Though Latvia’s selection of media and social media ‘influencers’ is small by global standards, there are nevertheless serious commercial interests behind many of them, according to Latvian Television’s investigative show ‘Forbidden Method’ (Aizliegtais Paņēmiens)
The number of followers of Latvian influencers is not exactly measured in millions, but in tens of thousands, which, in the Latvian context, is admittedly not a small number.
When examining the content created by Latvian influencers, it should be noted that a strikingly large part of it is subordinated to the interests of advertisers. There are a lot of advertisers. For example, “Maxima”, “Tet”, “Ikea”, “Circle K”, as well as various banks and beauty and technology products, fitness clubs and dental clinics, clothing stores, and universities can all be found backing influencers in one way or another.
And influencers are in demand by non-governmental organizations and state institutions. For example, influencer Lota Ulmane, together with Valters Aišpurs, regularly creates a programme “Bedtime Conversations” on Instagram, discussing various sexual topics. The cooperation partner is sexual health NGO “Papardes zieds”.
Self-generated content that is not affiliated with advertisers is more common among newcomers who are still building their audience.
The LTV program “Forbidden Method” talked to young people from the LSM project “Media Academy”. Which influencers do they follow?
One of the main ones named was ‘Intrishaa’, real name Patrīcija Kaļiņina. She is 26 years old and lives in Rīga. She regularly creates digital content for various social media platforms. She has 43,000 followers on Instagram, and more than 100,000 followers on TikTok. She creates various content – about her life, composes songs, and talks about various topics. For example, her clips about potholes on the streets of Rīga were popular.
“I became an influencer unintentionally. I worked as a designer in an office at a plumbing store, and there I talked about bathtubs, sinks, and toilets in a very humorous way. And people really liked it. One person just filmed me, posted the video on TikTok, and the video just went viral. I realized that people have emotions about me. That’s very important in this profession. And from that day on, I started filming everything,” the content creator said.
Another influencer, Niklāvs Mičulis is already an experienced influencer. He has been in this field for eight years, and for a long time he did not like being called an influencer. Now he has accepted it. He has 44 thousand followers on TikTok, about 60 thousand on YouTube, and more than 80 thousand followers on Instagram.
“The first video was a challenge in general, because I was extremely shy before and in fact, up until now, I’ve often been shy about publishing and creating something. I was about 16, 17 years old and my friends said: “You like filming things. But maybe try turning that camera towards you once and filming all our stupid and fun situations and just posting them.” And so it was – the first video was made by me filming all summer, what I did with my childhood friends and simply publishing it in one day at the end of the summer,” Niklāvs recalls.
Fitness trainer Gints Valdmanis currently lives in Bali with his wife and daughter. He has about 60 thousand followers on Instagram. In his clips, he shows how he lives with his family in the tropics, how they relax, how they build sandcastles, how they exercise. He does not consider himself an influencer.
“You do what you do, and then you probably publish it all on all social media. In my case, it will be some content related to fitness. If you look back, I’ve just always been into sports. My whole life. If one day, for example, “Instagram” or “Facebook” disappears, then for me the work that I do will continue anyway,” Valdmanis pointed out.
Such a stoical attitude is probably healthy in a profession also has its downsides. One of the main ones, which studies have shown, is that as long as the positive prevails, as long as your number of followers grows, everything is fine, there is a good mood, advertisers also come. If the numbers start to drop off, stress arises and the pressure to post new content builds.
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