Mapping Fuzzy Finfluencers' Landscape

The vast popularity of social media led to an unparalleled rise of financial influencers, the so-called “finfluencers”, who exploit those platforms to disseminate financial-related content and advice to a global audience. They use microblogging sites, short-form video hosting platforms, and online video sharing channels to disseminate their recommendations. Consumers in general, while following these entities, are vulnerable to risks related to the one-sided parasocial relationships created by unsolicited (and frequently unqualified) financial advice. Our project aims at addressing harms to citizens exposed to financial recommendations distributed in social media. In particular, it is concerned with studying financial loss and other associated harm inflicted as a consequence of following (intentional or unintended) unqualified financial advice (or misadvice) provided by influential users or celebrities (finfluencers) on social media platforms.

• This grant is a collaboration among University of Birmingham (Dr Panagiotis Andriotis and Dr Marco Barassi), Newcastle University (Dr Essam Ghadafi), and De Montfort University (Prof Julia Shaw).