Dear Colleague,

Society today is significantly different from the past due to the profound changes in the interactions that people have with media every day. The development of the Internet and the advances of the web have enabled a multidirectional communication in which citizens can, in addition to using media, consume and produce with them, with what this implies, mainly for consumption, coexistence, behavior models, leadership, and sociopolitical relations.

This multiform connection space for the consumption of news, learning, leisure, communication, interpersonal relationships, and collective intelligence is defining in a culture of media convergence and participation, which in a transversal way is influencing behaviors and social perceptions.

According to several international organizations (UNESCO, UN, UNICEF, Council of Europe, European Parliament) and the STATE RESEARCH AGENCY—2018 Calls KNOWLEDGE GENERATION R&D Projects and R&D Research Challenges SCIENTIFIC-TECHNICAL MEMORY OF INDIVIDUAL PROJECTS, it is necessary to analyze the perceptions, attitudes, and behavior of the population in the use of digital platforms, particularly those with the greatest global penetration: YouTube and Instagram.

YouTube is the free platform with the highest penetration, with 167.4 million monthly active users in the United States, 69.5 in Brazil, 47.4 in Russia, 46.8 in Japan, and 18.7 in Spain according to data published from the first quarter of 2016 (https://bit.ly/2CzrBVm). This platform has managed to attract millions of young people thanks to YouTubers (Fernández-de-Arroyabe, Lazkano, Eguskiza, 2018). Similarly, Instagram users worldwide have grown exponentially in recent years, reaching 1000 million active profiles in June 2018 (https://bit.ly/2wWruND). The distribution of Instagram users globally in January 2018 was 31% in the range of 18–24 years of age, 30% in the population of 25–34 years, and 17% in the age range of 35–44 (https://bit.ly/2wWruND). Instagram has been identified as the fastest-growing social network in the world. For example, in Spain, it increased its number of users from 4 million in 2014 to more than 10 million at the end of 2017 (Business Insider, 2018) (https://bit.ly/2NpGNbP). In this context, the figures of those users that set trends on both platforms, i.e., YouTubers and influencers, respectively, whose calling power had never been reached by any previous means of communication, constitutes a challenge in the investigation of communication processes.

These multiform connection spaces for the consumption of news, learning, leisure, communication, interpersonal relationships, and collective intelligence that is shaping the so-called culture of media convergence and participation demonstrates the need for alphabetization as the sole guarantor of the empowerment of citizens and the democratization of the processes of consumption and production, especially in younger generations and social groups and those at risk of social exclusion, in whom the profile as active users and producers (Bruns, 2008) acquires increasingly significant proportions.

The scope of this Special Issue is to provide a platform for researchers to share their innovative work, in the form of conceptual and research articles, on the contents, narrative, languages, contexts, innovation, and resources in communicative strategies, processes of production and reception, creativity and aesthetics in productions, as well as mediation or formation in pairs in the use of these networks.

Submitted papers should be based on rigorous, high-quality quantitative, qualitative or mixed-methods research, and intersectional and comparative analyses, contributing new insights and developments into the topics addressed. Papers based on research with under-represented, minoritized or marginalized groups or specific social contexts are particularly encouraged.

This Special Edition will focus on (but is not limited to) the following topics:

• Influencers and social responsibility;
• Influencers and social participation;
• Influencers and communication strategies;
• Influencers and aesthetics in the productions;
• Eduinfluencers;
• Influencers and social activism;
• Influencers, narratives, and languages;
• Influencers and media competence;
• Influencers and education;
• Competences of influencers;
• Influencers about school (edugamers).

Dr. Ignacio Aguaded
Dr. César Bernal-Bravo
Dr. Mari-Carmen Caldeiro-Pedreira
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Influencers
• Social responsibility
• Social participation
• Eduinfluencers
• Media competence of influencers
• Narratives of influencers