Virtual influencers identity and digitality in the age of multiple realities

"This book identifies the converging socio-cultural, economic and technological conditions that have shaped, informed and realised the identity of the contemporary virtual influencer, situating them at the intersection of social media, consumer culture and AI, and digital technologies. Through a critical analysis of virtual influencers and related media practices and discourses in an international context, each chapter investigates different themes relating to digitality and identity: virtual place and nationhood; virtual emotions and intimacy; im/materialities of virtual everyday life; the biopolitics of virtual human-production; the necropolitics of pandemic virtuality; transmedial and mimetic virtualities; and the political economy of virtual influencers.