(Self)influencers and fiction: the prescription of Spanish series on Netflix by actresses and actors

1. Introduction

1.1. Influencers on Instagram

Instagram is the social network that has experienced the greatest increase in population reach in Spain from 2021 to 2022. It is also the second most used network per month after WhatsApp, surpassing Facebook and YouTube (IAB Spain, 2023). In addition, this platform has the highest share of interactions (75%), engagement (75%) and efficiency (81%), according to IAB Spain (2022).

According to these studies, Instagram is the network where most influencers are followed, well ahead of YouTube and TikTok, which are in second and third place, respectively. The official profile given to actresses is decreasing and 34% of users consider influencers’ comments and posts to be advertising (InfoAdex, 2023). In fact, Instagram is also the social network to which most advertising investment is allocated, followed by Facebook (IAB Spain, 2023), and investment in advertising through influencers experienced a growth of 22.8% from 2021 to 2022 (InfoAdex, 2023).

Influencers are people with high levels of presence and influence on social networks who have a certain credibility on a given topic (Asociación Española de Anunciantes y Autocontrol, 2020; Sixto-García and Álvarez, 2020), so that they are prescribers not only of values and lifestyles (Martínez-Sanz and González, 2018), but also of products and services of those brands that rely on them (Sokolova and Pérez, 2021).

Research on the presence of these content creators on Instagram reveals the audience’s motivations for following influencers on this platform: authenticity, consumerism, creative inspiration and envy (Lee et al., 2022). Studies have also focused on measuring effects (Belanche et al., 2020), analysing effectiveness in terms of engagement (Jarrar et al., 2020; Tafesse and Wood, 2021; Leung et al., 2022) and understanding their influence on opinions towards the brands (De Veirman et al., 2017).

The professionalisation of influencers on Instagram (Van Driel and Dumitrica, 2021) implies that they must appear authentic and, at the same time, approach their followers in a strategic way in order to remain attractive to advertisers. Actions with influencers on Instagram have been integrated into brands’ persuasive communication strategies (Coll and Micó, 2019; Vinader-Segura et al., 2020). In sectors such as tourism (Fedeli and Cheng, 2023), beauty (Villena and Fernández, 2020) or fashion (Tentori et al., 2023) this technique has become the epicentre of communication strategies.

1.2. Spanish fiction series on Netflix

The arrival of streaming platforms radically changed the forms of creation, distribution and consumption of audiovisual content (Del Pino and Aguado, 2012; Gallardo-Camacho and Lavín-De-Las-Heras, 2015; Cascajosa-Virino, 2018). Watching multimedia content is one of the most frequent uses of the Internet: 80.3% of Internet users watch series (Observatorio Nacional de Tecnología y Sociedad, 2021) and 65.6% of Internet users watch films or series via streaming platforms (Fundación Telefónica, 2023). Furthermore, 44.1% of Internet users report interacting with other users while watching online series by commenting on what they are watching, either in chats with friends and/or family, actively participating in social networks or in the online video chat itself (IAB Spain, 2021).

Spanish households using video-on-demand services have 3.3 platforms on average, with Amazon Prime Video (68%), Netflix (66%), HBO Max (25%) and Disney+ (24%) having the highest reach (Fundación Telefónica, 2023).

In the case of Netflix, between 2022 and 2023 it has suffered a significant reduction in the number of subscribers, which has led it to be overtaken by Disney+ worldwide and by Amazon Prime Video in Spain (Fundación Telefónica, 2023; Barlovento Comunicación, 2023). After the elimination of accounts shared between several people, the platform proposed new revenue models that combine cheaper subscriptions with advertising viewing.

In Spain, Netflix has the largest production facilities in the European Union (Fundación Telefónica, 2023). Although studies such as those by Gutiérrez and Jáñez (2021) show that in 2019 Netflix offered more Latin American than Spanish-produced content in its catalogue in Spain, other investigations show an increase in Spanish series produced by Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and HBO since 2015, mainly sitcoms, thrillers and comedies (Forteza and Longhi, 2021). Previous research highlights Netflix’s commitment to in-house production, as well as the diversity of production languages as a strategy for the acceptance of its audiovisual offer.

Cable Girls (2017) y Elite (2018) were the first Netflix original series in Spain. The latter became the most binge-watched fiction in the world, i.e. the most watched in one sitting, episode after episode, according to TV Time¹. In 2019 Netflix released 5 series, in 2020 it did the same with 6 series and in 2021 it added 5 more titles. In 2022, it added 15 Spanish series of its own production to its catalogue. In addition, the streaming platform has also picked up series that were originally broadcast on other channels, such as PaquitaSalas (2019) or the successful Money Heist (2019), and co-produces other projects, such as Unauthorized living (2020) together with Telecinco, Toy Boy (2022) with Atresplayer Premium, or The Patients of Dr García (2023) with La 1.

1.3. Netflix’s promotional strategies

It is not anecdotal that for the release of its most outstanding audiovisual productions Netflix resorts to persuasive communication strategies that, on many occasions, generate controversy with the aim of going viral and obtaining media repercussion. The brand also frequently resorts to large outdoor advertising formats to publicise the launch of a series or the premiere of a new season.

The communication carried out by Netflix on its digital channels has been extensively studied (Cestino, 2021; Martín-Quevedo et al., 2021; Fernández et al., 2022; Moreno and Moreno, 2022). The sharing of content related to its own series, the use of youthful language, the use of humour and the introduction of calls to action to encourage participation mean that Netflix receives a high level of user interaction on social networks (Fernández-Gómez and Martín-Quevedo, 2018).

Based on the study of the messages shared by Netflix during the state of alarm in Spain in 2020, in which Netflix was the most consumed streaming platform, Fernández-Gómez et al. (2023) highlighted the proximity strategies employed by Netflix to approach the younger generations, with the use of jokes about the everyday problems of lockdown, references to their own habits (taking selfies or sending audios) or references in their posts to the network profiles of the actors in their series.

On Instagram, Netflix seems to have its own style of communication that is very different from the rest of the streaming platforms (Ortega and Santos, 2020). Amorós-Hernández and Segarra-Saavedra (2020) show that on Instagram, the platform uses stories as a tool for interaction with users, while the usual posts are more focused on the communication of its audiovisual content.

Navío (2021) makes a comparison between the profiles that Netflix creates for its own series on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter: while on Instagram images are the content with the most interactions, on Facebook and Twitter it is the videos that go viral. Martínez-Sala et al. (2021) highlight the potential of Instagram to promote the fandom phenomenon around the series produced by Netflix.

They conclude on the advantages of television fandom and its incipient exploitation that it can be improved by giving series posts a participatory nature, but they also note a correct approach in the brand’s communication strategy by considering different actions in accordance with the characteristics and representative audiences of each social network.

In this sense, in television, previous studies have shown that collaborators can become brand ambassadors of the channel itself (Marín-Pérez, 2019) and that television faces post promotional content on their Instagram profiles, although their commercial nature is not always identified (Castelló-Martínez et al., 2023). The research by Barrientos-Báez et al. (2021) highlights transmediality as a characteristic of the promotional strategy of fiction series, especially on digital platforms, based on the specific case of the series La Peste (The Plague) (2018), an original production by Movistar+.

2. Material and method

The general objective of this study is to analyse how the actresses and actors starring in Spanish television series on Netflix put influencer marketing into practice on Instagram when it comes to prescribing and self-promoting the series in which they participate. The choice of Instagram as the channel analysed is justified by the fact that it is the social network with the highest reach in Spain in recent years, and although WhatsApp is more widely used (IAB Spain, 2023), Instagram generates greater interaction, engagement and efficiency (IAB Spain, 2022) than other digital channels.

Based on this approach, the following research questions are proposed:

RQ1. Do the actresses and actors starring in Spanish Netflix series act as prescribers on Instagram by prescribing the fictions in which they participate? Do they indicate the commercial nature of their messages?

RQ2. What are the formal characteristics of the posts made by the actors and actresses of the Spanish Netflix series on their Instagram profiles to promote their series?

PI3. Do these series have their own profile on Instagram? How much content do they posts and what community of followers do they have?

PI4. Have the fans (prosumers) of these series created at least one profile on Instagram to extend the fictional universe and thus participate in the generation of content by the users? How much content do they post and what community of fans do they gather?

PI5. Do the actresses and actors with the most followers publish more promotional posts for the series in which they participate?

We start from the hypothesis that (H1) the VOD (video on demand) platforms themselves use the actresses and actors who appear in their fictions to promote the series. As a second hypothesis, it is considered that (H2) if an actress or actor also has a larger community of followers, their promotional work will be even greater.

An ad hoc method of analysis has been designed with a descriptive and experimental approach that contemplates two units of analysis: the official profile of the actresses and actors and the profile of the series. The possible existence of profiles created by fandom communities and their activity in quantitative terms (posts, followers and followings) has also been investigated. The design, based on these three universes, aims to facilitate the comparative work of the activity developed in the profile of the actress or actor as an influencer, in order to assess the importance of influencer marketing and its alignment with the rest of the promotional activity carried out on Instagram, either by the fictional content (series) or by the community of users.

The analysis sample consists of all the Spanish series and miniseries whose first season premiered in 2022 on Netflix, which can be seen in Table 1. This platform has been selected because it has had the most subscribers until the recent change in subscriber policy (SigmaDos30', 2022). In addition, the year 2022 has been selected as the first full calendar year available at the dates of analysis.

Of the 16 Spanish fictions that make up the showcase, The Longest Night, Fanático and The Girls at the Back are miniseries, 800 meters is a documentary series and the rest of the productions are conventional series. Only Heirs to the Land is a co-production, while the rest are original series. Drama continues to be the dominant genre, with only three cases of comedy. The commitment to fantasy or science fiction genres stands out in five of the cases analysed.

In order to analyse the way in which the actresses and actors become ambassadors for their own series and, therefore, for the platform, the posts published on the official Instagram profile in the week before and after (7-day period forwards and backwards) the premiere of the first season of the series were analysed. Once the posts alluding to the series had been identified, they were analysed according to the following variables and categories:

• First season premiere date

• Own profile status on Instagram (series): URL; total number of posts; followers and followings.

• Fan profile status on Instagram: URL, número total number of posts, followers and followings.

• Number of actresses/actors analysed per series.

• Total number of contents posted by actresses/actors.

• Average number of contents posted by actors/actresses in relation to the number of actors/actresses per series.

The variables analysed in the case of actors and actresses are:

• Number of followers.

• Number of posts during the period analysed.

• Number of posts during the period analysed about the series.

• Date of post.

• Day of the week.

• Type of content production: own; external (repost); mixed (repost + comment, e.g.).

• Type of content: photo; photo album; photo album + video(s); video(s) (IGTV).

• Presence of actress or actor: yes, alone; with a partner; with a group (more than one person accompanies her or him); does not appear.

• Use of text in the post.

• Ratings about the series: not rated; rated positively; rated neutrally; rated negatively.

• Content or motifs used in the post: extract from the series (several episodes); extract from an episode; premiere of the series; attendance at a festival; press conference; meeting with fans of the series; photocall of the series; other promotional event of the series; promotional video; filming; other advertising support/element of the series (billboard…); content of the actress or actor not related to the series; miscellaneous.

• Appearance of the Netflix visual identity.

• Appearance of the visual identity of the series.

• Netflix quote.

• Specification of release date.

• Asking questions to followers.

• Advertising content identification: not applicable; advertising; ad; in collaboration with; sponsored by; ambassador of; thanks to; gifted; other.

• Place of advertising identification: not applicable; text; image; audio; below the user’s name; other.

• Interactions: number of likes of the post; views of the reel; comments on the post.

The data collection method was validated by the research team and was carried out between 15 July and 15 August 2023. The data was collected and analysed in the Excel matrix created for this purpose.

3. Results

3.1. Series, profiles, content and communities

Only 4 series (22.2%) have their own profile on Instagram with a total of 178 posts. The profiles of the series on Instagram have a total of 58,029 followers (average of 14,506.5 per series) and only 128 users (an average of 32).

We have also detected five unofficial profiles related to the series analysed, created by communities of fans or followers, but despite the fact that they post more content (492 posts with an average of 98.4 posts/profile), they have a community almost five times smaller (13,212 followers with an average of 2,642.4 per series). This is despite the fact that they follow almost twelve times as many users (1,428 profiles followed with an average of 285.6 per profile).

3.2. Actors and actresses as prescriptive agents

A total of 146 main actors and actresses have been identified, distributed among the 16 series analysed, with an average of 9.7 actresses/actors per series. Only 7.5% (N= 11) of the actresses and actors do not have an Instagram profile.

Of the actor profiles that post content in the period analysed, 491 posts were counted, of which 50.9% (250 cases) correspond to promotional posts for the series in which they act.

3.3. Characterisation of content

Own content (95.2%) prevails over sharing (2.4%) and mixed sharing (2.4%), usually from the Netflix Spain profile (Image 1).

With regard to the type of content posted, posts with a photograph (35.7%), photo albums (32.9%), reels (13.7%) and videos (10%) prevail. Mixed photo and video albums are the least used (7.6%).

The appearance of the actresses and actors is relevant, not only in the series, but also in the posts they publish. Proof of this is that they appear in group (together with more than one person) in 52.6% of the content they post, alone (27.7%) and as a couple (15.7%). Only 4.0% of the content does not feature any actress or actor.

Practically all the posts (99.6%) use text. Only one post has been identified in which the actor Raúl Tejón posts a reel in which he compares a split-screen scene from his series Alpha Males with another from the series La que se avecina (Telecinco, 2007-), both by the director Laura Caballero and the director Alberto Caballero.

Actresses and actors promote the series in which they participate on their own Instagram profiles, but do not rate them (61%), or when they do, they rate the series positively (37.3%) or neutrally (1.6%).

Among the motifs (content) used to promote the series through the actresses’ and actors’ own channels, the following stand out: extracts from an episode (26.9%), filming (16.1%), promotional videos (13.3%) and extracts from the series made up of a compendium of different episodes (12.4%). Meetings with fans of the series and photocalls are not used.

This promotion by actors and actresses not only contributes positively to the series, but also to the platform. To a certain extent also because the visual identity of the platform appears in 26.9% of the posts and that of the series appears in 31.3% of the cases analysed. On the other hand, the platform is mentioned in 74.3% of the posts.

Among the promotional intentions, it is worth mentioning the release and reminder of the premiere date on the platform, which appears in 34.9% of the posts. On the other hand, actresses and actors do not tend to encourage audience participation in their profiles, since only 5.2% of the posts include questions addressed to the audience.

Actresses and actors of Spanish series on Netflix post promotional content about their fictions mostly on weekdays (average 42.6), while on weekends they reduce their activity (average 18.0). The days of greatest series promotion are Fridays (26.9%), Wednesdays (16.9%) and Thursdays (16.1%). The distribution can be seen in Graph 1:

Finally, with regard to the reach and interactions generated by the promotional content of the Spanish Netflix series posted by its actors and actresses, an average of 13,142.9 likes was detected, with the post by actor Bruno Gagliasso receiving the most likes among his followers (333,860). Through an album with five photos (Image 2) in which he tags the Netflix Brazil profile, screenwriter Carlos López and director Vicente Amorin, the actor reveals in Brazilian Portuguese the intensity of filming the series and some of the physical effects.

It is also the post with the highest number of comments (4,194) received from Instagram users, with an average of 182.4.

The average number of reel views was 52,865.4, with the Intimacy trailer posted by Itziar Ituño (Image 3) being the most viewed (258,000).

Despite this data, which confirms an evident promotional intentionality of the series on the part of the actresses and actors, no post identifies its advertising nature.

3.4. Relation between digital communities of actresses-actors and prescription of the series

Finally, the number of fans of the actresses and actors is analysed and compared with the number of posts published during the period analysed, as opposed to those related to the series they star in. Bruno Gagliasso, from the series Santo (22,443,009) and Alba Flores from Sagrada Familia (10,632,342) are the actor and actress with the largest online community on Instagram.

During the period analysed, the publication of content amounts to 491 posts and the average stands at 3.7. Once again, Bruno Gagliasso (22) is the most prolific actor on Instagram, followed by Sebastián Yatra from the series Once Upon a Time… Happily Never After (17).

It is striking that more than half of these 491 posts (N=250, 50.9%) are related to the series starring the actor profiles analysed. Once again, Bruno Gagliasso (18) is the actor with the most posts about his series Santo (81.8% of the posts published), followed by the actress Raquel Guerrero, whose posts (8) are all about the series Alpha Males, and the actress Mónica Mara, whose 8 of the 9 posts published (88.9%) are about Once Upon a Time… Happily Never After.

There are also 31 actresses and actors from 12 series whose activity on Instagram during the period analysed focuses exclusively on promoting their series. Smiley: Carlos Cuevas, Meritxell Calvo and Cedrick Mugisha; Alpha Males: Fele Martínez and Raquel Guerrero; You’re Nothing Special: Dèlia Brufau, Ainara Pérez, Jaime Wang and Jordi Aguilar; The Girls at the Back: Itsaso Arana and Mariona Terés; Sagrada familia: Álvaro Rico; If Only: Miquel Fernández and Michel Noher; Feria: The Darkest Light: Lazar Dragojevic and Patricia López Arnaiz; Heirs to the Land: Elena Rivera, Aria Bedmar, David Solans, Artur Sancho and Maria Rodríguez Soto; Fanático: Carlota Urdiales and Eva Almeida; Intimacy: Verónica Echegui, Patricia López Arnáiz, Yune Nogueiras, Eduardo Lloveras and Jaime Zatarain; The Longest Night: Fran Berenguer and Huichi Chiu; and The Girl in the Mirror: Josean Bengoetxea.

4. Discussion and conclusions

According to RQ1, the actresses and actors act as prescribers of their own audiovisual content, also contributing to the promotion of the platform. It has been found that more than half of the posts published are related to their series. In addition, 12 of the 16 series have at least one actress or actor (31 in total) whose activity on Instagram has focused solely and exclusively on promoting their series. It can therefore be said that hypothesis 1 is partially confirmed, as we can affirm that the vast majority of series are promoted by one of their actresses/actors, who dedicate at least half of their posts to promoting the series.

Despite this, they still fail to identify the advertising nature of their posts, thus persisting in what has been denounced by both the academic-scientific (Castelló-Martínez et al., 2023; Segarra-Saavedra and Hidalgo-Marí, 2018; Sixto-García and Álvarez Vázquez, 2020) and professional (Asociación Española de Anunciantes and Autocontrol, 2020) spheres.

With regard to RQ2, the contents are characterised by their own creation, delivery towards the end of the week, the predominance of photographic content starring the artistic team in group, but unlike what might be thought, they do not tend to value the series, they simply try to make them known through audiovisual capsules of the episodes and with little presence of the visual identities of the platform and of the fiction as such. Instead, they try to encourage interaction and traffic between profiles by quoting the Netflix Spain user.

Based on RQ3, very few series have their own profile on Instagram (Once Upon a Time… Happily Never After. Welcome to Eden. Sagrada familia and Smiley). The rest focus their promotion on this social network on the activity promoted from Netflix’s profile, but also on that generated by their artistic team, and in the cases of Heirs to the Land. Intimacy. You’re Nothing Special. Sagrada familia and Alpha Males, on that generated by the series’ own fans (RQ4). Fans produce more content, but reach a smaller community.

RQ5. In search of the possible relationship between the volume of the online community of each actress-actor and the relationship with the volume of promotional posts published, we calculated the correlation between the two variables (where matrix 1 corresponds to the number of followers and matrix 2 to the volume of posts published). The result is 0, so it can be said that the relationship between the two variables is null and, therefore, there is no dependence of one on the other, i.e. the volume of followers does not influence the number of posts published by the actors and actresses analysed. It can therefore be said that the study refutes hypothesis 2, which stated that actresses and actors with a larger community of followers have more promotional activity.

The relevance of the study lies in conceiving the actor’s role as a prescriber-influencer of the series they star in, as well as in knowing their possible contribution to increasing the audience not only of their series, but also of the audiovisual platform that includes them.

The limitations of the study include the impossibility of accessing the stories to be analysed, as well as certain quantitative engagement data, given that the configuration of some profiles has prevented this. Nor was it possible to find the distribution of 800 metres.

Future lines of research include the possibility of analysing the object of study of this article in a comparative way with the promotional activity carried out from the Instagram profile of Netflix Spain, contemplating other television series outside this platform, other cultural products such as films, plays or other projects promoted by the acting team, the promotion of commercial brands outside the cultural industry and even the hybridisation of both options —i.e. posts that promote their cultural products and also include commercial brands that sponsor them—, as well as the collaboration of the acting team with altruistic and social projects. In this way, it could be investigated whether actors and actresses are subject to exclusivity conditions when persuading on their own channels. It would also be particularly interesting to focus research on minors working in TV series or programmes such as MasterChef Junior (TVE 1, 2013), which bring together relevant online communities, whose accounts must be managed by adults, given the conditions of use limited to 13 years of age. Examples of these issues, related to the actor profiles studied in this paper, can be seen in Image 4.

Authors’ contributions

Jesús Segarra-Saavedra: conceptualization, methodology, data collection, formal analysis, visualization, supervision, writing- original draft, and writing-review & editing. Tatiana Hidalgo-Marí: data collection, formal analysis, writing- original draft, and writing-review & editing. Araceli Castelló-Martínez: writing- original draft, and writing-review & editing. The authors have read and accepted the published version of the manuscript and declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Availability of research data

The database designed specifically for this research and populated from the data collected is available for publication. Link to research data: http://hdl.handle.net/10045/139131

Acceptance of privacy policy

The authors of this article accepts the privacy policy as well as the rights of authorship.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgements

This article is part of the research groups “Comunicación y públicos específicos” (Compubes) and “Industrias creativas hoy: producción, difusión, gestión y consumo de productos culturales en la era de la información” (IICCXXI) of the University of Alicante, as well as the Instituto Universitario de Estudios Sociales de América Latina (IUESAL).

References

Notes

1. https://www.tvtime.com/

Author notes

* Professor and researcher in the group COMPUBES (Comunicación y Público Específicos)

** Professor of Semiotics of Mass Communication

*** Professor and researcher in the group COMPUBES (Comunicación y Público Específicos)

Additional information

To cite this article : Segarra-Saavedra, Jesús; Hidalgo-Marí, Tatiana; & Castelló-Martínez, Araceli. (2024). (Self)influencers and fiction: the prescription of Spanish series on Netflix by actresses and actors. ICONO 14. Revista Científica De Comunicación Y Tecnologías Emergentes, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.7195/ri14.v22i1.2097

ICONO 14, Revista de comunicación y tecnologías emergentes

ISSN: 1697-8293

Vol. 22

Num. 1

Año. 2024

(Self)influencers and fiction: the prescription of Spanish series on Netflix by actresses and actors

Jesús Segarra-Saavedra ¹, Tatiana Hidalgo-Marí ¹, Araceli Castelló-Martínez ¹