INFLUENCER AS A NEW AGENT OF POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION: CONCEPTUALIZATION OF THE CONCEPT IN POLITICAL SCIENCE


DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/2415-881x.2026.100.2.131-148

Ihor Tsyhvintsev

Abstract


The article presents a political-science conceptualization of the term «influencer» as a new agent of political socialization of youth. The relevance of the study is determined by the digital transformation of political communication, the emergence of a new type of communicative actor, and the institutionalization of the phenomenon in the Ukrainian media space after the 2019 electoral cycle and the full-scale aggression of 2022. The term is shown to retain predominantly marketing and sociocultural connotations, while its political dimension remains analytically underdeveloped. Drawing on English-language scholarship (H. Bause, J. Arnesson, D. Harff, M. Riedl, A. Goodwin and others) and Ukrainian research (I. Shmalenko, N. Yeftieni, I. Semenets-Orlova, A. Kravets, O. Hotsur, A. Proshchenko), the article provides a critical analysis of definitions formulated within marketing, sociological, communicative, and political science approaches. The theoretical framework is explicated as a mid-range conceptual paper integrating the theory of political communication, the theory of political socialization, and the concept of platform-mediated communication. A systematization of typological models is proposed across four groups of criteria: audience scale, thematic focus, degree of political engagement, and platform specificity. Based on a comparative analysis of the influencer and the classical opinion leader, structural and functional differences between the new digital actor and the communicative figure of the mid-twentieth century are identified. A working definition of the influencer in the political-communicative dimension is formulated, supplemented by an operationalization block (five components with empirical indicators) and an analytical framework of three levels of influence (micro, meso, macro). The normative dimension of the phenomenon, related to risks for democratic processes, is articulated. The proposed conceptualization lays the foundation for further studies of the impact of influencers on the components of youth political culture in the Ukrainian media environment of the wartime period.

Keywords


influencer; political socialization; political communication; opinion leader; parasocial interaction; digital public sphere; gatekeeping; political culture

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