Virtual influencers (VIs) have become a powerful marketing tool for brands to promote their products, due to their trouble-free experiences, compared with human influencers. However, uncanny valley, a theory that describes the negative psychological responses triggered by humanoid robots or avatars, suggests that VIs might exert negative responses from social media audiences. Thus, this study aims to investigate how social media audiences perceive Ling, the first computer-generated VI in China. Four research questions were proposed: 1) how Ling builds its persona on Weibo, 2) how consumers perceive Ling’s identity, 3) how social media audiences respond to Ling’s VI marketing strategies, 4) how social media audiences express their intimacy towards Ling. As an exploratory qualitative research method, textual analysis was employed to reveal underlying meaning in social media audiences’ perceptions of VI, and 79 Weibo posts and 8442 comments were collected as the research text. The results showed that users’ response to Ling can be summarized into three dimensions: (1) VI identity as a CGI character, (2) endorser identity as a social media marketing tool, and (3) national identity as a cultural ambassador.
Introduction
Virtual influencers (VIs) have become effective social media endorsers for brands of many kinds. Created as a CGI character, VI is managed by technology corporates. This gives them competitive advantages in that virtual influencers can minimize the risk of scandals and controversies to ensure trouble-free experiences. Although the use of virtual influencers sometimes backfires (e.g., a widespread outrage caused by the virtual idol group A-Soul), brands can have relatively greater control over virtual influencers than human counterparts (Moustakas et al., 2020). There are several well-known successful virtual influencers, such as Lil Miquela, Shudoo, Noonnuri, and Imma, who are active on social media with multiple business endorsement deals. Ling, China’s first and most successful virtual influencer holds a unique position among other VIs since she actively communicates her Chinese national identity and promotes traditional Chinese culture to national and global audiences in addition to fulfilling her role as a brand ambassador.
Although virtual influencers seem to be an effective marketing tool, there are some concerns revolving around them. Uncanny valley, a theory used to describe the relationship between a human-like appearance character such as AI or robot and the negative psychological response it triggers, suggested that fictional characters could evoke a feeling of discomfort or fear depending on the level of human-like traits they possess (Mori et al., 2012). From this perspective, using virtual influencers as endorsers might exert an adverse effect on brands, and it leads us to question social media audiences’ responses toward virtual influencers.
It is estimated that China’s virtual influencer market could be worth $960 million in 2021 (Teh, 2021). Ling has more than a million followers on China’s Twitter-like Weibo with more than two million comments and likes. Like any other virtual influencer, Ling is also created and managed by technology companies. AI technology enabled Ling to possess seamless and natural facial expressions and body movements. Meanwhile, there is no autonomy granted to Ling and other virtual influencers yet. Social media posts and live-streaming videos are all carefully planned and crafted by the people behind Ling. Thus, it is of our great interest to discover various themes emerged on Ling’s social media posts as well as comments. Specifically, Ling’s unique position as a cultural inheritor as well as social media influencer leads us to speculate on how she presents her roles on social media posts and how social media audiences react to her self-presentation practice exhibited by their comments under Ling’s posts.
This case study chose an exploratory qualitative design to explore repetitive patterns in Chinese consumers’ opinions on the most popular Chinese virtual influencer, Ling. In this research, we aim to answer four questions: 1) how Ling build its persona on Weibo, 2) how consumers perceive Ling’s identity, 3) how social media audiences respond to VI marketing strategies in the Chinese market, 4) how social media audiences express their intimacy towards Ling. The posts and comments under Ling’s Weibo, from May 18, 2020 (the first Weibo posted on the day) to December 31, 2021, were analyzed. This research takes the first step to understanding social media audiences’ perceptions of virtual influencers in China.
Literature Review
Materialism and Chinese Virtual Influencer Market
In the past 5 years, the global influencer marketing size increased from $1.7 billion in 2016 to $9.7 billion in 2020. In 2021, it reached $13.8 billion, showing stable growth, and the market is projected to reach $16.4 billion in 2022 and $84.89 billion by 2028, indicating a steady annual growth rate of 30.3% (Santora, 2022). Influencers are people who differentiate themselves by a large number of followers on social media and their ability to influence other social media audiences. The number of their followers varies from 10,000 (micro-influencer) to 100,000 (meso-influencer), or even over 1000,000 followers (macro-influencer) (Harrigan et al., 2021). In China, influencer culture is closely related to materialism culture. Materialism is deemed as a consumption value, and “at the highest levels of materialism, possessions assume a central place in a person’s life and are believed to provide the greatest sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction”(Belk, 1985, p. 265). As one of the most materialistic countries in the world, many Chinese people praise the wealth, power, and status of others, and they prefer to build parasocial relationships with those who possess more materialistic wealth than themselves. By posting luxury goods and sharing ideas about products and brands on social media, social media influencers (SMIs) built an image of having rich materialistic possessions and attracted great attention from their followers. In China, social media influencers, also known as Key Opinion Leaders (KOL), influence public perception of brands on social media platforms through audiovisual content (Lorenzana, 2022). Similarly, Li and Feng (2022) also found that social media influencers have become a force to represent national brands by engaging social media users through its authenticity. To this extent, they are considered by their followers as personal, reliable, and authentic information sources.
After witnessing the long-standing phenomenon of SMIs and the steady growth of global influencer marketing, virtual influencers have only recently emerged on social media. Virtual influencers (VIs) are computer-generated images (CGI) with a social media presence (Moustakas et al., 2020). Created by high-tech companies and marketing experts, the fictional characters do not have a physical form but look like real human in terms of physical appearance, behavior, and emotional display. They are mainly created and used for social media marketing, including selling a specific message or endorsing a particular brand. Different from human influencers whose personal scandals might have a negative impact on the brands they endorse, VIs are relatively free from misbehaviors which might lead companies to face a crisis. VIs give brands complete control over their endorsement forms and types, thus winning more collaborations with various brands (Moustakas et al., 2020). Kong et al. (2021) explored the virtual idol’s unique characteristics from a technological perspective using A-Soul as an example. They found that VIs can bring higher profits and lower costs compared with human influencers. Moreover, Lil Miquela, one of the most famous VIs in the world, has more than three million followers on Instagram and endorsed many luxury brands. She makes around $8000 for each sponsored post (MW, 2021). NetWorthSpot (2022) estimates that Miquela has a calculated net worth of $10.09 million. Besides, they are relatively easy to control because they do not have human needs to satisfy.
The number of virtual influencers keeps growing these days. The VI industry started to take off in 2015, there were only nine VIs at that time, and the number has grown to 200 by 2022 (Hiort, 2022). In China, VI is a growing phenomenon, and they are becoming a market force that cannot be neglected. It was worth $960 million in 2021, and the market size has grown 70% since 2017. Their followers have now reached nearly 390 million (Lorenzana, 2022), mostly Gen Z and Millennials, since they are digital natives and have a more favorable attitude toward artificial intelligence (Han, 2020). For younger audiences affected by celebrity and youth culture, virtual influencer like Miquela is seen as aspirational character among young adulthood (Stone, 2019). Brud, the firm that created Miquela, has carefully crafted her identity through social media posts by showing a half-Brazilian and half-Spanish ethnicity, supporting progressive causes (e.g., Black Lives Matter, young vote in the U.S.), promoting her iconic fashion style, and asserting her role as a singer. Building VI’s identity might be a challenging task, yet once built successfully, it can earn the hearts of Gen Z followers who become appeal to or resonate themselves with the VI’s identity (Block & Lovegrove, 2021). All in all, VI’s identity can be used as a “cultural currency” which later serves as a source of monetization (Boshier, 2020).
By 2023, China’s VI market is expected to reach 1.5 billion RMB (Daxue Consulting, 2021). With such a growing marketplace, VIs attract more and more attention from brands. China’s virtual influencers come in many different shapes and forms, from anime-like virtual idols who bring their influence to the stage through performances such as A-Soul and Luo Tianyi to human-like virtual influencers who promote themselves primarily through social media posts, such as Ling. Hutomo (2023) analyzed Luo Tianyi’s social media uploads and found that Luo Tianyi is highly acceptable as an idol figure as well as a presenter of traditional culture. She showed her cultural identity through visual displays, traditional outfits, classical Chinese songs, and collaborations with traditional musicians. Finally, she built her persona as an idol figure who supported the preservation of traditional Chinese culture.
Ling as a Symbol of Online Nationalism in China
Although there are many different forms of VIs, the first computer-generated VI in China is Ling, launched in May 2020 by Chinese artificial intelligence startup Shanghai Xmov Information Technology and Beijing Cishi Culture Media Company (Mao, 2021). Ling is designed as a Beijing resident who combines Chinese beauty with contemporary style. She has pale skin, a sharp chin, and dark straight hair with a bun, attracting over one million followers on Chinese twitter-like Weibo, especially the younger generation who prefer the latest fashion and love getting entertaining content from VIs. Similar to other VIs, Ling aims to endorse commercial brands, and engage in live broadcast, online and offline activities. She has promoted a wide range of products, including cars, watches, milk tea, and fashion. The brands that she endorses include Tesla, Bulgari, Vogue, Lancôme, and the milk tea chain Nayuki. Unlike other VIs, Ling has no interest in social events but is portrayed as a cultural ambassador designed to demonstrate China’s rich culture and soft power. Ling’s team also created content around such characteristics on social media platforms, such as showing off her Peking Opera ability.
Culture is important for national identity construction because a sense of national identity is found in a vast cultural network consisting of various images, ideas, discourse, and practice (Edensor, 2020). Leerssen (2006) also argued that all nationalism is cultural nationalism, a nation is a group of people whose peculiar character consists, at least in part, of cultural factors such as language or shared consciousness. Therefore, promoting the culture of a nation has the potential to cultivate nationalism, since a person becomes who s/he really is by associating with a particular culture (Haugaard, 2002). In the Chinese context, traditional culture plays a significant role in establishing a sense of national identity for individuals and serves as a means to safeguard Chinese culture against the perceived influence of Westernization (Meissner, 2006). Thus, given that Ling possesses a unique cultural identity, it is easy for her to become a symbol of nationalism. Especially in recent years, Chinese nationalism has been rising, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) promoted nationalism as the dominant legitimization tool to face market-oriented social transformation and maintain public support for governance (Hyun & Kim, 2015).
In Ling’s case, her fans are initially attracted by her uniqueness and the entertaining content she posts. However, due to more cultural content Ling shares and more distinct cultural identity she builds, gradually entertainment fans are mobilized to become nationalists, which is a common phenomenon in online fan communities in China (Liao et al., 2022). For example, some Weibo users criticized Ling’s appearance falls into the Western stereotype of a Chinese female, a flat face and single-fold eyelids, without representing a real Chinese woman’s image. At the same time, as a VI who claimed herself as “A cross-dimensional girl who loves Chinese traditional culture” (Weibo profile), Chinese online nationalists showed their expectations of Ling’s potential to boost the national image. Also, the fans are echoing Ling’s Weibo, which promotes Chinese culture and tradition, in turn strengthens their national identity.
Gradually, Ling’s Weibo, which plays a vital role in culture construction and transmission (Ohiagu & Okorie, 2014), has become a public sphere for young Chinese netizens’ opinion expression regarding nationalism and Sino-Western conflicts to fight for their national identity and pride (Zhang et al., 2018). In fact, it is common to find online political expressions with nationalist sentiment on social media among young people (Hyun et al., 2014), as online nationalism has become a new form of political participation among contemporary youth in China (Liu, 2012). Schneider (2021) also found that when connecting youth culture or youthful content about community sentiment on digital media platforms, such as inspirational patriotic music videos created by various actors, it is easier to lead to online commentaries and mobilize nationalist sentiments. However, if the political propaganda is too obvious, it would arouse the resentment of young people. Yang (2021) examined social media audiences’ responses to two Vtubers, Jiangshanjiao and Hongqiman, launched by the Chinese Communist Party Youth League (CYL). The two figures were created to diffuse positive energy amid the COVID-19 outbreak, however, they immediately received massive criticisms from netizens. The case of Jiangshanjiao and Hongqiman became a subject of political satire by netizens to express their public grievances, due to the distinct propagandistic nature of the positive energy campaign.
Ling, portrayed as a young virtual influencer, initially captured social media users’ attention by her distinctiveness, and the users soon discovered her role as a cultural ambassador and began participating in discussions related to her cultural posts. Over time, a growing number of patriotic sentiments emerged in the comments section of her Weibo posts, transforming her social media account into a public platform for expressing nationalistic opinions. Consequently, Ling herself became a symbol of online nationalism.
Social Media Audiences’ Reaction to the Virtual Influencer
Post-Humanism and the Uncanny Valley
The post-humanism theory rejects traditional Western humanism and undermines the traditional boundaries between human and technology (Bolter, 2016). Post-humanist discourse falls into three different typologies: transhumanism, critical post-humanism, and speculative post-humanism (Roden, 2015). Transhumanism focuses on supplementing human ability with technologies to eliminate possible human flaws (Singler, 2020). Critical post-humanism questions the human-centered view and argues that boundaries between human and non-human entities are being blurred. Lastly, speculative post-humanism considers the notion of post-human as the future of humanity, exploring how humanity might evolve with the augmentation of new technologies.
Posthumanism perspectives can provide a theoretical basis for VIs due to their post-human performances exhibited on their social media platforms such as endorsing products, building their identities with narratives, and interacting with followers. When people are confronted with technology-based human-like avatars on social media, different interpretations of post-human experiences will be made. One is approached in a more paranoid and negative way which is called uncanny feelings, meaning the discomfort triggered by nearly perfect human-like images. Another one is in a more appreciative and positive way, which is a more active user engagement with those virtual characters due to parasocial interaction. We will now take a closer look at the uncanny valley and user engagement to explore social media users’ reactions to VIs.
Interpersonal theories argue that people behave differently when interacting with a human or a computer. When social media audiences believed they were talking with a human rather than a computer agent, they would be more engaged in the conversation and showed more behaviors associated with interpersonal relationship establishment (Shechtman & Horowitz, 2003). However, if they realized they were speaking with a fictional computer-generated character, such as human-like robot or avatar, negative affective reactions might be aroused. Especially when they believe those fictional characters are also coupled with human-like cognitive abilities, they will have more fear (Stein et al., 2020). This idea is embodied in the uncanny valley theory (Mori, 1970; Mori et al., 2012).
The uncanny valley theory argues that people show a greater affinity when interacting with a more realistic avatar. Users’ affinity toward the avatar increases as it looks and feels more realistic. However, when the avatar possesses semi-realistic features, user affinity drops sharply partially because realistic avatars can trigger user anxiety. Then, as realism keeps increasing to the level that human beings possess, the valley can be crossed, and users’ affinity can increase to the highest level (Mori et al., 2012). The almost human-looking CGI character is located at the bottom of the valley (Yuan et al., 2019), and the user’ affinity is at the lowest level, producing a great sense of uncanniness and eliciting cold, eerie feelings in viewers. Indeed, Cheung et al., (2022) study found that young Chinese consumers had a more favorable attitude towards anime-like VIs such as Luo Tianyi and Hatsune Miku than those who possess human-like appearances such as Ling and Ayayi.
Negative emotional responses arise from cognitive resistance while processing the traits of the robot. Since the robotic agent cannot become a real-life human, people expect to see the differences that separate them from us (humans). However, the boundary between the robotic agent and the human is becoming blurred, especially when the main channel of communication is social media. Virtual humans, who build their presence on social media, are similar to that of real-life social media influencers. They talk, express feelings, and relate with their fans by sharing their everyday life on their social media feed. Social media audiences may feel that it is hard to find any difference between virtual influencers and real-life influencers in that real-life influencers tailor their content by modifying their appearance with heavily filtered photoshop images that deviate from their actual appearances. When Lil Miquela first opened her Instagram page, she did not reveal her identity as a virtual influencer in the very beginning, and her fans were not aware of her identity as a virtual influencer. Nowadays, more and more people are becoming familiarized with the virtual influencer industry and how they are operated by AI technology. Thus, we speculate that social media audiences will be likely to perceive Ling as a virtual character and feel uncomfortable when interacting with her. The following research questions were proposed.
RQ1:
How does Ling build her persona on Weibo?
RQ2:
How do social media audiences perceive VI Ling’s identity?
User Engagement
A large body of existing research has already examined virtual influencers’ marketing effectiveness. For example, Moustakas et al., (2020) examined the advantages and disadvantages of using VI as a marketing strategy, and they found sustained impact on consumers and the longitudinal success of VI were doubted by digital experts. Sands et al. (2022) also discussed the opportunities and challenges VI marketing presents for firms and managers. However, few studies have examined whether VI marketing significantly exerts a positive effect on consumers. Thus, it is necessary to investigate how social media audiences respond to VI social media activities. In other words, how user engagement could affect VI’s social media marketing strategies. User engagement refers to whether users find value in a product or service and develop purchase intentions. It is also defined as a psychological state by a level of interaction and dedication (Cheung et al., 2015). In the social media context, user engagement refers to the extent to which they are willing to have a conversation with their friends or interact with the people they follow, either social media influencers or marketers and organizations (Ihejirika et al., 2021), through a variety or combination of click-based interaction such as reading, forwarding, commenting, and liking (Khan, 2017). Engagement can be seen as two levels, either passive content consumption or active two-way communication (Men &Tsai, 2014). Highly engaged social media audiences can bring more profits since they are more likely to interact with the influencers, share the information with their friends, and buy the product (Arsenyan & Mirowska, 2021). Thus, it is of our interest to see whether Ling can be an effective brand endorser by capitalizing on her followers’ attention and interest in her. Accordingly, the following research question was raised.
RQ3:
How do social media audiences respond to Ling’s VI marketing strategies?
Besides, Ling, like other VIs, tries to build an intimate relationship with her followers by actively sharing her personal life on Weibo. Therefore, social media audiences may feel that a closer relationship can be built between themselves and Ling by knowing more about her. In the extreme, this can lead to a perception of a parasocial relationship with VIs. A parasocial relationship is seen as an enduring, usually positive, and one-sided form of relational “intimacy” that may be built between audiences and public figures such as politicians or celebrities in the mass media (Horton & Wohl, 1956; Liebers & Schramm, 2019). Users may have the illusion of an established friendship with the influencer and believe they are in the influencer’s social circle (Hwang & Zhang, 2018), leading to more frequent social interaction with VIs. Indeed, Molin and Nordgren (2019) found that parasocial interactions enhanced the level of users’ intimacy with VIs. Based on HypeAuditor’s report, the user engagement rate of VIs is three times higher than real influencers (Baklanov, 2021). Stein et al.’s (2022) research also showed that compared with human influencers, users showed stronger parasocial interactions with VIs. This may be due to a special form of intimacy built between VIs and followers, without having to make upward comparisons or feel jealousy towards VIs, unlike what commonly happens to human influencers (Deng & Jiang, 2023). That is, VIs’ followers can easily immerse themselves in alternate realities as VIs bridge the real and imagined worlds (Arsenyan & Mirowska, 2021). Thus, we raised the following research question.
RQ4:
How do social media users express their intimacy towards Ling?
Methods
Research Design
To address the research questions, this study used exploratory qualitative research method (i.e., textual analysis) to reveal underlying meaning in social media audiences’ perceptions of VI, developing new assumptions and generating new theoretical themes. Textual analysis is a term for various research methods used to gather, describe, and understand texts, allowing researchers to unlock hidden information and explore new horizons. The common methods of text analysis in media studies include thematic analysis, content analysis, and discourse analysis (Caulfield, 2022).
The specific textual analysis employed by the current study is defined as a way researchers apply to gather and analyze information about how people understand the world. It is a data collection process that allows researchers to understand how people in different cultures make sense of themselves and the world around them (McKee, 2020). Thus, for this study, textual analysis is proper to investigate social media audiences’ narratives through their comments, aiming to understand how they engage in sense-making practices with the messages conveyed in Ling’s posts. Besides, thematic analysis is suitable to analyze the text information because the purpose of this study is to find general patterns of social media audiences’ perception of VI Ling.
Data Collection
The text of this research was collected from both Ling’s Weibo posts and comments. Ling is the first virtual influencer in China, and she opened her Weibo account in February 2020. As of writing this article (November 2022), Ling has over 1.03 million followers, and her Weibo video has almost four million views. Weibo is China’s domestic social media which is like a combination of Twitter and Facebook (Ge & Gretzel, 2018), with 5.82 million monthly active users and average of 2.52 million daily active users in June 2022 (CIW Team, 2022). A large number of Weibo users utilize the social media platform to gain the latest information, record their daily life, and interact with their friends and the celebrities they follow. Their active engagement in Weibo brings them social capital and helps to build their personal values, which in turn enables their further participation (Ge & Gretzel, 2018). As one of the most popular social media types in China, Weibo is also on the top ranking of social media platforms in terms of influencer marketing (Hutchinson, 2019). However, there are also some limitations of Weibo. Weibo encourages its users to disclose their personal information, such as college information and IP address, which is criticized for invading users’ privacy (Amos et al., 2014). Also, the users’ Weibo accounts might be suspended or even banned for publishing aggressive comments regarding public events (Global Times, 2021).
Weibo is a text-based social network site, even though it also contains visual content. The current study only considered the textual content, both followers’ and non-followers’ comments were selected as a research sample, for avoiding any potential bias resulting from positive comments stemming from the influencer’s followers. Since Ling was newly launched as a virtual influencer and the number of posts she published is not large, we decided to set the time period of data collection from May 18, 2020, on which day she posted her first Weibo, to December 31, 2021, which is the end of a year.
As mentioned earlier, the research unit for the current study is the text from Ling’s Weibo posts and comments. Thus, we first used Python to extract Ling’s posts, and we collected all the URLs of each post, the content of the posts, the number of forwarding, comments, and likes. All the information was captured and stored in an Excel spreadsheet. The final data shows there are 79 posts during the set time period, and the posts received 15,472 forwardings, 24,916 comments, and 114,969 likes. Then, we started to collect comments from each post URL. The commenters’ names, profile descriptions, comment content, and publish date were extracted. However, we found that we cannot access all comments for every post due to Weibo restrictions. The extraction will terminate when the comment page is no longer validated, either because of limitations on the number of comments which can be extracted, or time restrictions. This limited extraction process produced a final sample of 8442 comments, representing 33.9% of the overall comments.
Data Analysis
Inductive (data-driven) thematic analysis was applied to analyze the text to find clusters and repetitive patterns in Ling’s posts and the opinions expressed by Ling’s followers and non-followers. The posts and comments were coded separately to find Ling’s daily routine as a VI and social media audiences’ attitudes towards her. Both posts and comments data were open-coded by four researchers and then discussed, matched, and finalized the themes.
First, in the open coding stage, researchers read all the posts. We highlighted relevant material and attached descriptive codes in a parallel column created next to the post column, making labels about important and recurring points of each comment line by line. Then sorting function in an Excel spreadsheet was used to cluster similar codes. Next, in the selective coding stage, thematic analysis was applied, and the clusters were interpreted and grouped into major themes.
As for the comment coding, a similar process was conducted. However, comment information is more complex, and the scale is much larger. In order to turn tangled data into manageable information, the researchers made great efforts to reach a consensus. Firstly, we decided to clean the data and delete the irrelevant comments, such as “repost” (转发微博), “check in” (打卡), “happy holidays” (节日快乐)), punctuation marks or emoji only or @ another account, to make the coding content more precise. Then, we averagely coded the rest comments separately, integrating similar codes into the same cluster, and key themes were derived from the repetitive patterns.
Findings
In the data analysis stage, the post codes were termed as “poem citation,” “Peking opera,” “brand endorsement,” “Bravo Youngsters,” “festival celebration,” “season and weather,” and all the codes were grouped into four major themes.
Social Life
Like other virtual influencers, Ling posted her routine activities on her Weibo regularly, such as going to the art gallery to see the exhibition or hanging out alone to enjoy a peaceful afternoon in a café or bar. She also posted her selfie and travel photos to keep her followers updated with her latest information. But unlike other VIs who sometimes hang out with their friends, go for a movie, or travel together. Ling seldom socializes with other VIs or human social media influencers. For example, she went to UCCA Center for Contemporary Art which is China’s leading contemporary art institution located at the heart of the 798 Art District and she posted “After work, I visited exhibitions in my spare time. It means a lot to me, I will talk to you about the exhibitions next time. #ling#” with a photo that she is standing in front of the center. Besides, she also displays her emotion like a real human. When she celebrated her birthday, she said “Celebrating my birthday alone, I feel relaxed and comfortable, wish for world peace. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME.#Ling#.”
Brand Endorsement
Created for social media marketing, Ling endorses many brands and promotes the products through her Weibo posts. After being launched for 4 months, Ling received her first endorsement for Tesla, she posted “today’s ‘special’ date ∼ For the first time, as @tesla #special experience officer#, it is so cool to see the combination of the traditional Chinese style and the new era of high technology∼#Ling#,” with two photos she was taken with Tesla. Later on, Ling endorsed Nayuki which is one of China’s biggest milk tea chains, Tissot, Estée Lauder, Pechoin, UNI green plum flavor tea drink, since she can guarantee a trouble-free experience for marketers and advertisers without influencer controversies and celebrity scandals. Now Ling has become one of the favorites among China’s major brands, including milk tea, watch, car, cosmetic to soft drinks.
Chinese Culture
In the profile section, Ling introduces herself as “A cross-dimensional girl who loves Chinese traditional culture,” she enjoys Peking Opera, calligraphy, and Tai Chi and sometimes dresses in Peking Opera costumes to join related cultural events. In order to popularize traditional Chinese culture, she participated in a TV show. In her promotion Weibo for the show, she wrote “I am Ling, Ling is from Opera Hualing (A peacock tail feather on the hat of Opera actors), I love traditional Chinese culture, like Peking Opera, calligraphy and Tai Chi, I hope I can interpret the traditional Chinese art in my own way.” She also likes Hanfu, the most traditional Chinese clothing, and Qipao, a classic one-piece Chinese dress. Besides, she celebrates all traditional Chinese festivals online with beautiful poetic Chinese language, including the dragon boat festival, mid-autumn festival, and Chinese New Year.
Talent Show
Except for brand endorsement and popularizing Chinese culture, Ling also joined a Chinese talent show called “Bravo youngsters” which was created by China Central Television to show the traditional Chinese culture seen by young teenagers through artistic expressions such as Peking Opera, folk instrumental music, and traditional Chinese dance. She has the chance to work with famous Peking opera artists and popular celebrities, this show won her many fans and she started to be treated as a virtual idol. After she performed her last show on the program, she summarized “Thanks to the # Bravo youngsters # program for providing me a performing stage, through which I can pay tribute to Mr. Mei Lanfang, I had an amazing experience. Thank you @王珮瑜, @陳子丹, @杨幂, @董艺_Memory for all the positive comments on my performance, and the staff who have taken care of me. This journey has come to an end, I will treasure my memories and see you on the next stage. ❤”
As for the comment, we initially coded the data as “technology usage,” “appearance comment,” “Chinese style,” “purchase intention,” “patriotic,” “friendship” and “idol,” then all the codes were grouped into four major themes.
Authenticity
In line with the uncanny valley theory, negative comments on Ling’s appearance, in terms of authenticity and humanness, were found. The audience expressed the feeling of uncomfortableness toward virtual influencers. Ling’s appearance is very much like humans, and some audiences seemed to have a hard time distinguishing and understanding Ling’s identity as a “virtual human.” For instance, “Is she a real human,” “how come she is virtual,” “she looks so real” were found. Some even showed pessimistic interpretations of the post-human era by expressing concerns over artificial intelligence such as “people will be replaced by AIs.” Indeed, some jobs (e.g., service representatives, check-out counter staff, restaurant servers) are no longer needed as before since their tasks can be easily replaceable by technology. Thus, people seem to worry about the possible consequences of the evolution of technology which leads to the reduction of manpower. To summarize, people not only expressed their fear on the appearance of Ling which caused uncanny feelings but also showed concerns about her role as an “influencer,” which in turn may replace real-life influencers and possibly other occupations as well.
Commercialization
As an influencer, aiming for social media marketing and gaining profits from endorsements, Ling is supposed to attract potential customers, affect their attitudes toward specific products, and stimulate their purchase intention. However, it is hard to tell whether the commentators have the desire to buy the products Ling endorses. Among the 8000 comments we extracted, less than 10% of comments mentioned the brands and products. Only a few said “I am really into the products,” “the products are really creative,” “I finally know what to add to my shopping cart on double eleven, thanks for Ling’s recommendation,” “I am longing for Pechoin” under Ling’s endorsement posts. Compared with the comments on Ling’s appearance and authenticity, social media audiences paid much less attention to her product promotion. However, among those comments, we seldom can see any negative sayings about the brands and products.
Intimacy
Due to the parasocial interaction on social media, users have easier access to showing their concern for Ling whom they consider a friend, leading to an increased intimacy towards Ling. They cared about Ling’s daily life, including eating food, wearing clothes, and weekend leisure activities, such as “I can see your collarbone! You look really thin, please eat more!” “Winter is coming ∼ ling, remember to wear winter clothes, keep warm, and do not get sick!” “Where did you spend your weekend? I really want to hang out with you,” “You can stay up a little bit tonight, because tomorrow is the weekend, good night and have a good rest.” They also wanted to support and encourage Ling spiritually, like “Is it possible to be a friend with you, a friend who can talk heart-to-heart?” “I hope you can always be passionate about your life and live bravely.”
Nationalism
Since Ling describes herself as a cultural ambassador of China, several audiences commented on Ling’s potential to propagate Chinese culture worldwide. Some worried that her appearance fits into Western people’s stereotypical view of Chinese females. The high fashion industry adores models from Asia who possess certain body figures and outlooks. Small eyes, fair skin, and a flat face. Likewise, some commented that “she does not look like an ordinary Chinese person, rather she fits into the Asian stereotypes created by the West. She shouldn’t represent Chinese culture.” Audiences had favorable views on Ling’s role as a cultural ambassador, such as “I like this Chinese style girl” and “She represents the modern traditional Chinese culture,” however, one commentator criticized that she should represent how ordinary Chinese girls look like, “She is not a real typical Chinese girl, she looks like a Chinese girl in Western eyes.” As the first virtual influencer in China, Chinese audiences are building their expectation on her potential to heighten her national image. Thus, they seem to dislike the fact that her appearance does not truly represent a typical Chinese woman.
Discussion
The results demonstrated that to successfully build her persona as a real human influencer and reduce Weibo users’ uncanny feelings, Ling tried to behave like a real human on the social media platform. For example, she posted her daily life regularly on Weibo, participated in a talent show, and joined related cultural events. In this way, Weibo users might not be aware of her real identity as a CGI character, given that Ling’s face is very close to a human with the support of advanced technology, and she can also express her emotions. As we mentioned earlier, when the uncanny valley has been crossed and realism keeps increasing, users’ affinity can increase as well. By making herself become a more believably realistic avatar through her human-like appearance and behavior, Weibo users’ affinity towards VI might have increased. Thus, the RQ1 was answered.
To answer the RQ2 and RQ3, how the social media audiences perceive Ling’s identity and respond to VI marketing strategy, and express their intimacy towards Ling, we summarized the users’ responses into three dimensions: (1) VI identity as a CGI character, (2) Endorsement identity as a social media marketing tool, and (3) national identity as a cultural ambassador. The summarized three identities answered RQ2. A formative model was drawn in Figure 1.
Figure 1. A formative model of VI identity.
VI Identity as a CGI Character
As authenticity is the currency of realness (Genz, 2015), it provides a chance for VI to be reliable and trustworthy as being real is important for VI’s long-term success (Moustakas et al., 2020). Like all other VIs, as a CGI character, sometimes it is difficult for people to distinguish whether Ling is a real human, an animated character, or a VI. Prior research showed that there were continuous queries about VI’s human/robot/animation character and identity (Block & Lovegrove, 2021). Even though Ling strived to make herself more real, in line with the previous studies, our research still found that people were doubtful about Ling’s authenticity, and many Weibo users were confused about her real existence. Besides, Ling aroused divergent responses among her followers and non-followers regarding her trustworthiness, but the overall perception is not favorable.
Furthermore, for the people who can tell Ling is a VI, it is easy to evoke a feeling of uncomfortableness or fear among them. This idea is explained in the uncanny valley theory (Mori et al., 2012). It argues that as a non-human character like robot, the virtual character becomes more human-like, they may trigger a negative reaction among social media audiences because humans tend to be fear of uncanny or unfamiliar things (Choudhry et al., 2022; Mathur et al., 2020; Wiese & Weis, 2020). Our findings showed a similar result, Ling’s human-like appearance made many Weibo users feel uncomfortable. Some even showed their reactance toward the advanced technology, potentially leading to people’s reluctance in their interaction with Ling.
Endorsement Identity as a Social Media Marketing Tool
As mentioned above, the lack of authenticity caused trust issues among Weibo users. Previous studies have shown that it could be an obstacle for brands to collaborate with VIs (Choudhry et al., 2022; Moustakas et al., 2020). Similar results were shown in our findings as many comments questioned how Ling can eat, drink, work, and wear make-up since she is virtual, such as “Do you need to work everyday,” “what did you have today.” Even though some Weibo users made such comments out of curiosity, in the long run, these doubts might adversely affect her food and cosmetics endorsement. People also criticized Ling’s appearance which cannot represent Chinese girls but Asian stereotypes in Western eyes, which might also negatively affect her marketing value.
However, very few people questioned her personality or personal life, unlike other human influencers who are sometimes trapped in scandals (such as tax evasion, surrogacy, or drug abuse) and banned from social media and blacklisted by the China Association of Performing Arts. It was found that Ling’s behavior is totally under control. To this extent, as a VI, Ling can minimize the risk of scandals and controversies to ensure trouble-free experiences, thus becoming increasingly popular in brand endorsement. Besides, with the increasing acceptance of VIs among Gen Z, social media audiences also have high acceptance of the brands and products Ling endorses. Among the comments related to users’ purchase intention, people showed their great interest in the brands Ling mentioned on her Weibo and even recommended the products to their social media friends. Thus, regarding RQ2, we can generally conclude that social media audiences showed a positive response to VI marketing strategies in the Chinese market based on what we have discovered on Weibo comments.
National Identity as a Cultural Ambassador
Generally, as a marketing tool, VI is normally used to endorse and promote brands and products, and their enthusiasm for social events is also due to their persona built by economic motivation. Unlike other VIs who are eager to engage in social issues such as breast cancer or Black Lives Matter (Moustakas et al., 2020), created by the Chinese company, Ling was characterized as a traditional Chinese girl who is fond of modern traditional Chinese culture. VIs are not responsible for cultural inheritance and culture promotion. However, in the Chinese context, Ling is set as a cultural inheritor to demonstrate China’s rich culture and soft power, which evoked broad national and patriotic feelings among social media users, attracting many online nationalists. Compared with Jiangshanjiao and Hongqiman who were initially built to diffuse positive energy and earn political allegiance among young netizens but finally failed, because the purpose of cheering people up was too obvious during the time of Covid-19 (Yang, 2021). In Ling’s case, there was no message pushed by Communist Party. Instead, young Chinese people were naturally attracted to Ling’s human-like appearance and behaviors. Since Ling asserts her role as a cultural ambassador, young Chinese people’s pride in traditional culture was expressed as a form of nationalism. To the best of our knowledge, such finding is first seen among VI studies.
Currently, Ling’s Weibo has become a public sphere for users’ opinion and expression about nationalism. In the comment area, some criticized her Western looking which cannot show Chinese national identity, while others thought she was a traditional Chinese beauty that can represent the typical Chinese female image. However, either way, it is fueling Chinese online nationalism. To this extent, by building a national identity as a cultural ambassador, Ling could build her unique persona and attract more patriotic Chinese social medial users, thus having more traffic and being more successful as an influencer.
Regarding RQ4, social media users expressed their intimacy towards Ling by showing daily concerns (i.e., caring about Ling’s daily necessities), sending festival greetings (i.e., asking whether Ling had festival food), and providing mental support (i.e., encouraging Ling to be herself). All in all, due to parasocial relationships, users actively and frequently engage in Ling’s daily life through a variety of click-based interactions such as reading, forwarding, commenting, and liking. By doing so, the intimate relationship was established on the users’ side.
Conclusion and Limitation
The current study depicted a general picture of how Ling interacted with Gen Z and how Ling boosted online nationalism among young people through her personal social media account, laying a foundation for future research to dig out more insights in terms of youth culture and online nationalism presented on VIs’ social media. This research also provides a new consumer perspective of VI on the Chinese social media Weibo. It investigated how Chinese first VI Ling built her persona and attracted social media audiences through her Weibo posts to gain economic benefits, and how Chinese social media audiences identified Ling, responded to her marketing strategy as a brand endorser and showed their intimacy towards Ling.
The results showed that, like other VIs, Ling tried to blur the lines between a humanoid avatar and a real human by sharing her everyday life and interacting with her followers on social media platforms. Although some people exhibited uncanny feelings when facing Ling, she achieved success as a brand endorser because some users either did not seem to recognize her real identity or those aware of it did not show reluctance toward Ling’s virtual identity. By analyzing Ling’s Weibo comments, we could observe both positive and negative interpretations of post-human discourse among followers of Ling. Based on our observations, some followers set distinctive boundaries between Ling as a virtual human and themselves as real humans and left negative comments about her human-like, yet imperfect appearance. On the other hand, some positive interpretations of post-human discourses were found in the comments. Some users treated Ling like a human as if they were being forgetful of her VI identity. They seemed to have formed parasocial relationships with Ling and expressed intimacy towards her by leaving comments about her routine, holiday plans, health, and well-being as if she is a real human.
In summary, Chinese social media audiences’ perception of Ling can be conceptualized in three dimensions, including VI’s identity as a CGI character, endorsement identity as a social media marketing tool, and national identity as a cultural ambassador. The first two identities are commonly seen in VI research, in line with the previous studies, there are still many Weibo users who are reluctant to accept Ling since the sense of uncanniness is easily elicited when they face a human-like avatar. However, once they can accept and be familiarized with the virtual character, they will show a positive response to VI marketing strategies. Previous studies mostly focused on the marketing effectiveness of virtual influencers from the perspective of VI marketing strategy. However, the current research examined whether those strategies were effective or not from the consumers’ perspective. Besides, it is worth mentioning that authenticity and trustworthiness are still the two most important factors in VI marketing. As witnessed in several comments, some comments questioned how Ling could be an effective endorser for food brand while she does not have a physical body to experience them. Thus, it is notable that the endorsed products matter to keep the VI’s authenticity and trustworthiness. In order not to dilute Ling’s credibility as a brand endorser, managers should consider the fit between her CGI identity and the nature of the product. Furthermore, we also found that in the Chinese context, people are showing a great interest in VI’s potential to boost China’s national image. They not only interact with Ling in terms of her VI identity and brand endorsement but also treat Ling’s Weibo as a public domain to promote their nationalism expression, which has not been found in the previous VI research.
In addition to the novelty and originality of our research, it also has some limitations. First, we only studied a single social media platform Weibo. However, different results might be found on different platforms. For example, Weibo is a text-based social medial platform, so the visual content was not included in our analysis. Future research can explore visual-based platforms such as Instagram or TikTok to examine the effect of images and videos on user responses to VI’s identity and marketing strategy. Second, Ling is the only VI we chose for the study, so we did not compare the users’ reactions to different VIs in China. Future studies can collect more data about different VIs and conduct comparative case studies to gain a deeper understanding of the topic. Third, regarding the methodology, the current paper chose thematic analysis to reveal Ling’s identity shaped on social media. However, future studies can adopt discourse analysis to interpret the data based on contextual knowledge.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Lijun Luo (PhD candidate, Hong Kong Baptist University) is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research interests focus on health communication, environmental communication, and media psychology.
Dr. Wonkyung Kim (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is a communication scholar whose research focuses on the effectiveness of marketing communication in the new media environment, particularly the effects of electronic word-of-mouth in social media.
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