IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eco/journ3/2024-02-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Investigating the Dark Side of Social Media Marketing: Case of Cyberbullying on Micro Celebrities

Author

Listed:
  • Leila Lefi

    (Department of Business Administration, College of Business and Economics, Qassim University, Saudi Arabia)

  • Sarra Sghaier

    (Research Lab in marketing (LRM), Institut des arts et de métiers de Sfax (ISAMS), Sfax University, Tunisia)

Abstract

A substantial growth of using social media is the new marketing trend in last few years. Influencers are now recognized as new micro-celebrities. So that, marketing professionals are increasingly using them for a better placement of their products. This new trend is considered as the bright side of social media. But, little is known about the dark side. This research investigates the dark side of social media in the particular case of Instagram platform. We focused on cyberbullying as an abusive way usually used by followers in order to highlight the real effects on micro-celebrities. This research innovatively used netnography method to extract and analyse Instagram posts on the official account of one well-known Tunisian micro-celebrity. All contents shared during 3 months by individuals involved in this research were recorded using Nvivo 11.0 for thematic analysis and coding. Results shown that strangely, cyberbullying in Tunisian context doesn’t cause psychological disorder but made the victim viral and famous. It seems that masquerading was provoked by the micro-celebrity to get more followers, more endorsement and more profit. Limitations and future research directions were stipulated.

Suggested Citation

  • Leila Lefi & Sarra Sghaier, 2024. "Investigating the Dark Side of Social Media Marketing: Case of Cyberbullying on Micro Celebrities," International Review of Management and Marketing, Econjournals, vol. 14(2), pages 13-22, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:eco:journ3:2024-02-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econjournals.com/index.php/irmm/article/download/15758/7835
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.econjournals.com/index.php/irmm/article/view/15758
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jesús Henares-Montiel & Vivian Benítez-Hidalgo & Isabel Ruiz-Pérez & Guadalupe Pastor-Moreno & Miguel Rodríguez-Barranco, 2022. "Cyberbullying and Associated Factors in Member Countries of the European Union: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Studies with Representative Population Samples," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(12), pages 1-13, June.
    2. Hunt Allcott & Matthew Gentzkow, 2017. "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election," NBER Working Papers 23089, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Bruno Godey & Aikaterini Manthiou & Daniele Pederzoli & Joonas Rokka & Gaetano Aiello & Raffaele Donvito & Rahul Singh, 2016. "Social media marketing efforts of luxury brands : Influence on brand equity and consumer behavior," Post-Print hal-02313434, HAL.
    4. Godey, Bruno & Manthiou, Aikaterini & Pederzoli, Daniele & Rokka, Joonas & Aiello, Gaetano & Donvito, Raffaele & Singh, Rahul, 2016. "Social media marketing efforts of luxury brands: Influence on brand equity and consumer behavior," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 5833-5841.
    5. Hunt Allcott & Matthew Gentzkow, 2017. "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 211-236, Spring.
    6. Shan Lu & Lingbo Zhao & Lizu Lai & Congrong Shi & Wanyue Jiang, 2022. "How Do Chinese People View Cyberbullying? A Text Analysis Based on Social Media," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(3), pages 1-13, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Julia Cage & Nicolas Hervé & Marie-Luce Viaud, 2017. "The Production of Information in an Online World: Is Copy Right?," Working Papers hal-03393171, HAL.
    2. Leopoldo Fergusson & Carlos Molina, 2020. "Facebook Causes Protests," HiCN Working Papers 323, Households in Conflict Network.
    3. Tetsuro Kobayashi & Fumiaki Taka & Takahisa Suzuki, 2021. "Can “Googling” correct misbelief? Cognitive and affective consequences of online search," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(9), pages 1-16, September.
    4. Dean Neu & Gregory D. Saxton & Abu S. Rahaman, 2022. "Social Accountability, Ethics, and the Occupy Wall Street Protests," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(1), pages 17-31, September.
    5. Robbett, Andrea & Matthews, Peter Hans, 2018. "Partisan bias and expressive voting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 107-120.
    6. Henrik Skaug Sætra, 2021. "AI in Context and the Sustainable Development Goals: Factoring in the Unsustainability of the Sociotechnical System," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-19, February.
    7. Fathey Mohammed & Nabil Hasan Al-Kumaim & Ahmed Ibrahim Alzahrani & Yousef Fazea, 2023. "The Impact of Social Media Shared Health Content on Protective Behavior against COVID-19," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(3), pages 1-16, January.
    8. Michele Cantarella & Nicolo' Fraccaroli & Roberto Volpe, 2019. "Does fake news affect voting behaviour?," Department of Economics 0146, University of Modena and Reggio E., Faculty of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    9. Cho, Daegon & Hwang, Youngdeok & Park, Jongwon, 2018. "More buzz, more vibes: Impact of social media on concert distribution," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 103-113.
    10. Joël Cariolle & Yasmine Elkhateeb & Mathilde Maurel, 2022. "(Mis-)information technology: Internet use and perception of democracy in Africa," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 22010, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    11. Kerim Peren Arin & Juan A. Lacomba & Francisco Lagos & Deni Mazrekaj & Marcel Thum, 2021. "Misperceptions and Fake News during the Covid-19 Pandemic," CESifo Working Paper Series 9066, CESifo.
    12. Bartosz Wilczek, 2020. "Misinformation and herd behavior in media markets: A cross-national investigation of how tabloids’ attention to misinformation drives broadsheets’ attention to misinformation in political and business," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-22, November.
    13. Barrera, Oscar & Guriev, Sergei & Henry, Emeric & Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina, 2020. "Facts, alternative facts, and fact checking in times of post-truth politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    14. Sumeet Kumar & Binxuan Huang & Ramon Alfonso Villa Cox & Kathleen M. Carley, 2021. "An anatomical comparison of fake-news and trusted-news sharing pattern on Twitter," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 109-133, June.
    15. Julia Cagé & Nicolas Hervé & Marie-Luce Viaud, 2020. "The Production of Information in an Online World," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 87(5), pages 2126-2164.
    16. Bag, Sujoy & Tiwari, Manoj Kumar & Chan, Felix T.S., 2019. "Predicting the consumer's purchase intention of durable goods: An attribute-level analysis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 408-419.
    17. Zhang, Chu-Bing & Zhang, Zhuo-Ping & Chang, Ying & Li, Tian-Ge & Hou, Ru-Jing, 2022. "Effect of WeChat interaction on brand evaluation: A moderated mediation model of para-social interaction and affiliative tendency," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    18. Zazli Lily Wisker & Robert Neil McKie, 2021. "The effect of fake news on anger and negative word-of-mouth: moderating roles of religiosity and conservatism," Journal of Marketing Analytics, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(2), pages 144-153, June.
    19. Roger D. Magarey & Christina M. Trexler, 2020. "Information: a missing component in understanding and mitigating social epidemics," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7(1), pages 1-11, December.
    20. McNamara, Trent & Mosquera, Roberto, 2024. "The political divide: The case of expectations and preferences," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 110(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social Media; Dark Side; Instagram; Cyberbullying; Micro-celebrities; Digital Marketing; Netnography;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M3 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising
    • M37 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Advertising

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eco:journ3:2024-02-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ilhan Ozturk (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.econjournals.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.