Green vs. Greed: A Cross-Platform Analysis of Sustainability and Commercial Social Media Influencer Content

To understand how social media influencers, as digital opinion leaders, communicate about consumption and sustainability, this study investigates the extent to which social media influencer content is commercial (promoting brands and stimulating purchases), and to what extent their content is sustainability-oriented (promoting a more sustainable lifestyle). Specifically, we analyzed 84,338 influencer posts on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to capture the proportion of commercial and sustainability content, and their combination. Results show that commercial content far outweighs sustainability content. Additionally, we find platform differences: Instagram has most commercial content relative to sustainability content, whereas YouTube has most commercial content relative to all content. Although sustainability content is scarce on all platforms, TikTok seems to have a larger proportion of sustainability content. These findings evoke an important moral debate on whether influencers should stimulate consumption and how to encourage them to address sustainability more.