Promoting Politics: Political Social Media Influencers, Their Online Engagement, and Implications for Democracy

Social media has become increasingly important in today’s political information environments, especially for younger generations. More and more social media influencers are turning to political topics. Such political social media influencers (PSMIs) emerge as new intermediaries in public opinion formation and political engagement. Aiming to enhance the conceptual understanding of this emerging group of political communicators, I conducted a systematic literature review of N = 110 publications about PSMIs to condense existing knowledge on who they are (source), what and how they communicate (message), and who consumes their content (audience). Results show that research on PSMIs has been increasing substantially since 2022. From a theoretical perspective, PSMIs are often understood as opinion leaders exerting a (para-)social influence on their followers. To specify the previously broad scholarly understanding of PSMIs, this article introduces a content-based classification approach, proposing four PSMI types, which could aid future studies in selectively examining their intentions, contexts, and potential effects on audiences. Finally, I summarize existing evidence of individual-level effects of PSMI content and outline a research agenda. Besides focusing on democratic PSMIs, this work also draws attention to risks associated with extremist, anti-democratic, particularly far-right efforts to position their “own” PSMIs, as well as corresponding implications for democracies.