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

Junior Oliveira de Almeida, Peter Lugosi and Sarah Quinton

Journal of Business Research, 2025, vol. 200, issue C

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.

Keywords: Agency; Child Consumer Behaviour; Child Influencers; Mosaic Approach; Online Engagement; YouTube (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296325004138
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:200:y:2025:i:c:s0148296325004138

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115590

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().