DCMS Committee to examine the power of influencers

• Inquiry: Influencer culture
• Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee 

It will also assess influencer impact when it comes to media and popular culture as well as the positive role they can play, such as raising awareness for a campaign addressing vaccine hesitancy among people from ethnic minority backgrounds.

DCMS Committee Chair Julian Knight MP said:

"Influencers wield a growing power over people’s lives. We want to find out how influencer culture operates and what impact it has.

There’s concern that while influencers are useful to advertisers in reaching the right markets on social media, there is a lack of transparency around the promotion of products or services. We’ll be looking at whether there’s a need for tighter regulation in this area and what form that might take."

Terms of Reference

The DCMS Committee is inviting written submissions by Friday 7 May addressing the following areas:

• How would you define 'influencers' and ‘influencer culture'? Is this a new phenomenon?
• Has 'influencing' impacted popular culture? If so, how has society and/or culture changed because of this side of social media?
• Is it right that influencers are predominantly associated with advertising and consumerism, and if not, what other roles to influencers fulfil online?
• How are tech companies encouraging or disrupting the activities of influencing?
• How aware are users of the arrangements between influencers and advertisers? Should policymakers, tech companies and influencers and advertisers themselves do more to ensure these arrangements are transparent?

Further information

• About Parliament: Select committees
• Visiting Parliament: Watch committees

Image: Pixabay