Authenticity Online: How Audiences Authenticate SMIs Who Organically Promote Destinations

Abstract

This study investigates how culturally different audiences authenticate social media influencers (SMIs) who promote destination culture, traditions, and heritage in an organic way. As a context, we selected online discussions of video content created by Li Ziqi, a famous Chinese SMI with millions of followers around the globe. We focused on two populations: Mainland Chinese users (the domestic audience on Weibo) and English-speaking foreigners (the international audience on YouTube). We examined such authentication aspects as otherizing, traditionalizing, nostalgia, and self-discovery via the way they are reflected in the comments to the four most iconic Li Ziqi videos. The method applied was the Large Language Model (LLM) with prompt engineering. We obtained evidence that authentication through otherizing and self-discovery is more prevalent among international audiences while traditionalizing and nostalgia are used more by domestic viewers. We discuss how SMIs who promote destinations using day-to-day life scenes and intimate content contribute to the positive image-building of a destination, which potentially can be leveraged by the DMOs in their marketing efforts