Social media influencer communication and its ethical challenges

Social media influencers are once ordinary internet users who have managed to build up an audience of followers over whom they have influence through their activities on social media. ^[1] These activities include creating social media content, distributing it via the respective platforms, interacting with followers around this content and curating a public persona. Attracted by the opportunity to reach young people and young adults in particular via influencers, companies and later other organisations such as political parties, government agencies and non-governmental organisations began to cooperate with influencers.^[2] They often receive support from communications agencies, which are tapping into a new field of business by organising influencer campaigns.

This network of actors, consisting of influencers, followers, clients, communication agencies and social media platforms, poses ethical challenges for influencers. These challenges can be catalogued along ten ethical principles^{[3], [4]}

• Independence: Influencers should act independently, even in the context of remunerated collaborations. They must therefore be able to assert their autonomy vis-à-vis clients and their agencies.
• Honesty: Influencers should express their real opinions and not sell them to clients. The principle of attention is sometimes discussed in the discourse as authenticity.^[5] In contrast to authenticity, however, sincerity not only takes into account the influencer’s relationship with themselves, but also with their followers.^[6]
• Transparency: Influencers should clearly label promotional posts as such – a requirement that is also stipulated by law.
• Truth: Influencers should communicate truthfully, i.e. correctly state facts about a presented product, check these facts themselves if necessary and refrain from artificially boosting their followership with purchased bots.
• Caring: Influencers should not discriminate against people or groups. They should also take into account the needs and abilities of vulnerable target groups, such as children and young people whose advertising skills are limited.
• Professionalism: Influencers should work professionally, i.e. adhere to agreements or create commercial posts with the same care as organic posts.
• Appreciation: Influencers should pay attention to the needs of their clients and take their values seriously, for example.
• Respect: Influencers should communicate in a polite, fair and approachable manner and refrain from making disparaging remarks towards cooperation partners and followers.
• Loyalty: Influencers should behave loyally towards both their followers and clients.
• Social responsibility: Influencers should reflect on the impact of their actions on society and the environment and thus fulfil their role model function, especially for children and young people.

Ethical principles are increasingly being codified in the form of codes of ethics. In Germany, for example, the Federal Association of Influencer Marketing adopted a code of ethics back in 2019. [ ^{7], [8]} Industry associations in other countries followed suit. [ ^{9], [10]} The establishment of ethical principles through codes fulfils various functions, including setting internal industry targets. For example, codes of ethics offer industry players guidance in their day-to-day work and promote the professionalisation of the entire industry. On the other hand, codes have an external impact by ensuring legitimisation in the public debate.

Comparability with analogue phenomena

Influencer communication operates at the interface of other communicative, social macro-forms, namely advertising, public relations (PR) and journalism.^[3] The ethical principles that apply in the influencer industry therefore draw on the ethics of the other areas. For example, a duty of care applies to influencers in the context of truthful representation, as is known from journalism. In the areas of advertising and public relations, on the other hand, the principle of transparency is enshrined when corresponding industry codes refer to the requirement of sender transparency, which prohibits deception about the advertising intent of the message. Due to the fact that influencers are mainly financed by income from commercial collaborations, the ethics councils of the respective industry associations, namely the German Advertising Council and the German Public Relations Council, have become active in the self-regulation of the influencer industry. In 2020, for example, the German Advertising Council reprimanded an influencer, the Instagrammer Ron Bielecki, for the first time due to a sexist and derogatory depiction of women in an advert for a sexual enhancer. The German Public Relations Council, on the other hand, has been setting out the transparency obligation for influencers in its guidelines on public relations in digital media and networks since 2017.

Nevertheless, influencer ethics differs in key areas from the ethics of other communicative macroforms. For example, the relationship with their followers plays a special role for influencers. Such a relationship does not exist for the other macroforms. Influencers also face the challenge of dealing with a dual expectation of loyalty – on the part of followers and on the part of clients. The loyalty of advertising and PR agencies, on the other hand, belongs exclusively to their clients. Influencers are also confronted with the fact that they are expected to be independent and honest even within remunerated collaborations, while agencies adopt the relevance structures of their clients.

Social relevance

The influencer industry in Germany has so far been allowed by lawmakers to deal with potential areas of conflict independently in a self-regulatory mode. Legal regulations are rudimentary and exist mainly with regard to the transparency obligation. This concession is consistent insofar as it is also made to the advertising and PR industries. As long as self-regulation functions sufficiently well, influencer ethics is hardly a topic of public debate. However, the German Influencer Marketing Association has not yet managed to set up a complaints body that would be able to issue and enforce arbitration judgements.

Beyond regulatory issues, the ethics of the influencer industry are particularly relevant because they are reflected in the genre expectations of the field. This shows that followers expect “their” influencers to act honestly, even in the context of paid collaborations. The scepticism that traditional forms of commercial communication are met with is therefore not observed in the influencer industry, or only to a much lesser extent.^{[3], [11]} Instead of generally devaluing advertising posts, many followers trust the recommendations that influencers make. In this way, influencer ethics are helping to further erode the once clear boundaries between editorial and commercial content.^[12]

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