Have influencers on social media created a new career field worthy of formal education?
Classes on influencing have been popping up around the country as more young people give a serious look to the $2.1 billion industry.
"If people are serious about wanting to do a career in influencing or online content creation, they have to know that there is more to it," said Jessica Maddox, co-director for the Office of Politics, Communications and Media at the University of Alabama.
Maddox has started a class on the subject called Social Media Storytelling.
Summer Harlow, the associate director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas in Austin, teamed up with UNCESCO, to create a class specifically to help influencers tackle misinformation.
"We kept seeing these different voices having influence on the news," Harlow said, so she and others "decided to launch this project to try and understand how digital content creators were changing the journalism field."
After roundtables with invested parties on the topic, the U.N.-backed partnership launched a free class for influencers.
Meanwhile, Arkansas Tech University has created an entire major it calls the "Bachelor of Arts in Social Media Influencing," with courses including film production, journalism and public relations.
"I think it's communication, I think it's production and I think it's business," Kate Stewart, assistant professors of public relations at Jacksonville State University, said when asked what influencers could study.
There are also real legal and financial dangers for those who break the rules, an area where educators hope they can help students avoid falling into trouble.
Italian influencer Chiara Ferragni was recently fined $1 million for misleading consumers about a partnership she had with a cakemaker, falsely making it seem as though funds from purchases would go to charity.
Read more from Lexi Lonas Cochran at TheHill.com.
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