Abstract
Social movements have historically been understood as collective endeavors, yet today individual influencers increasingly mobilize publics for sustainability and social good. This paper investigates how de-influencers and cause-driven influencers communicate to persuade and engage their audiences, extending framing theory from grassroots activism to individualized digital persuasion. Using large language models fine-tuned on 1, manually labeled posts, we apply the diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing framework across a large corpus of influencer content. Our analysis highlights how influencers embed these frames in personalized narratives and parasocial relationships, creating distinct communication dynamics compared to traditional social movements. The findings problematize existing assumptions about collective mobilization and offer theoretical and practical insights into how individuals function as micro-mobilizers in the digital age.
Recommended Citation
Jha, Abhishek Kumar and Sailakshmi, Srinivas K., "From Movements to Micro-Mobilizers: How Socially Conscious
Influencers Mobilize Engagement Beyond Traditional Social
Movements" (2025). ACIS 2025 Proceedings. 288.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/acis2025/288