Biodigital Influencers: A New Alternative for Fighting Loneliness

Abstract

Social networks are primarily about developing relationships with friends or with admired people, and sometimes influencers. Recently, companies specialised in computer-generated imagery have started to develop a new type of human-like creations, who are often taken to the level of influencer. Because of their ambiguous identities, they have been named biodigital influencers. Followers connected with them on Instagram experience surprise and doubt, and this can help them to handle loneliness. Through a semantic text analysis of followers’ comments, our findings reveal, among other things, that followers get to express feelings of empathy in the community. Indeed, the stimulus of novelty provokes a positive reinforcement. With their strategy of secrecy, biodigital influencers create and encourage a community of questioning, which keeps the feeling of loneliness among followers at bay.