Communication through Shifting Lingua Franca: Surveying Followers' Perceptions of Influencers' Code-Switching in Social Media

Abstract

The explosive growth of social media-enabled sharing and engagement has resulted in the emergence of content providers known as social media influencers (SMIs) who use different languages during engagements. This study investigated why SMIs feel the need to switch between languages and how their followers respond to this underreported and interesting phenomenon. The study explored social media followers’ perceptions of influencers’ code-switching behaviour (n=163). It used SPSS version 28 to conduct descriptive data analysis and to calculate the mean and standard deviation to gain insight into respondents’ perceptions. The findings revealed that a significant proportion of the participants reported that the influencers whom they followed frequently employed code-switching during conversations. While English is assumed to be the de facto lingua franca of social media, the findings of this study contribute to the communication field by suggesting that influencers code-switch when conversing in English for many reasons. The results of this study provide insights into how influencers' code-switching is perceived by their followers during social media interactions. Factor analysis was performed, and it revealed that the underlying followers’ perceptions of social media influencers who code switch are related to lexical clarity, lexical deficiencies, and language meaning. This study also revealed that the most dominant perception was lexical clarity. Individuals or organisations interested in engaging influencers may find these results useful, particularly marketers who frequently use influencers for advertising purposes, as they can provide insight into influencer behaviour. Furthermore, social media influencers interested in knowing how followers perceive them when they code-switch may find these results useful.