The final speaker in this session at the 2026 International Communication Association conference in Cape Town is Fatima Gaw, whose focus is on political influencers in Asia and North America. These have been integrated into party politics, instrumentalists for foreign propaganda, involved in journalistic works, and other areas; but most ‘political’ influencers do not solely post about politics, but are considerably more diverse in their attributes and activities.
This means that they are often miscategorised as inherently political; but their persuasive potential results not only from their political themes but also from their personal communication styles. We must instead pay more attention to the authenticity, intimacy, and platform expertise of their communicative approaches. All of these contribute to their epistemic authority in political contexts, in lieu of normative markers and institutional positionality.
Authenticity is about presenting oneself as genuine, passionate, and independent; this addresses the heightened distrust towards politicians and journalists. Intimacy is about cultivating close parasocial relationships, connections, and engagement with followers, in part also through visual content that extends beyond inherently political contexts. Platform expertise is about having the knowledge and skills to leverage platform affordances, algorithms, and infrastructures, which also places influencers as intermediaries for groups and organisations that seek visibility and amplification on such platforms; this has also been exploited by disinformation campaigns and other partisan interests, of course.
How these and other logics are operationalised on the content production side, manifest in content, and translate to engagement and exploitation by institutional actors deserves further critical analysis.
