The future of influencers
In the dotcom era, communication professor Angèle Christin embedded herself in newsrooms, where she witnessed how audience metrics tilted journalism toward viral content over in-depth reporting.
Christin now researches the influencer economy and how content creators monetize their production by any of three means – brand sponsorships, engagement-based payments from social media platforms, and direct-to-audience subscriptions, donations, or sales. She says this engagement-based ecosystem steers communication toward what captures attention, not always what best informs. To improve our reeling national dialogue, we must first change the financial model of social media content, Christin tells host Russ Altman on this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Russ Altman: This is Stanford's The Future of Everything, and I'm your host Russ Altman. Since we started this podcast eight years ago it's become an archive of the amazing and impactful work done by my colleagues at Stanford University. In a time when the sheer volume of information available to us can make our head spin and make it hard to determine what's accurate, i'm proud to be able to bring you experts in law, medicine, engineering, technology, and much more.
[00:00:27] Angèle Christin: The most popular career path for most kids in the United States and Canada, like kids that like, they don't want to be astronauts, they don't want to be firemen,
[00:00:35] Russ Altman: It's, it's amazing.
[00:00:36] Angèle Christin: They don't want to be doctors, they want be influencers.
[00:00:46] Russ Altman: This is Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything, and I'm your host Russ Altman. You know, we have some amazing episodes coming up and you're not gonna wanna miss them, so please, select follow, press follow so that you get alerted to all the new episodes. That'll make sure that you don't miss the future of anything.
[00:01:02] Today, Angèle Christin will tell us that when you're consuming your social media, you might wanna follow the money. The people who are making that content have some economic incentives and that could affect what they say. It's the future of influencers.
[00:01:18] Today we're continuing our segment called The Future in a Minute with Angèle. I'm gonna ask her a few rapid fire questions at the end of our interview, and she's gonna give me some rapid fire answers. Also, don't forget to follow, you don't wanna miss any of those amazing upcoming episodes.
[00:01:40] You know, social media can be great. I use it all the time. I follow it for my hobbies. Other people use it for professional development to navigate life changes. They might follow sports, they might like politics, or just their favorite celebrities, it's all good. But as you're consuming your social media, you might want to consider that some of the content creators you're listening to, both have passion and economic incentives. Some of them, this is their main job. That's fine, that's how they make money, but that could affect what they say and how they say it.
[00:02:11] Well, Angèle Christin is a professor of sociology at Stanford University, and an expert about how digital media can influence society and culture. She's gonna tell us that she's studied journalism all the way to influencers and they're different, and they have different incentives.
[00:02:28] Angèle, how did you decide to study social media and its cultural impacts as part of a major thrust in your work?
[00:02:37] Angèle Christin: It's been a while. Okay, so I started studying journalists, um, in the late two thousands. And then, you know, I was really a kind of like economic sociologist kind of person, and I was wondering, what happens when the revenues of a given industry, in that case a news industry, suddenly disappear, right? Which is basically what happened to the media and journalism. Uh, with the rise of digital platforms and kind of tech company, a lot of advertising moved to Google, Meta, et cetera, and Facebook, uh, which meant that, uh, for kind of, uh, newspapers and news websites and traditional media companies, suddenly there was much less money going around.
[00:03:23] So that was kind of my first kind of foray into it, um, and you know, the angle was really economic. It's like, so yeah, what happens when revenues change and suddenly there is just much less to go around? How do you sustain the kind of extremely costly enterprise that journalism is about with much less money? After a while though, I really became interested in the cultural aspect of social media and the fact that, you know, social media is not only an economic force, uh, and it's not only about advertising.
[00:03:54] So advertising is everywhere in the social media game, and we'll certainly come back to that, uh, pretty soon. Uh, but also about what were the kinds of discourses, the kind of cultures, uh, the kind of memes that were emerging on social media and how did that change how the rest of us, or all of us, were kind of, um, discussing things, accessing information and communicating with each other. And so that's basically what I've been doing for, um, yeah, like the past 17 years, so it's been a while.
[00:04:27] Russ Altman: So just, just to go back to that, um, what did you conclude about the journalists and their economic stress? Um, a a and especially I, as I understand it, you were actually watching this happening. You were watching the rise, um, so you were in a, I don't, I would never call it lucky, but you were in a fortuitous position to be able to observe very closely, um, the response to this big tsunami. And, and, and, and how did they deal with it and does it have lasting repercussions before we move on to the other topics?
[00:04:56] Angèle Christin: Yeah, it really does. And I agree, I mean, I think, you know, uh, talking about the past 15 years, it's not been a happy time for the news industry, generally speaking, but you know, personally, and as a observer, I was kind of lucky in the sense that I started kinda doing field work, uh, with journalists, um, circa 2009, 2010, which is really when, uh, kind of social media, uh, platforms took off.
[00:05:22] Um, so a word about kind of the kind of research I do, I'm a sociologist by training, right? Um, and specifically I'm an ethnographer. So ethnographers, it's, it's really a method and a way of doing research that goes back to kind of anthropology in the 19th century. Think about, you know, explorers going to remote islands and going to study the culture of the natives, as you know, it was then called. Uh, we've changed the language since then, obviously, uh, and also a lot of the kind of ethical considerations there.
[00:05:51] Uh, but you know, that's kind of what I was doing with journalists, so I was spending a lot of time in newsrooms. I was interviewing journalists. I was kind of sitting in the newsrooms with them. I was watching what they were doing on their computers. I was following their stories. I was going on Twitter at the time and on social media with them, and really trying to understand how these big transformations were affecting their daily lives and their representations.
[00:06:16] And so, the main findings, well, so first one is really, is that, you know, big economic transformations that is changing in the business model of, of journalism also come with kind of day-to-day consequences. So concretely, what I saw is that in newsrooms at the time, and I was focusing particularly on web newsrooms, right? So kind of where journalists publish news articles online.
[00:06:43] Um, they started paying a lot of attention to social media metrics. And to what users were doing when they came to their website, how much time they were spending on each story, uh, how they came to the stories, right? Did they find them through Facebook or Twitter, or kinda did say Google them or did they arrive on the homepage of the website?
[00:07:05] All of this is basically conveyed to extremely granular dashboards and software programs to web journalists. And what was really interesting at the time is what I saw is that a lot of journalists were kind of obsessed with these metrics, right? Uh, they kept on talking about, you know, who is coming to the website, which article is the most popular, which article is underperforming, which one is going viral on X and X platform.
[00:07:32] Um, and what was fascinating there is that, you know, perhaps unsurprisingly since from 2026, but again this was, uh, 2009, 2010, the kind of articles that were getting a lot of traction and a lot of traffic online were not the most prestigious articles that journalists had been trained and socialized into thinking that was the important stuff of journalism.
[00:07:55] So concretely, uh, you know, for traditional journalists, um, international news, politics and, uh, let's say culture and the arts, right? These are the most prestigious kind of rubrics and sections, um, in newspapers that, you know, it's kinda, uh, always been that way. I mean, since, uh, 19th century. Um, take a guess uh, was that, what was the most popular online?
[00:08:21] Russ Altman: Well, maybe it was popular culture and, uh, celebrities?
[00:08:24] Angèle Christin: Yeah. So basically sex, scandals, celebrities.
[00:08:28] Russ Altman: There you go.
[00:08:29] Angèle Christin: There you go. And also like cat memes, right? Like kind of cute memes that, you know.
[00:08:34] Russ Altman: Right.
[00:08:35] Angèle Christin: Uh, would just like make people chuckle. At the time it was like, you know, there was grumpy cat, which was like this cat that had a super grumpy
[00:08:41] Russ Altman: Right, right.
[00:08:41] Angèle Christin: With like a little hat, you know, uh, things like that. Listicles, uh, the ten best burger places in the Bay Area.
[00:08:49] Russ Altman: Yes.
[00:08:49] Angèle Christin: Like, you know, that kind of stuff right
[00:08:51] Russ Altman: Now, these were trained journalists? These weren't people, these weren't people who aspired to be influencers as the, as you, 'cause that wasn't even a word yet,
[00:08:58] Angèle Christin: That wasn't even a thing.
[00:08:58] Russ Altman: So these were all trained
[00:09:01] Angèle Christin: They were all trained journalists. Most of them had either gone to journalism school or had done like multiple kind of internships and kinda really kind of, you know, gone up the ladder of kind of newsrooms, uh, in order to become full-time journalists. And so, I think that for them it was like a real um, kinda, I mean, a tsunami, right? In the sense that suddenly there were these two different ways of kinda evaluating what was good journalism.
[00:09:31] There was a traditional way, which was about getting the respect of your peers, of your superiors, of the editor in chief. Getting someone at another kind of newsroom saying like, wow, I read your story, I love your work.
[00:09:43] Russ Altman: And Pulitzer, Pulitzer Prize.
[00:09:45] Angèle Christin: Pulitzer Prizes, exactly like right, this kind of traditional, journalistic, editorial way. And that was one thing. But then there was also this other kind of criteria, right? Um, which was traffic and what kinds of articles were popular online, and this was completely different. And so, basically what you could see in newsrooms is people kind of moving back and forth between these two kind of axis of success.
[00:10:09] Russ Altman: Yeah.
[00:10:09] Angèle Christin: And just being like, so wait, which one, what, what does it mean? I worked for like a month on the story, but no one clicked on it. Is it a good story or a bad story? Vice versa, I just did like a quick fun piece on what Rihanna was wearing at, um, at the Oscars. I mean, I'm making this up, right?
[00:10:28] Russ Altman: Yeah.
[00:10:29] Angèle Christin: Uh, and uh, that went viral because it was fun, it was light, it was about Rihanna and it really captured the zeitgeist of the moment, right?
[00:10:37] Russ Altman: Yeah.
[00:10:38] Angèle Christin: So, how do you do? And then on top of it, uh, there were editors in chief. And so, editors in chiefs, the thing is, well, they have to both put out contents that of high quality, but they also have to ensure the economic bottom line of the publication.
[00:10:54] Russ Altman: Yes.
[00:10:54] Angèle Christin: And for the economic bottom line of the publication, they have to have enough traffic numbers. At the time, the main metric was a number of unique visitors, uh, per month, right? So it was a number of unique people who came to the website every month. That's what advertisers were looking at. That's what everybody was looking at. Um, and so, you know, editors were also kind of stuck in the like, well, I don't want, we don't wanna do only celebrity stuff, or sex and lifestyle. Uh, but at the same time, we, we have to maintain a number of unique visitors. So how do we kinda?
[00:11:24] And so what, what I saw is that depending on the newsroom, people landed on very different strategies. So, some editors were like, okay, you know what, uh, this is a business. At the end of the day, we have to best to make the business work, and so we are gonna really go deep on the metrics. We are gonna put traffic targets for every single visitor, for every single journalist. We are gonna have leader boards, like big dashboards in the newsrooms with metrics, kind of realtime metrics changing kind of all the time. So that writers feel like the competition and the angst, right?
[00:11:57] Russ Altman: Yes. Yes.
[00:11:58] Angèle Christin: The numbers go down. I mean, as an academic, I think you can imagine if we did that with citation numbers, it would be like an absolute nightmare kind of.
[00:12:06] Russ Altman: And to some, and to some degree. To some degree we do.
[00:12:09] Angèle Christin: And to some degree we do, but not in real time, which I think,
[00:12:12] Russ Altman: Yeah, not in real time, and it doesn't, our job doesn't depend on it, directly.
[00:12:14] Angèle Christin: And it's not the only criteria. But again, I mean, I think there are many fascinating parallels with academia, but that's, I guess a bit inside baseball. Um, and, and so, you know, some newsrooms went falling on the app. Uh, and you know, often what happened in those cases is that journalists were just like this is not what I trained for.
[00:12:32] Russ Altman: Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:32] Angèle Christin: I mean, again, I'm, you know, you know, I'm, I'm want to write good stories.
[00:12:36] Russ Altman: I'm really struck because in the olden days when you bought a newspaper or a magazine, you bought the whole thing. So of course you could turn to the page with the celebrities and stuff, but there was also the front page with the national news, and the editors didn't have even access, probably, to exactly what people were buying it and why. But with this kind of disarticulation, and more fine grain reporting, um, now people can pick and choose and they don't always, you know, choose what we would think would be like perhaps the best for them.
[00:13:05] I don't wanna be paternalistic.
[00:13:06] Angèle Christin: Yeah.
[00:13:07] Russ Altman: But not the thing that they thought they were doing. And so I can see how it would be very disruptive. And, and, and this, this was, was, was, was it both money but also the dopamine? 'Cause I'm sure the journalists, when they get a big viral posting, in addition to knowing that it might make some money for the, uh, organization, they must have gotten like just a high from knowing that millions of people were looking at their posts.
[00:13:30] Angèle Christin: A hundred percent. So two things about what you just said, excellent points. So, you know, I think the first thing, which, you know, many people have asked me about that research is like, well, is this new? I mean, economic pressures on journalism and the media have always existed. This is just the latest wave of it.
[00:13:45] Um, my answer is like, yeah, sure, there are parallels. And in fact, you can find like kinda, um, you know, memoirs from editors in the 19th century making like, "Oh, yeah, you have to give the audience what they want", you know what I mean? And often that means kind of celebrity stuff and lifestyle stuff. But you know, we use it to kind of cross-subsidize the serious stuff. And so, you know, it's kind of, okay.
[00:14:08] I think that it's exactly what you're talking about. The big difference for me is what in kind of digital studies we call the unbundling of content, right?
[00:14:16] Russ Altman: Yeah.
[00:14:16] Angèle Christin: And the fact that like with newspapers, it was a bundle, like everything was bundled together, you wrote a newspaper and in it there were lots of things. And as you say, like most of the time, I mean they did like, you know, audience studies and marketing studies, but you know, it was pretty, kind of superficial at the end of the day. People mostly didn't remember anything going, you know? Uh, and anyway, like editors were not really looking at it because they're like, I am kind of too busy.
[00:14:41] Uh, what happens with digital technologies is that suddenly, yeah, you can access individual articles, uh, kind of on one by one case basis, right? So that's the first thing. And second, you have metrics for every single article, and not even every single article, every single paragraph in the article.
[00:14:56] Russ Altman: Yes, yes.
[00:14:57] Angèle Christin: So some of the metrics are about like how people scroll down. And what you find to the distress of journalists, is that A, the average time on, uh, any given news article is around? Five like seconds, like even less than five seconds. So that's like number one, right?
[00:15:14] And second, like most people look at the first paragraph and then they leave the page, right?
[00:15:18] Russ Altman: Yes.
[00:15:19] Angèle Christin: So it's like for journalists is like always this kinda like super distressing kinda realization. Um, but so, so yeah. So I think that that was really kind of the main, the main kind of transformations.
[00:15:29] Uh, and that point about the dopamine high is so, right. I mean, I think, at the end, that's kind of a big argument in my book, um, 'Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms' uh, which I published with Princeton University Press in 2020. Which is that, you know, at the end of the day, journalists are communicators, they want their stuff to be read. Like, I mean, and I, I have a lot of empathy for that as, as a writer, as a professor, as a researcher, I want my stuff to be read. And so for them, uh, getting high traffic numbers was not just market pressures. It was also, oh my gosh, I am the queen of the world. You know what I mean?
[00:16:06] Russ Altman: Yes.
[00:16:06] Angèle Christin: Like I'm on top of it, everybody's reading me. Like, you know, I'm going viral is this kind of exhilarating experience. And so absolutely, it also makes you feel really good. And also, you're kind of the top dog in the newsroom, right? Everybody's like, oh my gosh, like how did you do that? This is so cool.
[00:16:22] Russ Altman: We have to be like her. We have to be like, okay. Well this is a beautiful segue. I'm glad we went there, 'cause this actually segues beautifully into your more recent I, I think, book on influencers and social media.
[00:16:33] Because, maybe some of those journalists grew up to be influencers, uh, whether they like it or not. So, so tell me about the, the kind of perspective and conceit of this, of this newer work where you're looking at, um, and you know, it was very interesting and of course I did a little bit of research about it, kind of a, a three way dance that is happening right now in social media.
[00:16:55] Angèle Christin: Absolutely. Yeah so in a way, it was really the natural continuation of my work on journalists, right? It's like journalist, it was this kind of established institutions that were kind of slowly, I mean, I don't want to say collapsing, because there is still, I mean, you know, journalists are doing incredibly important work. Um, and you know, they have been transforming in a variety of ways and, you know, I'm happy to talk more about that. Uh, but you know, it was really about this established institutions kind of facing the wave of digital media, right? And how were they kind of reacting to it?
[00:17:27] Then influencers, uh, it was, well the other side of the picture, which is like, well, what is a new media ecosystem that has emerged on top of social media platforms, right? Social media platforms that weren't around 15 years ago, basically. So what does, and now, you know, influencer careers are, uh, the most popular career paths for most kids in the United States and Canada. Like kids that, like, they don't want to be astronauts, they don't want to be firemen.
[00:17:55] It's amazing.
[00:17:55] Russ Altman: It's amazing.
[00:17:56] Angèle Christin: They don't wanna be doctors, they wanna be influencers, you know?
[00:17:59] Russ Altman: I was visiting, I was visiting Cuba about eight years ago, and a little Cuban boy, he was 10 or 11. I said, what do you want to do when you grow up? He said, I want to be a YouTube influencer. It's the first time in any language anybody had ever said that to me and I nearly fell off my chair.
[00:18:15] Angèle Christin: Yeah, yeah.
[00:18:15] Russ Altman: I had to check with the parents exactly what he meant, and then it was just amazing. So influencer is definitely a thing, and it's actually very high on the wishlist of lots of young people.
[00:18:25] Angèle Christin: Absolutely. And, and more than that, I mean, when you look at the numbers of people who are declaring, self-identifying as influencers or content creators, it's astonishing. It's like more than 200 million people say that they are content creators. Now, it doesn't mean that they're all making money with it. It doesn't mean that, you know, it's a self like that, it's a full-time job, uh, but that, that's a lot of people. Imagine 200 million cable channels basically kind of broadcasting content because that's kind of what it is, right?
[00:18:57] Russ Altman: Yes.
[00:18:57] Angèle Christin: So, so that, um, you know, that kind of emerged pretty organically. And then for the past six years, um, I've been doing almost the same kind of things that I was doing with journalists, except that I did it with content creators.
[00:19:09] Now, what's interesting about content creators and about kind of my own kind of study of them is that, all of it is online. Uh, so compared to journalists where I was kind of hanging out in newsrooms, going on lunch breaks, going on coffee breaks, and just like hanging out in the newsroom. Uh, for content creators, I ended up doing all of my field work kind of online. So part of it is like kinda, uh, situational COVID-19, right?
[00:19:37] Russ Altman: Yes. Yes.
[00:19:37] Angèle Christin: Lockdowns
[00:19:38] Russ Altman: Yes.
[00:19:38] Angèle Christin: Um, what was happening at that time, because that's when I started kind of like 2019 - 2020, is that that was boom time for influencers. Everybody was at home. We were all stuck on our screens, and that's when like kind of the number of followers, the number of users,
[00:19:56] Russ Altman: Everything went up.
[00:19:57] Angèle Christin: Like all of that was just like expo, like crazy growing, right? So for all of them, they were like, okay, all the brand deals are coming in, because that's also when brands were like, well, we're not going to advertise in the streets. No one's in the streets, right? No one's driving around. So we are gonna advertise online, we're gonna advertise on social media, we're gonna advertise with influencers.
[00:20:15] And so, suddenly all of those numbers were also growing. So it was like, basically like a gold rush, for them. And that's exactly when I came in. So again, I feel like I kind of got lucky there that like, I arrived when, right when like things were exploding, uh, for so many, so many, so many creators.
[00:20:33] Um, and I ended up kinda spending, yeah, like, uh, doing a lot of interviews, uh, working with an agent. So I became an unpaid intern, so the other interns were like 18 years old and they were much better than me. I was the old intern who like doesn't know what she's doing.
[00:20:50] Russ Altman: Wow.
[00:20:50] Angèle Christin: Uh, I helped an agent who was representing influencers and kind of negotiating deals for them. Uh, I did kind of a quantitative study of how much, um, influencers were paid. Uh, anyway, I did kind of all of these things and of course, like analyzing their content as well.
[00:21:06] Russ Altman: This is the future of everything with Russ Altman. We'll have more with an Angèle, Christin next.
[00:21:23] Welcome back to the Future of Everything. I'm Russ Altman, and I'm speaking with an Angèle Christin. In the last segment, we got a fascinating story about how Angèle witnessed the transition of journalism from the pre-social media to the social media days. And the pressures that put on newsrooms everywhere to both attract viewers, readers and provide high quality content. That evolved into the current state of social media influencers. And so in this segment, I'm gonna ask her to give us a deep dive in what makes influencers tick, especially economically. Don't forget, at the end of this segment, we'll have 'The Future in a Minute' where I'll ask an Angèle some rapid fire questions and she'll give me some quick answers, it's The Future in a Minute.
[00:22:06] So Angèle, you were saying that you, um, you started your work and during the pandemic and, and that you could do a lot of the research online, and I just wanted to ask to start out, did you feel a need to embed yourself with these influencers where they were sitting when the camera or the, or the videotape or whatever wasn't on? Um, do you feel like you could get a good sense of that ethnography? 'Cause you know, you're trained, you like to watch people, I'm sure there's all kinds of nonverbal cues, blah, blah, blah. So tell me about that decision. Part of it, I'm sure was related to the pandemic and what you had to do.
[00:22:37] Angèle Christin: Yeah. I mean, I think that's, uh, that's the main answer. So let me tell you, I, I wish I could have kind of embedded myself in person with creators. I think that, and you know, I think as this kind of classically trained kind of sociologists, it's like, yes, everything happens like off camera. That's when like a lot of the tough choices are made. Like, you know, that's when like things really kinda, uh, hit, uh, kind of tough questions. Um, at the time it was lockdown. I just couldn't get out.
[00:23:06] Russ Altman: Right.
[00:23:07] Angèle Christin: So, you know, I ended up kind of not doing it and basically kind of, that changed my research question in turn, which is classing in, in kind of the kind of interpretive social sciences. But you're like, well, you collect some kind of data, in that case, it was all online. And so I ended up kinda focusing more on kind of the economic incentives, uh, first of all, and second, uh, the ways in which the kind of structures of social media, uh, shapes the relationships between influencers and audiences, right?
[00:23:36] So in a way, instead of kind of really looking deep down at kinda what's happening behind the scenes, uh, I ended up looking more as like, okay, structurally what's going on with social media production, so, you know, not perfect, but it is what it is.
[00:23:51] Russ Altman: It's a great answer. Um, so tell me about these three players and how you came to understand them and what it means for all of us.
[00:23:59] Angèle Christin: Okay. So the first thing I want to say is that, you know, influencers, it's such a fascinating job, right? Because most of the people I interviewed, I interviewed more than a hundred of them, um, they came into social media, not really wanting to make money. I mean, at first the stories that came up were stories of passion, right? I call it the passion principle in the book. It's like they wanted to help others the ways they had been helped, they wanted to share their expertise. They wanted to document their life journey. They wanted to do all of these things that weren't tied to compensation, really.
[00:24:34] But then they started making money and uh, you know, and I'll talk a bit more about this in a second. But since they were like, oh well, I, I don't love my job. My, my day job is, is okay, but it's just a job. I could be an entrepreneur. I could build my own kind of personal brand, my own company based on social media. And that was so attractive for so many of them that they went full in.
[00:25:00] Now, the reality of social media careers is unfortunately not that great, right? It's not that rosey, it's not like everybody is Charli D'Amelio or Mr. Beast. I mean, you know, it's a winner take all kind of economy. Most people never really make it that big. Right? Uh, but the dream of making it, I mean, it's like in sports or Hollywood, right? It's just like, it keeps people going. So then what I realized is that, you know, most of them were working themselves to the ground, trying to make a living.
[00:25:29] And so what did that mean? Well, making a living on social media, it's complicated. And so what I came to realize is that really there were different ways to make money at the end of the day. And again, there are many nuances, but you know, this is a kind of big picture.
[00:25:44] First, you can make money from brand deals. So that means, uh, you know, me saying like, you know, you should really buy this kind, you know, ceramic cup.
[00:25:54] Russ Altman: Very good. I think you, I think you have a, a knack for this.
[00:25:57] Angèle Christin: There is a link in bio, like click and you'll get a discount. You know, they're so good. They're so pretty. They're so nice. You know, that means that kind of stuff. And you make money because you have a contract with the brands that's like, hey, we'll pay you x plus a percentage of the sales that you generate, okay?
[00:26:13] Russ Altman: Wow, okay.
[00:26:13] Angèle Christin: So these are like commercial kind of what I call commercial pathways, where you really work with brands and uh, you know, you, the thing that it's that you have to usually work with a lot of brands.
[00:26:23] So, not only are you selling a cup, but you're also selling coffee. You're also selling like, yes, you're basically like a, a billboard, right? You're a human billboard. Um, and that's complicated because you see, you're supposed to be authentic in doing it, and so, if you do it for 20,000 brands, like, you know, the question of authenticity becomes a bit tricky. Okay, so that's kind of the first thing.
[00:26:43] The second pathway is uh, what I call viral pathways. And that's when you make most of your money from platform payments. So, social media platforms, uh, YouTube started that. But then, you know, all the other platforms did some version have what they call partner programs.
[00:26:58] So partner programs is if you have a certain number of followers or subscribers and a certain amount of watch time on your content, uh, you can sign up and you are gonna get a share of the advertising revenues that your videos bring. Usually it's 55%. Um, and so what that means is that you need views and you need watch time. So what do you do to get views and watch time? Well, you engage in clickbait, right? That's what you do. And so over time, what I found,
[00:27:25] Russ Altman: You invite Angèle Christin, to your podcast.
[00:27:28] Angèle Christin: Yes. To your podcast to get the views,
[00:27:30] Russ Altman: I should say that I do not have such deals. I just, for those who are interested,
[00:27:34] Angèle Christin: well, we can get into the economics of podcasts soon, right? Um, but so, but, so the thing is, like over time, what happens then is that a, you have to post all the time because it's really hard to go viral. Like, you know, it, it's impossible to engineer basically. So you have to throw a lot of bottles into the sea, basically. And so that means you run yourself to the ground, just trying to post video after video, hoping that one of them is gonna get viral.
[00:27:59] The second thing is, um, as you do that, basically the best way to get people's attention is to publish what, uh, psychologist Jeanne Tsai here at Stanford calls "High arousal, negative content". So basically shocking negative stuffs, that kind of outrageous people or makes them feel scared or angry or sad, like, you know, that kind of stuff.
[00:28:25] Russ Altman: Yeah.
[00:28:25] Angèle Christin: Really short circuits, our attention pathways. And so, so tendency over time is just to publish more extreme stuff, more violent, more inflammatory, you know, just like that kind of stuff. Rage bait kind of stuff. So, so that's the second kind of category. And I call these like kind of entertainers on kind of viral kind of pathways.
[00:28:44] And the third way of making money. Is where you're like, you know what? I don't want to do brand deals because then I'm at the mercy of big companies that have their own kind of priorities. I don't want to do only platform payments because then you're beholden to platforms. What I really wanna do is I want to monetize my audience, I want to monetize my followers and I want them to support me.
[00:29:06] And to do that, you have a couple of options. You can sell merchandise. So basically you build your own company and you sell your stuff to your followers, right? Uh, this can be whatever, um, you know, any kind of merch really. Uh, but they can also, and that's a really profitable saying, services, retreats, coaching programs.
[00:29:25] Russ Altman: Ah.
[00:29:25] Angèle Christin: Like all of these kind of unlimited access to your kind presence and your personal brand, right? So you sell that. And on top of it, you ask your followers to give you money. Uh, either through subscriptions, donations, crowdfunding, that kind of stuff.
[00:29:40] Russ Altman: Yes.
[00:29:40] Angèle Christin: Now, the thing when you try to do that is that you have to make your audience loyal. How do you make your audience loyal? Typically, it's by developing an 'us versus them', kind of discourse.
[00:29:53] Russ Altman: Oh my goodness. I, I wasn't expecting you to say that.
[00:29:56] Angèle Christin: Yeah, I mean, it is, right.
[00:29:58] Russ Altman: Yeah.
[00:29:58] Angèle Christin: Because that's kind of how you get people to support you. When you're like, I am a truth teller, I am a silent voice, I can speak truth to power, support me because everybody else is trying to silence me.
[00:30:11] And this again, and this is a bit of a caricature, but you know, naturally kinda goes towards more polarized kinda world views,
[00:30:21] Russ Altman: Right, right.
[00:30:21] Angèle Christin: Conspiracy theories, like that kind of stuff. And so basically, what I end up finding is that, you know, if you are a full-time content creator, you end up going in one of these three directions. And surprise, surprise, these three types of content creators are very often clashing, right? They have all of these conflicts with each other, and that's when you end up having drama on social media. So that's kinda where,
[00:30:45] Russ Altman: Yes, you wrote about drama and I wasn't exactly sure, um, what I, I, I said I don't watch dramas on YouTube, but now I see. But I do watch drama on YouTube. And So this is what you're talking about?
[00:30:57] Angèle Christin: Yeah.
[00:30:57] Russ Altman: Okay. And so, um, as we, as we kind of wind down, I just wanted to ask, where is this headed and what is needed? Are, are you, I guess part of you is a scientist and you're just observing and reporting, but you must have ideas about where this could or should go.
[00:31:12] Angèle Christin: Yeah, I kind of do. I mean, you know, right now I'm finishing copy edits on my, on my manuscript and, and you know, I mean, I think that, you know, after spending six years studying influencers and you know, really 15 years studying social media, like you kinda, you kind have ideas, right? Uh, even if you're just like, well, I'm just, I'm just kind of analyzing.
[00:31:31] Russ Altman: Yeah.
[00:31:31] Angèle Christin: I think for me, social media is amazing and terrible at the same time. And I don't want to diminish any of these aspects. I mean, it's amazing in the sense that we have more information than we ever had any time before, right? And so much of that kind of content, so much of that information is incredibly valuable. Um, I mean, I'm thinking I'm a mom, you know, and the transition into motherhood was, you know, definitely stressful.
[00:32:00] Russ Altman: Yeah.
[00:32:00] Angèle Christin: And kinda, you know, emotional. And I was so grateful to all the creators who are blogging and blogging about the first months of motherhood, how to deal with, I dunno, colicky babies, like all of these things, right?
[00:32:12] Russ Altman: And, and then people who have hobbies have found these communities that are very deep and nobody's making any money, but they're all loving their gardening or their photography
[00:32:21] Angèle Christin: or, and you share, you have this kind of super nice corners, right? Yeah. I mean, I do ceramics and I'm watching ceramics videos all the time. And so yes, I, I wouldn't want to go back to a world where I don't have that. So that's kind of the first side.
[00:32:33] The second side though, is that, you know, again, and I, I, I very rarely take normative positions, but after 15 years studying social media, I think I've reached one. And that normative position is that it is not a good idea to have a media ecosystem that is fully funded through advertising revenues.
[00:32:54] If you look at newspapers, the ways they were funded, their business model was half subscriptions and selling of newspapers, half advertising revenues. I mean, the percentages varied, depending on the time and newspapers and country. But you know, it was really half and half, right?
[00:33:12] And so if one of them went down, well, you still had the other one. If the other one went down, well, you still had the first one, right? Social media, it's all advertising. It's all online advertising and behavioral targeting. And I think that what that means is that social media platforms are at the end of the day in the business of optimizing for user engagement. And that kind of, um, pressures then, uh, percolates down to social media influencers, right?
[00:33:38] Russ Altman: Yeah.
[00:33:38] Angèle Christin: Whilst themselves, because of the payments, the brands, like, you know, all of this, also in the business of optimizing for engagement. And I think that when that is your north star, when that is the sole priority, I mean, at the end of the day, you know, the main kind of guiding logic of an industry like social media, it's not a great, it's not a great situation.
[00:33:59] And so, um, my kind of, you know, clear recommendation is just like we need to diversify, uh, the business model of social media platforms. And what that means is that all of us as users, as audience members, we have to kinda reconcile ourselves with the fact that we need to pay.
[00:34:17] Russ Altman: Yeah.
[00:34:18] Angèle Christin: Yeah. And not with our data, we need to pay with our wallets. You know what I mean?
[00:34:22] Russ Altman: Yeah.
[00:34:22] Angèle Christin: Um, and I think
[00:34:23] Russ Altman: So we can watch the ceramic YouTubes and know that that person has a source of income from us separate from clickbait about ceramics.
[00:34:31] Angèle Christin: Exactly. And we just kind of, either we subscribe to them, and we kind of, you know, uh, do an annual subscription kind of thing if we really like the content.
[00:34:39] Russ Altman: Yeah.
[00:34:39] Angèle Christin: Or we donate, like, you know, again, there are many different ways in which we could do that. But I do think that that's really, uh, kind of a clear, kind of normative point on which I've landed, which is like, advertising, online advertising only, is not an ideal situation.
[00:34:54] Russ Altman: Yes. And, and we are seeing things in that direction. So this is great. And, and before we totally finish up, I wanted to go to our segment that we call 'Future in a Minute'. So thank you so much. Uh, and we could go on, but are you ready to do 'Future in a Minute' where I'll ask you some quick questions and you give me some quick answers?
[00:35:09] Angèle Christin: Yes, for sure.
[00:35:10] Russ Altman: Okay, great. First question, what is one thing that gives you the most hope about the future?
[00:35:16] Angèle Christin: Again, the diversity of social media creation from ceramics to motherhood, any kind of hobby. I find that this kind of explosion of content is fantastic.
[00:35:27] Russ Altman: What is one thing you want people to walk away from this episode remembering?
[00:35:32] Angèle Christin: Follow the money. It's, it's, you know, that's kind of my, my my thing. Follow the money. Content creators, at the end of the day, it's a job. Um, try to figure out what are the incentives of the people producing the content you consume.
[00:35:45] Russ Altman: Aside from money, what is the one thing you need to succeed in your research?
[00:35:50] Angèle Christin: My own research, I need time. I'm a very slow animal. I take a long time. I need more of it.
[00:35:58] Russ Altman: If all goes well, what does the future look like?
[00:36:02] Angèle Christin: Amazing information and and entertainment for all of us that inspires us to become better citizens in the world.
[00:36:10] Russ Altman: If you were starting over again and you needed to get your degree or your certification in a different discipline, what would that be?
[00:36:18] Angèle Christin: I would become a ceramicist. A hundred percent. It's amazing.
[00:36:23] Russ Altman: Thanks to an Angèle Christin, that was the future of influencers. Thank you for listening to this show. Don't forget, we have a catalog of back episodes, more than 300, where you can listen to conversations on an amazing array of topics.
[00:36:37] Please remember to share. If this episode made you laugh, made you cry, made you think deeply, consider sharing it with friends, family, and colleagues, that's the best way to grow the show. Maybe you'll even rate and review it, that'll also help. You can connect with me on many social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Threads, Blue Sky and Mastodon, where I'm @RBAltman or @Russbaltman. You can also follow Stanford Engineering @StanfordSchoolofEngineering or @Stanfordeng
