When influencer logic and news media logic converge in the scandalisation of an influencer: The exposure of literary critic and influencer Katherine Diez’s plagiarism
NETE NØRGAARD KRISTENSEN
Profil Orcid et ANNE JERSLEV
Profil Orcid 
Publié en ligne: 19 mai 2025
Pages: 93 - 111
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/njms-2025-0006
Mots clés
© 2025 NETE NØRGAARD KRISTENSEN et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
In this article, we present and analyse the scandalisation of Danish influencer and literary critic Katherine Diez. In early 2024, Reddit users exposed that she had plagiarised in some of her postings on Instagram and in columns published by professional magazines and newspapers. The scandal soon travelled from Reddit to a variety of news media. Opinions about Diez’s plagiarism were divided, and we ask how the scandal unfolded, and how her transgressions were understood by social media users and professional news journalism. We hypothesise that two media logics intermingled in the unfolding of the scandal: the logic of influencers and the logic of news media.
First, we introduce the case and contextualise the article in current research about how the notion of scandal transforms in a digital media environment. Next, we outline the two media logics operating and coalescing in the Diez scandal: When building and sustaining their public presence, influencers need to create and perform an authentic persona (Arriagada & Bishop, 2021) that builds up followers and maintains their attention and loyalty. It is about “being true to one’s self and brand and being true to one’s audience” (Wellmann et al., 2020: 68). Authenticity scandals (Enli, 2015) thus challenge the main components of the influencer logic and are often detrimental to influencers, and potentially also to the influencer industry as a whole. The professional norms and standards of the news media logic (Asp, 2014), on the other hand, involve thorough research, fact-checking, truth, and trustworthiness (Zelizer, 2004). News institutions therefore turn to metajournalistic discourses as strategies for repairing their institutional image (Carlson, 2016) when they find themselves at the midst of, for example, plagiarism scandals (Blach-Ørsten et al., 2021).
Based on this theoretical framework and a qualitative thematic analysis of three sets of data from Reddit, Instagram, and news media from early 2024, we analyse how Diez’s deeds were deemed scandalous by social media users and news media, and how the two media logics worked, separately and together, to make the scandal unfold. We show how Diez’s strategy for gaining public visibility since the late 2010s was both criticised and applauded by social media users; how her persona construction and claim to a postfeminist authenticity unleashed some of the reactions across media; and how news institutions used metajournalistic discourses to save their credibility when they unwillingly became accomplices by distributing Diez’s content and providing her with a platform that furthered her visibility and brand value. This article thus contributes to influencer studies by showing how different media logics and strategies for authenticity and credibility clash and at the same time intensify the scandalisation of an influencer. In a broader perspective, the article spotlights some of the challenges of the so-far relatively unregulated influencer industry.
Since the beginning of her career as an influencer and literary critic in the late 2010s, Diez had been a controversial figure, building part of her public persona on her good looks – which she did not hide were partly fabricated – and sharp-cut critical style, her feminist statements and postings on Instagram about invisible women in public culture, past and present. Through partnerships with a hairdresser and an “aesthetic doctor’s clinic”, around whom she built praising narratives, she had continuously insisted that beauty, sexuality, and intellect were not exclusive of each other, and in Instagram posts about literature, she often portrayed herself in sexualised poses while reading a book. She also posted provocative opinions about men, and through her unsubtle opinions about gender, female power, and sexuality invited debate and harsh commenting. However, she was also regarded as a cool feminist role model by her Instagram followers (approx. 60,000 in early 2024), who admired her self-confident writing on gender, politics, and culture, and her apparently unproblematic combination of good looks and a power-attitude. Her participation in a celebrity television show and as a guest on radio programmes provided her with celebrity status. Moreover, she was skilled at authenticating her commercial partnerships by cloaking them in personal stories about, for example, the importance of her hairdresser in her life, or how literature and beautiful objects such as jewellery made her happy. Nonetheless, her brand-building, which thus included the performance of a sexualised bodily self and a range of paid partherships with the beauty and fashion industry, had primed an image of her as controversial and ambiguous, if not untrustworthy, in parts of public discourse across platforms. This perceived image was confirmed by Reddit users who, on 10–11 January 2024, exposed that Diez had plagiarised in Instagram posts and cultural reviews and columns produced for traditional mass media. The image was also revitalised when the scandal reached the news media a few days later, as news articles contextualised her plagiarism by detailing controversial episodes in her professional career as an influencer and literary critic (Kopping, 2024b).
Subsequently, the scandal culminated with severe consequences for Diez. She was immediately dismissed as a freelance critic and op-ed writer, her articles in the online women’s magazine
Following the exposure, Diez posted a comment on her Instagram profile in which she acknowledged that her eagerness to always “deliver as a superstar” and her way of working had been “irresponsible, wasteful and unsystematic. This has caused a range of mistakes which I deeply regret”. She ended the post with the words, “Now I shall sleep, eat, write and heal” (Diez, 2024a). A few weeks later, Diez and her partner, Danish celebrity chef, food critic, restaurant owner, and television personality Adam Price, posted a seemingly joint statement on his Instagram about their decision to go their separate ways; the post was deleted shortly after. In a second post on Diez’s Instagram, following the publication of
Scandal is not a novel but intensified social and cultural phenomenon. Over the past decades, scandals have become the “new normal” (Pollack et al., 2018) in politics, the financial sector, and the cultural industries. The literature has pointed to the chief role of media, and news media in particular, in this development. For decades, investigative and tabloid journalism have been main proponents in deciding what is scandalous by publicly disclosing violations of society’s moral and legal order, prompting reactions on behalf of the public. In fact, news media used to not only expose and cover scandals but also actively drive, frame, interpret – or construct – them (e.g., Ekström & Johansson, 2008; Thompson, 2000).
Recent scandal research has argued, however, that the advent of digital media has reconfigured what deeds are considered scandalous. People’s actions on social media may turn into a scandal, for example, when the wrongdoings of social media influencers used in strategic communication spill over to the commercial brand (Kintu & Ben-Slimane, 2020), or when attempting image-repair on social media (Benoit, 2014; Choi & Mitchell, 2022). Digital media, participatory journalism, and citizen involvement on social media have also reconfigured where scandals emerge, who drives them, and when they come to a closure (Tumber & Waisbord, 2019). Today, exposure of scandals are not necessarily the result of investigative or tabloid journalism – they may emerge on social media such as Instagram or Reddit, as in the Diez case, and they may extend for longer periods of time or be momentarily intense and vanish as quickly as they occurred with more or less damage done to those scandalised. Scandals are nowadays constructed across platforms and by multiple actors. They are “socio-mediated” (Zulli, 2021). While news media and professional journalists still play a role in the co-construction of scandals, their agenda-setting and frame-building power has been challenged.
The main focus of the analysis in this article is how an influencer’s violation of the different logics of social media and news media escalated the unfolding of a scandal. We depart from Altheide and Snow’s (1979) seminal concept of media logic, which encompasses the ways in which media as technology, formats, and grammatical rules in strategic and more implicit ways communicate to an intended audience, and how audiences adopt and adapt to this logic as part of their construction of social life. Originally developed with radio and television in mind, Altheide emphasised in his later writing (e.g., 2014) that the term also includes the working of digital media. Following Hjarvard (2008), Thimm (2018) argued for the importance of contemplating the concept of new media logics within the context of interactive media and the changed role of audiences, and, moreover, that in a networked media system, a plurality of media logics intersect.
Inspired by recent research about new media logic and social media logic, that is, “the strategies, mechanisms, and economies underpinning [social media] platforms’ dynamics” (van Dijck & Poell, 2013: 3), we propose the term influencer logic. This is to be understood as the platform- and format-dependent practices of creating visibility and sustaining followers by individuals on social media. Contingent on platforms’ technological and communicative affordances, influencer logic encompasses practices of self-branding, performance of authenticity, and what Abidin (2021) – to modernise Horton and Wohl’s (1956) famous term para-social relationship – has called constructions of “perceived interconnectedness” for social media communication. Perceived interconnectedness refers to the creation of feelings of intimacy and closeness with followers. The intersection of these strategies works to maximise visibility and capitalise on attention.
With such self-branding, individuals are locked into a mode of constant promotion (Bishop, 2023; Khamis et al., 2017). Influencer logic advances the commodification and optimisation of the self through creating a reliable and popular persona (Banet-Weiser, 2012; Chen & Kanai, 2022). However, influencer logic is also paradoxical: Creating the self as a brand may be regarded as expressing agency, empowerment, and “self-directed labour” (Khamis et al., 2017: 200). Yet, influencers may also be trapped in a web of constant negotiation of their self-brand with followers and advertisers (van Driel & Dumitrica, 2021). Influencer logic entails the creation of an authentic persona, which must at the same time continuously promote itself and tap into what is trending with followers at any given time (Leaver et al., 2020).
Influencer logic’s most important site for self-branding is the personal profile, the persona (e.g., Marshall, 2016), or the “explicit act of writing oneself into being in a digital environment” (boyd, 2011: 43). Since it is also at the center of the construction of authenticity, the profile is both negotiable and non-negotiable (van Driel & Dumitrica, 2021). Authentic self-expression (Duffy, 2017) epitomises a relatable influencer profile. As Duffy (2017: 135) put it: The authentic self becomes a branding strategy, a “means to an end” – a sellable commodity which creates followers in return. Mediated authenticity is not an outer expression of an inner core but a feeling arising in communication. Authenticity is constructed socially, it is a set of strategies performed and negotiated with an audience that may change with platform, format, and context (Marwick & boyd, 2011). Authenticity may thus be performed “in myriad ways” (Wellman et al., 2020: 70), and therefore, authenticity is always subject to evaluation. Hence, there is always the risk of authenticity scandals (Enli, 2015) inbuilt in influencer logic, that is, deception and breach of trust (Abidin & Ots, 2016) between influencer and followers.
Authenticity essentially involves the perception that there is no difference between the real and mediated person; therefore, claims to authenticity are always in danger of being met with scepticism. For an authentic performance to be communicated convincingly, it must conform to a set of behavioural qualities, namely, as suggested by Enli (2015), trustworthiness, originality, and spontaneity. Trustworthiness in influencer performance may be constructed by communicating a consistent persona; hereby, influencers may give an impression of offering their “true self” to their followers. Trustworthiness may also be enhanced by giving access to influencers’ private and ordinary personal life, showing that they are real persons. Originality means creating a unique persona, which does not copy others. Both originality and trustworthiness signal the genuine and exceptional, which is included in true individuality. Finally, spontaneity refers to the improvised and non-scripted. On the one hand, the improvised is that which is non-posed and non-staged and therefore closer to the real, but on the other, spontaneity must not destroy consistency as a sign of authenticity. As we return to in the analysis, the exposure of Diez’s plagiarism could be understood as an authenticity scandal.
Scandal has not only become the new normal in politics and the cultural industries. News institutions and their journalists may also find themselves amidst public scrutiny and controversy. They belong to the elite actors experiencing increased media visibility, which Thompson (2000), in his seminal work on political scandals, considered a key trait foregrounding scandal. News media scandals include the public exposure of professional journalists plagiarising content or fabricating news stories, sources, or facts. Blach-Ørsten and colleagues (2021) have argued that such scandals are “critical incidents” in journalism, which D’Angelo (2020: 19) has defined as “incited by an occurrence made scandalous by virtue of journalistic misdeeds and/or ethical lapses that news organisations must subsequently promote as an accident”.
Critical incidents elicit various public repair strategies, since faking news or plagiarising is not only a moral offense of the individual journalist but a threat to the professional norms and standards of the news media logic (Asp, 2014), and thus to journalism as a profession and the news industry as an institution (Waisbord, 2018). The societal position and cultural authority of journalism is based on what Barbie Zelizer labelled its “god terms” (2004): facts, truth, and reality; plagiarism or fabrication signify the opposite. Hartley, Wittchen, and Blach-Ørsten (2020) have shown that drawing the line between rewriting, accrediting, and plagiarising other news media’s content can be difficult because no clear rules exist. These boundaries have only become blurrier with the advent of digital media and the immense amount of content constantly being produced, uploaded, and circulated in the current “age of ubiquitous remix” (Waysdorf, 2021), where the repurposing of content has in many contexts become an accepted digital media and cultural practice.
The literature speaks of these debates as metajournalistic discourses, that is, “public expressions evaluating news texts, the practices that produce them, or the conditions of their reception” (Carlson, 2016: 353). Such discourses can take shape within news institutions’ internal or external inquiries, commentaries, and news stories about the critical incident and measures to avoid similar future occurrences, and so on. When looking at the traditional dramaturgy of scandals (e.g., Thompson, 2000), this is part of the scandal culmination but also a way to bring the scandal to closure and restore the image of the news institution. The literature critically contends that when news media engage in such discursive strategies, they are more often defensive than self-critical, and the measures taken often mainly have consequences for individual reporters, not the news institution (e.g., Blach-Ørsten et al., 2021). Carlson (2016) argued that metajournalistic discourses can arise both from the news professionals themselves and from non-journalistic voices outside of the news institution, for example, on social media or via research publications. They can be reactive, for example, when concerning specific incidents, or restorative, when more broadly stimulating public debate about the current state of journalism. Metajournalistic discourses may also provide transparency in the journalistic work – a strategy that has more broadly become key in journalism in response to declining news consumption, declining trust in journalism, and the fact that the otherwise quintessential professional norm of objectivity has been challenged (Karlsson, 2022).
Journalism was never a protected title or a profession only performed by those with professional training in the norms, values, and craft of journalism, for example, sourcing or crediting. With the digital turn, producers providing content for news media have significantly diversified. This is not least the case in cultural journalism and cultural criticism, where those producing cultural reviews or cultural commentaries on diverse platforms span a broad spectrum: critics and public intellectuals with aesthetic knowledge and expertise; professional cultural journalists trained in the norms and values of journalism; and a diverse group of “media-made arbiters of taste” (Kristensen & From, 2015), for example, celebrities or influencers, who have gained public visibility and recognition from their work in the cultural industries or on social media and use this capital to gain a critical voice, also in institutionalised news brands. Diez exemplifies the latter type, as she created a public persona as a literary influencer and outspoken cultural commentator initially on social media but soon across a diversity of media and platforms.
This article is based on qualitative content analyses of three sets of data: 1) Reddit comments debating Diez’s plagiarism, 2) Instagram comments by Diez’s followers, reacting to the two posts in which she explained her deeds, and 3) news articles in Danish print and digital newspapers covering the scandal.
We included 323 comments from the subreddit r/influencergossipDK and specifically the “Diez mega thread” [“Diez mega tråd”], which gathered many comments on Diez’s plagiarism, flooding Reddit in a short period of time in January 2024. We stabilised the thread as a PDF on 26 March 2024. We also included a short Diez-subthread in which the anonymous Redditor LittleMissUnperfect first mentioned Diez’s plagiarism. At this point in time, users were mostly commenting on Diez’s looks and writings, which had long been a topic of unrest in Reddit communities (Mimoun, 2024), mocking her as an “intellectual Barbie”. It was not until LittleMissUnperfect, the day after their first post, documented Diez’s plagiarism by visualising her text next to similar parts from an American university student’s writings about feminism that the scandal took off. The Instagram sample consisted of 628 comments to Diez’s two posts from 18 January (217 comments) and 16 February (411 comments), stabilised as a PDF on 20 June 2024. Despite some harsh and aggressive contributions, mostly in the beginning of the first comment thread, comments were by far supportive and overall oriented towards diminishing the gravity of Diez’s deeds. Finally, in addition to gossip magazines (
The qualitative analytical strategy was cross-mediated, discerning the scandal’s development across platforms, and thematic, identifying main themes, or “patterns of meaning” (Neuendorf, 2019: 213). This means that the analysis of the news coverage and social media comments across the three samples was thematically systematised along attitudes of Diez as a scandalous person, opinions on her behaviour, and arguments for the scope of her actions.
The scandal was a topic across the spectrum of print and digital newspapers, driven by news and investigative as well as metajournalistic and diagnostic discourses. Expectedly, the tabloid
The coverage across news media involved three overlapping themes, running fairly in parallel. The first theme was a newsy agenda, driven by immediacy and exposure of new information, escalating the scandal especially during the first two weeks, and scandalising Diez for her plagiarism, a fundamental moral and professional transgression in journalism. This also involved a satirical framing, for example, labelling the scandal “Diez-gate” (Dahlager, 2024), alluding to the original scandal suffix from the 1970s’ major political Watergate scandal.
The second theme track was metajournalistic, as both reactive and restorative metajournalistic discourses (Carlson, 2016) emerged almost the minute the scandal reached professional news media. This was the case across the newspaper spectrum, showcasing that the incident was not only newsworthy but also critical to the industry, as such. Reactive pieces dug into the case, involving external juridical experts to explain the boundaries for reusing others’ texts and media scholars to explain Diez’s claim to fame as well as her dethronement (e.g., Bergløv & Bech-Danielsen, 2024; Elmelund, 2024a). Commentators from within the news industry applied restorative discourses by interpreting the critical incident as a signal of the acute state of the industry per se: Some raised the issue of quality content production at a time of fierce competition between professional news media and content providers on social media (Villemoes, 2024b). Others emphasised the news industry’s attraction to people with extensive visibility and a distinct or provocative persona, but also cultural news desks’ dependence on a freelancer precariat due to cutbacks (Stockmann, 2024). Others again saw Diez as symptomatic of millennials’ strategies for achieving a career in the media industry, based not on professional skill and trustworthiness but on “being themselves” (Giese, 2024), that is, on influencer logic. Diez was also criticised for publicly preying on feminism on social media (Amiri, 2024).
The third theme was diagnostic, moving beyond reactions to Diez as an individual and the plagiarism as a specific case, but also beyond the news industry as a business in crisis and in need of repair and restoration strategies. Instead, analyses, columns, and opinion pieces by journalists and external media pundits and public intellectuals contextualised the case, suggesting that it illuminated broader trends. The case was seen as exemplifying an age of deception and self-deception in terms of credentials and looks (Olrik, 2024); Diez was listed as one of several people recently exposed as plagiarisers (Elmelund, 2024b), and as one of several female influencers scandalised as hypocrites by public opinion due to lack of self-insight or double moral, as they had turned out to be inauthentic (Dreyer, 2024); the case was used as an occasion to scrutinise contemporary Internet culture, exemplified by the community-driven platform Reddit feeding on a mix of gossip and genuine investigation (Bergløv, 2024; Larsen, 2024); and several interpreted the case as symbolic of contemporary public witch-hunting and encouraged public opinion to avoid sexist discourses by conflating the case with Diez’s looks (Paludan, 2024), or questioned the vindicative shaming of Diez, bordering on schadenfreude, as this, paradoxically, gave attention to those to whom public opinion should not be attentive (From, 2024).
While touching upon themes also addressed in the news-driven and metajournalistic stories, the diagnostic pieces put the case into a bigger picture, considering it emblematic of broader societal problems and moral issues. This at once confirmed professional news media as legitimate providers of content when a scandal rages in today’s abundant information society and Internet culture
LittleMissUnperfect’s revelation of Diez’s plagiarism caused almost ecstatic outbursts by users on Reddit’s influencergossipDK subthread, praising those who, in the wake of the Redditor’s exposure, had successfully been digging for more “scandalous” examples to substantiate the claim of organised plagiarism. One commenter wrote: “Wow, we are only writing 11 January and the scandal of the year is already home and dry”. Throughout the thread, vehement and concordant critiques of Diez’s plagiarism, her two Instagram posts, and her lack of authenticity were pointed out. Much effort was made to knock Diez off the pedestal she had placed herself on with the help of “the cultural parnas” or “Culture Denmark” consisting of “a small clique of overgrown egos”, “more and more detached and snobbish”. Diez’s deeds were constructed as scandalous by the community through four claims: she was stealing other people’s work, her two Instagram posts were spin, glossing over a real offence, and she was projecting an inauthentic persona. The fourth and final group of comments referred to the Reddit community itself, acknowledging proudly the important investigative work done by Reddit users to reveal a misdeed of public interest.
The first group of comments substantiated the thread’s assertion of Diez’s plagiarism by revealing new examples. Along the same line, comments emphasised the importance of Reddit users in digging out morally reproachable action and bringing it into the open. Commenters praised each other for their “good work”, and eagerly requested more examples. “We must keep this thread going. Really, really smart people in here!!!”, one commenter wrote. Several expressed a sense of relief when realising that their vague feelings of uncertainty regarding Diez were not a result of envy or personal inferiority but proved to be reasonable, for example, put in this way: “Wooow, brilliantly spotted! Everything makes sense now! Her strange and inconsistent way of writing and her random use of references!”
The second group of comments – about Diez’s explanations in her two Instagram posts being spin – lamented Diez for naming plagiarism and theft “mistakes” and for trying to position herself as the victim. They shredded her argument about a working archive turned chaotic; Diez’s lack of referencing was “systematic big-time swindling”, proved by the many examples disclosed on the thread. Many commenters argued that referencing properly is learnt in early high school; moreover, it was suggested that her two posts – labelled “non-apologies” – were written by a communication consultant. The unanimous verdict was that Diez’s repair strategy was a failure. Her apology went wrong because there was no real recognition of serious wrongdoing (Kador, 2009) and only evasion of responsibility (Benoit, 2014), according to the users. Hence, commenters saw Diez’s “non-apology” as a second-order transgression (Thompson, 2000) – that is, (re)actions resulting from the initial scandalous deed coming across as scandalous themselves, for example, lying about or playing down the misdemeanour.
Third, commenters considered the two Instagram posts to be proof of Diez’s lack of authenticity. Not only was she not apologising properly, she might not have written the posts herself. She was dismantling influencer logic’s number-one rule – being authentic – and this undermined her very persona: The Reddit community judged Diez to be “empty and untalented” and thus not as wise as she had projected herself to be. She was criticised for her outspoken insistence on being beautiful, sexual, and smart at the same time. Moreover, it was implied that she was heavily dependent on well-known men for her visibility, not least her 20-years-older partner at the time. He was by some commenters nicknamed “butter daddy” [“smørfar”], referring to his preference for butter in his long-standing cooking programmes on Danish public service television, but also alluding to the pejorative term “sugar daddy”, conjuring up an image of dependency and sexualised femininity close to prostitution.
In contrast to the first group of comments that celebrated the Reddit thread as a community, a final group of metacomments addressed the broader media landscape. These accentuated the soundness of the investigative work done by participants on the thread, Reddit’s importance in exposing unacceptable societal deeds, and the public responsibility undertaken to reveal and debate a misdeed of public interest. Commenters argued that the mere number of posted examples and disclosures of plagiarism proved that the Diez subthread r/in-fluencergossipDK was more than hearsay or a “slough of unconfirmed gossip from anonymous users”, as otherwise suggested by a professional journalist in a conservative, quality newspaper (Villemoes, 2024b). Commenters expressed a lack of understanding of the ignorance by professional news media, which did not take up debatable subjects already highlighted on Reddit – for example, the lack of proof that Diez had the bachelor’s degree that she invoked. Commenters were diligently posting links to news articles about Diez, published days after examples of her plagiarism appeared on Reddit, and anxiously called attention to upcoming podcasts and television or radio programmes about the Diez scandal.
The drivers of engagement on the r/influencergossipDK subthreads were thus manifold. Users either performed or applauded proper investigative work and hereby confirmed with proof a disgraceful deed. Moreover, the thread reinforced the scandal affectively by maliciously but also speculatively, and in a gossip-oriented way, dismantling the image of a powerful influencer with outspoken opinions on gender and highbrow opinions about culture.
Whereas the Reddit comments unanimously constituted plagiarism as a first-order transgression and interpreted Diez’s Instagram responses as a second-order transgression (Thompson, 2000), the majority of Instagram comments endorsed her two posts as reparations proper. Commenters addressed Diez directly and embracingly and used an abundance of heart emojis to create an atmosphere of closeness and interconnectedness (Abidin, 2021), contrary to the Reddit comments, which addressed and constituted a community “in here”. Moreover, many Instagram comments expressed solidarity with Diez through a mimetic vocabulary. The wish for Diez to “heal” and the assurance that she would “come out stronger on the other side” were recurrent phrases, imitating the final sentences in Diez’s first post.
In general, comments expressed affection, consolation, and solicitude by giving “lots of hugs” and urging Diez to “take care of herself”. Sincere hopes were expressed that Diez would recover as a whole and more authentic person and that her “journey” towards healing would lead her to a “new place”, as she herself also concluded in her second post. Another way of expressing support was to blame the media, hoping that the “public shaming will stop”; “no one deserves the treatment you have been subjected to”. A recurrent advice for Diez to overcome the crisis was to continue writing, which many users found that she did so wonderfully. Her two posts were seen as proof that she did not need to “borrow/steal/whatever”. Lastly, a large group of comments claimed that “this will pass” – “it takes time but it does not last forever. Come again”.
Most comments expressed the view that Diez’s fault was not that severe and recurrently added dryly: “After all, you haven’t killed anyone”. On the contrary, comments emphatically supported Diez by identifying with her. Often used phrases of consolation were “we all make mistakes”, “we are all just humans”, and “no one is perfect”. Hence, these comments argued that Diez had not transgressed social norms or acted scandalously for real. Failing is inherent in human nature – and, consequently, she did not deserve the media blitz. The performance of intimate communication on Instagram humanised Diez and put faith in her ability to learn and grow as a person.
In this article, we have shown that the scandalisation of Danish influencer and literary critic Katherine Diez was an authenticity scandal (Enli, 2015). We have also shown that authenticity can be understood in different ways. By plagiarising in some of her posts on Instagram and in columns published by magazines and news media, Diez violated a trustworthiness contract by pretending to be someone she was not; an originality contract by copying other people’s work; and a spontaneity contract by arguing that she had lost control of her work process. As an authenticity scandal, Diez’s plagiarism infringed two logics – the the logic of influencers and the logic of news media – which escalated the unfolding of the scandal. The essence of the news media logic is trustworthieness and credibility based on the dissemination of reliable information, facts, and truth to serve democratic goals, whereas coming across as an authentic, consistent persona is essential to the influencer logic to create closeness and familiarity with followers. The two logics worked together in diffusing the scandal: While covering the scandal in detail was a reparation strategy for the news media, this coverage also helped spread knowledge of and interest in an influencer scandal instigated on Reddit. The social media community, on the other hand, fuelled popular cultural coverage in the news media with sensational or tabloid twists. The moral transgression considered scandalous across media was, of course, the plagiarism per se, but the scandalous deed was also the offense towards the explicit and implicit communicative rules underlying news media and social media, respectively. The Diez scandal could thus be seen as undermining the trustworthiness inherent in distinctive media logics.
For the same reasons, the scandal became an important site for metadiscourses. Applying institutional and structural perspectives, metajournalistic discourses in the news media served as reactive and restorative attempts to repair the image of an implicit accomplice in the scandal –
While Diez’s followers did not necessarily approve of her plagiarism, they did not consider it an expression of inauthenticity either. Most commenters sided with influencer logic’s understanding of authenticity as created through consistency, uniqueness, and spontaneity: Diez had built a consistent and unique persona and a spontaneous way of expressing her unambiguous opinions. Moreover, she was honest and open about her bodily procedures. Thus, her sponsored posts and claim to an Instagram persona as “Diez” were regarded as part of her authenticity, and so was her cosmetically aestheticised body and her penchant towards luxury goods. Supported by her followers, Diez incarnated influencer logic. On Instagram, books and writing critically and intellectually about literature were props in her construction of a sellable, unique self. In the Reddit community, however, these very trademarks of authenticity occasioned strong feelings of
The different ways of understanding authenticity also show that (authenticity) scandals are polysemantic (Lull & Hinermann, 1997: 17). Discourses on Reddit and Instagram represented relatively homogenous groups of opponents exposing, documenting, and accelerating the scandal, and proponents downplaying the gravity of Diez’s misdeeds and thus decelerating the scandal. Polysemantic interpretations were also visible in the news discourses, as some criticised Diez’s transgressions while others considered them symptomatic of the contemporary media industry and society more broadly. This shows that it is no longer mainly investigative or tabloid journalism that define the scandalous, as this is coconstructed by social media users and news media (Zulli, 2021), but also that there is not one shared interpretation of what is or who are scandalous.
Diez responded to what she on Instagram called her “biggest professional lesson so far” by withdrawing completely from public visibility – until the publishing of her autobiography (Diez, 2024c) approximately nine months after the scandal peaked. In the immediate aftermath of the scandal culmination, she responded to the vehement criticism with silence; she did not try to repair what the Reddit community criticised as her inadequate apology or react to Reddit accusations of her apology being ghostwritten. This silence may be regarded as a way for Diez to authenticate herself and her Instagram message about “finding herself again” by “sleeping, eating, working and healing”. Silence may also be taken as a strategy to prevent further accelation or prolongment of the scandal by not fuelling more gossip or speculation. Finally, silence may be a radical way of opposing the logics that paved the way for Diez’s public visibility and crossmedia presence in the first place. The communication about her book in late 2024 in paradoxical ways continued this strategy of authentification by silence. The book was not a response to the exposure of her plagiarism or to the criticism by Reddit users and the news industry – it was not an apology or, in that sense, a repair strategy. It was (framed as) an “authentic” self-revelation and a step on her personal journey of finding herself and healing.
Scandalous incidents like the Diez case are critical for the individual influencer, exposed as inauthentic and disobeying the influencer logic, and for the news industry, exposed as infringing the news media logic of fact-checking and credibility. They may also be critical to the influencer industry as such, however, as they spotlight potentially serious communicative actions among a newer, highly influential type of public figures who have so far operated in a relatively unregulated field (Abidin et al., 2020). Influencer scandals may thus have broader public value by spurring debates about the durability and working of influencer logic and entailing efforts to create more transparency in the influencer industry.