Makana Chock's research is in the area of media psychology. She studies the ways in which people process and respond to persuasive messages in mass media, social media and virtual reality contexts. Much of her research focuses on the relationships between media and perceptions of self and others. She has examined the effects of different types of content as well as different types of formats. Her research on media content has been used to help design and implement educational campaigns concerning HIV-awareness, drug-use, binge-drinking, food-safety issues and environmental risk campaigns. Chock has also studied the effects of sexual content in media on gender norms, body image and sexual behaviors.
Virtual influencers can appear cartoonishly fake or strikingly true to life, but always engaging to their audience. For advertisers, it’s proven a tantalizing combination. And amid a pandemic, virtual influencers have been increasingly hard to cast aside as a fad.
We've spent decades having a cartoon tiger sell us cereal. The big issue is going to be if the companies that produce these avatars do so without informing the public. I think there will always be a market for real influencers.