Assessing Advice on FinTok: A Digital Ethnography Study of Audience Judgements of Finfluencer Credibility
Casper Danholt Iuul
Recent Danish research suggests that social media has become a significant information source for financial influence among young investors. One in five young Danish investors report following online advice to invest in cryptocurrency or other high risk investments, 8 % report involvement in pyramid schemes and 7 % report having been deceived into investing in scams (Finans Danmark, 2026). At the same time around 10 % of investment-related profiles have been identified as outright scammers, and four in ten show signs of poor or unqualified financial advice (Finans Danmark, 2026). These figures indicate that finfluencer content is part of a broader youth culture with potential systemic consequences. Existing finfluencer research has primarily examined content, expertise claims, monetization strategies, and platform affordance, or measured behavioral intentions through surveys (Ben-Shmuel et al., 2024; Chandani et al., 2025; Gregersen & Ørmen, 2024, 2025; Hackl & Enzminger, 2026; Hayes & Ben-Shmuel, 2024). Such approaches reveal little about how audiences actually interpret financial advice. Building on Katz’s two-step flow model and recent work on influencers as proximal opinion leaders, this paper argues that digital financial influence cannot be inferred from communication output alone but must be studied through the interpretive practices of recipients (Harff et al., 2025; Katz, 1957). This is especially important in a context where credibility is likely formed through heuristics tied to platform cues, social proof, and perceived authenticity rather than formal expertise alone (Hackl & Enzminger, 2026; Nerino, 2023; Sundar, 2008). The study combines online observation of engagement in the comment sections of financial TikTok videos with qualitative follow-up interviews with the audience (Hine, 2007; Postill & Pink, 2012). This design moves beyond production-centered analyses of online influence by investigating how audiences make sense of persuasive content. It asks how TikTok users assess the credibility of finfluencers’ claims and how attitudes toward financial opportunity shape engagement with investment content. By foregrounding audience interpretation, the paper contributes an empirically grounded approach to systemic risk: one that links platform-mediated financial advice to the normalization of speculative practices and the credibility dynamics through which opaque digital environments may channel young users into harmful financial behavior.
Beyond Ideology: Understanding Engagement with Tradwife Content on Instagram Reels
Lydia García Vaquero
The growing influence of social media platforms on political attitudes is often studied through explicitly ideological or political content. However, some forms of influence operate more subtly through lifestyle media that blends aesthetics, entertainment, and ideology. This is the case of “tradwife“ content on Instagram, which has recently attracted scholarly interest regarding its conservative political underpinnings and its entanglements with the rise of other anti-feminist movements online [2;6]. Even though there are several studies analyzing the content, we know comparatively little about the audiences who choose to watch and interact with it, and what they gain from this engagement. This paper advances that the engagement with this content is driven by multiple factors, including aesthetic pleasure, a sense of safety, soothing audiovisual atmospheres, and practical inspiration related to cooking, fashion, or homemaking. And that such sensory environment could facilitate the transmission of the conservative values behind this content. Thus, the paper proposes looking at the uses and gratifications of tradwife content audiences on Instagram Reels. Rather than assuming ideological affinity, I hypothesize that the engagement with this content is driven by the relaxing soundscapes, visually pleasing forms of homemaking, and tactile cues abiding in it; which are also found in other popular social media genres such as such as ASMR, “oddly satisfying“, or organizing videos [4;5]. Drawing on affect theory [1] and Barad’s concept of “entanglements,“ [3] this project examines how sensory elements generate attachments that tacitly shape orientations toward particular lifestyles and values, and how platform affordances, algorithmic recommendation systems, aesthetic formats, and user engagement practices interact to co-constitute the unfolding of this influence. To investigate this, the study uses a mixed-methods approach, combining digital trace analysis with qualitative interviews. By focusing on the intersection between aesthetic engagement, lifestyle inspiration, and embedded ideology, this research contributes to broader debates on how social media platforms shape cultural norms and political orientations through seemingly apolitical content. Understanding these dynamics is essential for analyzing how platform affordances, algorithmic recommendation systems, and content formats collectively facilitate subtle forms of cultural and ideological influence.
From Burgers to Brokerage: The Financialization of the Creator-Audience Relationship
CJ Reynolds (Jacob Ørmen, Andreas Gregersen)
Finance apps have adopted much of the logic of engagement and brand loyalty seen within the social app space (Garzaro et al., 2021) and on traditionally creator-driven apps, which have themselves integrated a range of payments and marketplaces (Ørmen & Gregersen, 2023). Simultaneously, a class of online creators focused on personal finance have gained substantial popularity as a source for financial expertise (Hayes & Ben-Shmuel, 2024). Recently, however, creators who are not traditionally part of this class of “finfluencers“ have begun to enter the space, with the most notable being MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) and his purchase of youth-focused finance app Step. Taking up MrBeast and his corporation, Beast Industries, as a case study, we explore the financialization of creator-audience relationships. As one of the most prominent content creators, MrBeast offers a view into the extreme edge of creator economy potential and how the industry moves to model him (Flyvberg, 2006: 229). What values are promoted or challenged by a personal finance app that forefronts its connection to the billionaire creator of such videos as ""$456,000 Squid Game in Real Life!""? How does Donaldson’s role as intermediary reshape the relationship between creators and fans, or between fiduciaries and clients? Donaldson’s move into the financial space represents an evolution in the creator economy from the monetization of attention on social platforms (watch my content!) to the transactional relationship outside of social spaces (buy my products!) to the financialization of audience trust and aspiration (invest through my app!). This is a shift from capturing value from users as audience commodities (Smythe, 1981) sold to advertisers, to users as paying customers through buying products, to users as financial assets, a resource engineered to yield durable future income streams (Birch & Muniesa, 2020; Langley, 2020). Thus, whereas ads, merchandise and brand deals are well-known foundations for the creator economy, the introduction of financial assets signals a shift in both the revenue structure of creators and the relationship they foster with their audiences; this is the crux of the ongoing financialization of fandom. Step’s integration into Beast Industries introduces a position where Donaldson’s financial interests may begin to conflict with those of his audience. His purchase of Step thus represents a notable shift in both the scope and alignment of creator economy aspirations.
Corporate Motive Positioning in Online Dating: A Norm-Based Ethical Perspective
Michelle Ølgaard (Lina Jacobsen and Carsten Bergenholtz)
Online dating platforms present themselves as matchmaking services, yet users increasingly question whether their commercial incentives align with their stated mission (Degen & Kleeberg-Niepage, 2025). In a lawsuit in 2024, users accused Match Group of having a predatory business model designed to keep users engaged and paying, rather than helping them form relationships (Scarcella, 2024; Stempel, 2024). These allegations echo scholarly concerns, arguing that online dating platforms have a ‘perverse incentive to keep users single’ (Finkel et al., 2012, p. 49). Despite these concerns, existing research offers limited insight into how users form ethical perceptions in these platform contexts. Using a cross-sectional survey of active online dating users (n = 1030) and an online survey experiment (n = 510), we investigate how perceived claim-practice consistency, inferred platform motives (social- vs. profit-motives), and injunctive normalization shape ethical evaluations of the platform. The findings show that users’ ethical perceptions are associated with perceived alignment between stated matchmaking claims and platform practices. This relationship is mediated by social-motive attributions. Contrary to assumptions (e.g., Brunk, 2012; Ginder et al., 2021), profit-motives are not evaluated as inherently unethical. Instead, their ethical relevance depends on whether users view profit-oriented motives as normatively acceptable within the market context. Ethical perceptions further shape evaluations of relative platform attractiveness, linking ethics to competitive positioning. Integrating interdisciplinary fields, the study advances research by showing how claim-practice consistency, motive attributions, and norms jointly shape users’ ethical evaluations in an emotionally invested platform market. Additionally, the paper stresses that beyond individual-level interventions, online dating platforms should acknowledge their role as social infrastructures. With millions relying on these platforms for relationship formation, online dating platforms carry a responsibility to align communication with observable practices and clarify commercial motives. This may strengthen ethical evaluations by demonstrating that ethical perceptions drive attractiveness, providing platforms a practical tool for competitiveness.
A Grift in the Manosphere: entrepreneurial masculinity in Danish influencer communities
Jakob Kleofas (Kai Roland Green)
The manosphere is widely perceived as a transnational digital ecosystem promoting narratives of gender crisis, reactionary masculinity, and entrepreneurial selfmaking (Botto & Gottzén, 2023; Ging, 2019). Although these dynamics are well documented in cultural, criminological, and informationstudies research, little attention has been paid to how entrepreneurial logics intersect with masculine identity performance (Bratich & Banet-Weiser, 2019; Kompatsiaris, 2024). This paper investigates: “How do Danish manfluencers enact entrepreneurial masculinity to produce their twin objectives of ideological influence and individual economic advantage?“. Our methodological approach draws on recent work into Estonian manfluencers (Lott et al., 2025), employing a critical discourse analysis, supported by an ethnographically informed digital inquiry (Baker et al., 2024; Ging & Murphy, 2021). This dual lens enables a close reading of discursive patterns, alongside a broader mapping of the influencers’ cultural positioning within the Danish media ecosystem. The study analyzes a selected corpus of Danish manfluencers across platforms, focusing on their rhetorical strategies, constructions of value, and the interweaving of entrepreneurship with gendered selfimprovement narratives. Concrete results are yet to materialize but preliminary findings indicate that Danish manfluencers draw on values, language, and economic logics associated with entrepreneurship, and adapt global manosphere tropes to a Danish context. Denmark’s welfarestate model and high gender equality produce cultural conditions unlike the U.S., where dominant manosphere tropes are formed (Haslop et al., 2024). With content blending local cultural reference points with imported narratives related to crisis, hierarchy, and selfoptimization, we find manosphere tropes adapted and and translated into a Danish contexts, often monetizing men’s vulnerabilities through practices connected to grifting, finfluencing, and intimacy coaching. The paper contributes to understanding digital influence infrastructures by showing how entrepreneurial masculinity operates as a flexible ideological resource that can be adapted to local cultural conditions. In doing so, it expands current research beyond dominant AngloAmerican cases and highlights how platformed ideological actors’ function within smaller national ecosystems; an urgent concern given growing societal challenges surrounding opaque social media influence.
Performative Activism or Alliance of Change? Walking the Line as a DEI-Influencer on LinkedIn
Vera Schwarz (Manuel Menke)
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has become a prominent feature of public discourse over the past decade (Jones et al., 2023). Emerging from critical theory and translated into organisational practice, DEI surged into mainstream cultural conversation following the 2017 #MeToo movement and the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests (Dean, 2023; Johnson, 2021). It has since gained popularity as a political topic on social media, creating a branch of DEI-influencers navigating a space between activism, visibility, and monetisation. A growing body of research documents how both platform affordances and influencer culture are gradually reshaping online activism into a branding practice, with critics arguing that this convergence dilutes its political potency (Scharlach, 2024; Gill & Kanai, 2020). Even though DEI-influencers profit from platforms’ DEI-related features, they simultaneously risk being considered pawns contributing to strategic virtue signalling. The stakes are particularly high for influencers belonging to groups benefiting from DEI who might be considered sellouts when collaborating with platforms or offering costly DEI workshops, walking the line between norms of activism and influencer or platform logics. The DEI discourse serves as an interesting case to examine this tension: On one hand, it carries a political heritage oriented towards structural change (Edelman et al., 2001). On the other hand, it now circulates in spaces that systematically reward engagement over substance and self-presentation over collective advocacy (Sobande et al., 2022). This contradiction is particularly sharp on LinkedIn, where professional self-presentation and entrepreneurship are prioritised. This raises critical questions about who ultimately benefits: platforms (through enhanced brand image), influencers (through accumulation of social and financial capital), the DEI cause itself (through awareness), or a combination of the three? Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis, we combine platform affordance analysis with an influencer discourse analysis of LinkedIn’s “Top Voices“ influencer programme. Preliminary findings suggest that LinkedIn has systematically shifted its core features from connectivity toward visibility to adhere to influencers, and that DEI discourse within this space tended to be filtered through self-branding practices (e.g., personalisation, affect, entrepreneurialism, and engagement-centrism), challenging norms of political activism.
