Abstract

As a result of technological innovation and the changing environment, new professions have emerged in recent years. One of these is the influencer, a person who, through their posts on YouTube (the youtubers), Instagram (the instagrammers), and other social networks, influences the thinking and the way of acting of preadolescents and becomes their new reference. This influence has repercussions for their career choices and life project. This research seeks the variables that influence minors to want to exercise professions linked to the use of social networks. To respond to the proposed objectives and hypotheses, and adopting a quantitative approach, a questionnaire was applied to 343 Spanish students in the fifth and sixth grades of primary education. The results show that the Machiavellianism variable is the one that shows the greatest differences between boys and girls who want to be youtubers and/or instagrammers and those who do not. The second most significant variable is narcissism, a characteristic of postmodern society and the digital environment. The rest of the variables studied (self-esteem, school commitment, and dominance) differ to a lesser extent.

Abstract

In the digital world, social media have become important for people with disabilities in terms of communication and visibility. They have also become the ideal place for activism, as they allow the self-representation of disability by the content creators themselves. This social group, traditionally segregated and discriminated against, has seen in these platforms a tool to promote social inclusion and confront the dominant discourse. This paper explores the social media Instagram as a space for communication and visibility of instagrammers with disabilities from Europe and Latin America. The main objective of the research is to analyse the publications of Spanish-speaking influencers with physical disabilities to establish if there are similar characteristics or if there are significant differences in the uses they make of Instagram’s functions and how disability is represented in their profiles. Through quantitative, descriptive, and statistical research, a content analysis was carried out of 400 publications corresponding to 10 Instagram profiles, all of them of microinfluencers and macroinfluencers with physical disabilities who had different types of business collaborations. The results show that disability is visible in 85% of the publications, whether in the photos or videos shared, in the text of the post, hashtags or emoticons, although it predominates to a greater extent in audiovisual content. In advertising, mentions or tags of brands stand out, much more than paid collaboration, which appears as a minority compared to other forms of promotion. The degree of influence is decisive for interactions in the form of likes and views per video or reels. Finally, the use of hashtags on inclusion and social awareness reinforces the importance of these platforms for the social integration of people with disabilities.