By Adriana Alarcón (Written for MakerZone)
Since the invention of the printing press, the role of the media has played an elemental role in political, economic, and social decision-making over the centuries. However, since the advent of the Internet, the processing and impact of information on society have reached astronomical proportions. In particular, because of the transformation of the well-known opinion leaders, who were considered academics or specialists in certain subjects. Now the so-called influencers, who mostly give their opinion on such basic elements as lifestyle, exercise, nutrition, etc., and in general on the consumption of a product and/or service, generate a great impact with their actions, which has set a new standard in consumerism and the international stock markets.
A clear example of this has been the South African billionaire, Elon Musk, who among all his businesses has the automaker Tesla, where he had initially accepted the cryptocurrency bitcoin as a payment method to buy a car. However, it became known that bitcoin requires a large source of energy, generated by polluting fuels such as coal. For this reason, through a series of tweets, the businessman expressed his concern and the demarcation between Tesla and bitcoin, which resulted in its collapse of more than 10%. And the value of this cryptocurrency has been defined by the entrepreneur's tweets, full of memes and black humor. While last December, Musk made another cryptocurrency, the dogecoin, appreciate by almost 20% simply by tweeting: "Doge", a tweet that was later clarified as a joke, so his Twitter account tends to affect other parts of the market.
Therefore, it is necessary to generate or even study this phenomenon through a semantic vision because not only is reception justified under an ideological manipulation, but it is also necessary to take into account the reproduction of this dominant ideology from other interpretative communities. It also needs to consider the dilemma between public opinion and publicized opinion. For the most part, companies have glimpsed a large market and investment in influencers to generate a greater reach, without really sizing the effect they can have on their consumers or viewers, with products and/or services, without having a criterion other than their benefit. Similarly, it is necessary to elucidate that most influencers lack specialized knowledge in health, politics, economics, among others, so their public opinion, becomes publicized, and even misinformation with a huge ripple effect on both consumers and markets.
Sources:
BBC News Mundial. (2021). Bitcoin y Elon Musk: el CEO de Tesla anuncia que ya no aceptarán la criptomoneda y esta sufre una fuerte caída. Retrieved on: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-57096818
CNN. Ziady, H. (2021). Un tuit de Elon Musk con emoji de corazón roto hace caer más al bitcoin 7%. Bitcoin cae después de que Elon Musk tuitea un meme sobre una ruptura. Retrieved on: https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2021/06/04/bitcoin-cae-elon-musk-tuitea-meme-trax/
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