Child viewers’ engagement with social media influencers: Exercising socialisation-driven agency

Abstract

This paper examines child consumers’ engagement with child influencers via YouTube and the implications for agency development among viewers. The study used a multi-method ‘Mosaic Approach’, involving arts-based activities, focus groups and interviews with child consumers and their parents, to capture child consumers’ and their parents’ experiences, reflections and practices. The data illustrate how learning, self-awareness and shared experiences of the world were developed, articulated and critically assessed across, and in relation to, their engagement. Based on the findings, it is argued that exposure and interactions with child influencers’ content contribute to the construction of ‘socialisation-driven agency’, which child consumers enacted in their own life spheres. This research thus identifies how child influencers drive engagement among viewers, and it demonstrates how child consumers exercise their agency by co-creating knowledge and competencies through engagement.