just by watching a YouTube video? Are influencers skillful in order to give nutritional advice? These are some of the questions our research will try to give answers to.

References:
[1] Pautler, S. E., Tan, J. K., Dugas, G. R., Pus, N., Ferri, M., Hardie, W. R., & Chin, J. L. (2001). Use of the internet for self-education by patients with prostate cancer. Urology, 57(2), 230-233.
[2] Laghos, A., & Zaphiris, P. (2007). Social network analysis of self-taught e-learning communities. International Journal of Knowledge and Learning, 3(4-5), 465-482.

Keywords:

Self-education, web 2.0, influencers, social-media, video-tutorials, nutrition.