Virtually Real: Humanlike Virtual Influencers
and Politics of Artificial Technologies

(book proposal and manuscript in development)

What does it mean to be human in mediated communication environments? How do we want to be together?

I am currently working on my first book project Virtually Real: Humanlike Virtual Influencers and Politics of Artificial Technologies to tackle these questions. Virtually Real examines the cultural implications of "humanlike" artificial technologies' increasing social integration in our everyday cultures through the case of virtual influencers, uniquely drawing on fieldwork that incorporates English, Korean, and Japanese language-based examples and participants. I critically trace various (hidden) people, things, and structures in the phenomenon to explore how these "humanlike" artificial social actors become meaningfully (or as some would say, virtually) "real," however with unresolved ambiguities around issues of power and accountability.

Contact me: doownkim[at]uic[dot]edu

Related Works

• Kim, D. O. (forthcoming) "Meta-authenticity and Fake but Real Virtual Influencers: A Framework for Artificial Sociality Analysis and Ethics." New Media & Society [pdf - accepted version]

  • Abstract: This article studies the negotiation of humanness in artificial sociality by examining the cyborg case of humanlike virtual influencers and their performance of authenticity, drawing on phenomenological ethnographic research. Based on the findings, I propose the framework of “meta-authenticity”—the flexible, co-constructive process of self-referential (in)authenticity performances. Virtual influencers’ meta-authenticity was a dynamic outcome of collaborative performances by entangled human and nonhuman actors. Meta-authenticity’s theoretical and practical contributions are demonstrated, including through an illustrative application. Then, I reflect on meta-authenticity’s implications on human cultures, such as regarding artificial sociality’s capacities to provide authentic interaction on and as per demand, followed by suggestions for ethical practices. As an accountability-integrated framework, meta-authenticity encourages nuanced critical assessments of artificial sociality’s “real” actors and consequences. [Keywords: meta-authenticity, artificial sociality, virtual influencer, authenticity, human-machine communication]

• Kim, D. O. (2025) "Virtual Influencer History: Human Patterns in New Old Media". In AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2024i0.14096

  • Summary: Whether as an innovative business opportunity or as the latest odd Internet fad, virtual influencers are often approached as novel media phenomena. However, they have predecessors: virtual celebrities—e.g., virtual idols, cyber singers, and fictional bands. Approaching the virtual influencers’ seeming novelty as a technological myth, I examine a selection of preceding cases to historicize, and thereby politicize, the contemporary significations of virtual influencers. Often framed as a technical matter, naturalized narratives of novelty distract from the continuing patterns of human involvement and intersecting issues of power in social and cultural spheres. This paper’s chronology is by no means comprehensive of all predecessors, but uniquely incorporates Japanese and Korean cases that are historically rich but lesser known in English-based international Internet research, drawing on a larger project on virtual influencers. The analysis prioritized cases that emulated human stars through CGI, but some non-virtual and non-human cases were included in the larger analysis where relevant.

  • Paper included in: Berryman, . R., Abidin, C., Kim, D. O. D., Hwang, S., & Miyake, E. (2025). "Virtual Celebrity Industries in East Asia." AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2024i0.14096

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Here are some shorter spin-off pieces that were inspired during the Virtually Real project development.

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