ABSTRACT Though organizations increasingly collaborate with social media influencers, such as bloggers and videobloggers, little is known as to how the contextual cues related to sponsored content affect the authenticity perception of the social media influencers among audience members. This study explores how positive and negative priming of sponsored content shapes the authenticity perception of the vlogger among its audience members. Four different manipulation conditions were constructed to study a U.S. based travel vlog on Qualtrics, with data collected via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. A theory-guided content analysis of 211 open viewer responses was conducted to compare perceptions of authenticity between the manipulation groups. The results verified the significance of priming: the same sponsored content can result in opposite reactions among the audience members depending on the positive/negative valence of the introductory text attached, highlighting the central importance of strategic communication related to the perception of sponsored content. The results also point out the importance of audience member engagement for experienced authenticity: The manipulation of audience participation with the vlog had a stronger effect on the perception of authenticity of the vlogger than the positive/negative valence of the introductory text.

中文翻译：

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真实性：原始性如何影响社交媒体有影响力者的真实感

摘要尽管组织越来越多地与博客和视频博客等社交媒体影响者合作，但对于与赞助内容相关的上下文线索如何影响受众成员之间的社交媒体影响者的真实性知之甚少。这项研究探讨了赞助内容的正面和负面底色如何塑造vlogger在其受众成员之间的真实性感知。构建了四种不同的操作条件，以研究通过Qualtrics在美国进行的美国旅行视频博客，并通过亚马逊的Mechanical Turk收集了数据。对211个开放观看者的响应进行了理论指导的内容分析，以比较操作组之间对真实性的看法。结果证实了引发的重要性：相同的赞助内容可能会导致受众成员之间的相反反应，具体取决于所附介绍性文字的正/负价位，从而突出了与赞助内容感知相关的战略交流的核心重要性。结果还指出了受众成员参与对于体验真实性的重要性：与介绍性文本的正/负价相比，使用vlog对受众参与的操纵对vlogger的真实性感有更强的影响。