Child’s privacy versus mother’s fame: unravelling the biased decision-making process of momfluencers to portray their children online

ABSTRACT

Many privacy concerns are related to influencer sharenting, or the practice of influencers sharing content about their children on social media. This study uncovers how momfluencers (i.e., mothers who collected a large following on their social media channels by sharing insights of their motherhood experiences) reflect on these privacy concerns and examines how these concerns rationally and/or biasedly impact their sharenting behaviour. By conducting in-depth interviews with 20 Flemish momfluencers on Instagram, this study reveals that, while they are concerned about their child(ren)’s privacy and take some privacy-related measures to protect it, cognitive biases (unconsciously) reduce their risk perceptions. As such, privacy risks are perceived as relatively abstract and distant because the majority of them have not (yet) personally experienced them. Additionally, a privacy-openness paradox occurs in which mothers tend to lose the explicit and immediate benefits of influencer sharenting when protecting their child(ren)’s privacy, further stimulating them to disclose personal details. These results show that children derive little to no benefits from their mothers’ influencer activities, yet are the ones carrying the potential privacy risks.

KEYWORDS:

• Sharenting
• influencer marketing
• privacy
• children
• mothers
• social media

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds (BOF) [grant number BOF.24Y.2020.0006.01].

Notes on contributors

Elisabeth Van den Abeele

Elisabeth Van den Abeele, PhD candidate at the Department of Communication Sciences at Ghent University. Her research focuses on children as senders and receivers of commercial messages in context of kidfluencer marketing and influencer sharenting. Twitter: @vdaelisabeth [email: [email protected]].

Ini Vanwesenbeeck

Ini Vanwesenbeeck, Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication and Cognition at Tilburg University. Her research focuses on minors’ processing of (persuasive) media. Twitter: @inivanw [email: [email protected]].

Liselot Hudders

Liselot Hudders, Associate Professor of Marketing Communication and Consumer Behaviour at the Department of Communication Sciences of Ghent University and director of the Centre of Persuasive Communication. She focuses her research on how minors cope with embedded advertising and how social media messages should be framed to foster behavioural change, with a focus on influencer marketing [email: [email protected]].