Social Media Influencers and Consumer Culture : A Bibliometric Analysis of Digital Consumption Research in Emerging Economies

This study examines the global research landscape of social media influencers and consumer culture through a bibliometric analysis of publications indexed in the Scopus database. Using VOSviewer as the primary analytical tool, the study constructs and interprets keyword co-occurrence networks to identify dominant research themes, thematic clusters, temporal evolution patterns, and research density distributions in this rapidly growing field. The analysis reveals that the literature is anchored around consumer culture, marketing, and influencers, with Instagram and authenticity functioning as key mediating constructs linking influencer practice to consumption behavior. The findings show that the field has expanded from early studies of celebrity and brand culture toward themes of sustainability, zero waste lifestyles, generation Z, and digitally mediated consumer identity, with emerging-economy contexts such as China, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Indonesia increasingly represented. Overlay visualization indicates that sustainability, zero waste, and digital marketing are the most recently active themes, while density analysis confirms consumer culture and influencers as the most intensively studied constructs. These findings provide a comprehensive map of the field and identify promising directions for future research on digital consumption in emerging economies.