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This study investigates how follower size influences social media influencers’ sourcing behavior and credibility assessment rigor when producing content for their audiences. Grounded in Social Capital Theory, this study examines the tension between popularity as a form of social capital and its limited capacity to predict rigorous credibility assessment using a global quantitative survey of 500 social media influencers across multiple languages and regions. The findings suggest that influencers with larger follower sizes utilize more diverse sources; however, follower size does not correlate with credibility assessment rigor. This underscores that follower size functions as a symbolic rather than epistemic resource, where source diversity often serves as a visible signal of professionalism rather than having a deeper verification. Additionally, credibility assessment rigor is not a significant predictor of source diversity, and platform type and content genre did not moderate the relationship between follower size and source diversity. These findings contribute to the influencer marketing literature by challenging assumptions linking popularity with higher scrutiny of content credibility. The study holds implications for platform policy, media literacy education, and influencer–brand collaborations. Recommendations are provided for improving transparency and source vetting among digital content creators in increasingly flooded social media platforms.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) underscore the United Nations’ effort in advocating disability inclusion in education and the infrastructure of member countries. Brands can also play their role by promoting disability inclusion through their brand messages. Brand messages are powerful as they advocate causes and ideals that include disability inclusion through repetitive and omnipresent messages whose ultimate goal is to influence the target audience’s behaviour. This multiple case study compared brand communication from ten brands each originating from Malaysia and the United States using Saussure's model of semiotics. It was found that Common Fate is the fundamental gestalt principle in most brands’ communication on disability inclusion of both countries and that positive nomenclature was used as the signifier that underlined the organisations' positive perception of disability inclusion. Our moral obligation is to include persons with disabilities (PwDs) in society, and brands can play their role by promoting the universal ideal of disability inclusion. This study was borne out of the intrigue in understanding how images in brand communication have been incorporating disability inclusion. Brand messages are ubiquitous and powerful as they can set the agenda on disability inclusion by giving it appropriate prominence. The proposed multiple case study will examine brand communication from ten brands, each originating from Malaysia and the United States. The criteria used to select the brands will be vital as confirmed by the industry in the case of Malaysian brands and the highly indexed brands deemed by the Disability Equality Index (DEI) for U.S. brands. Saussure's model of semiotic analysis will be used to examine the brand messages in terms of their communication on disability inclusion. The model of semiotics to be adopted is broken into components such as a sign, signifier, and signified, thus providing us with an insight into the sign in the form of websites by brands, the dominant symbols (signifier), and the interpretations of these symbols (signified). It was found that Common Fate was the key gestalt principle found in the communication on disability inclusion by all brands in Malaysia and the US and that positive nomenclature was adopted as signifiers that promoted the organisations’ positive perception of disability inclusion.    

Abstrak: Matlamat Pembangunan Mampan (SDGs) Pertubuhan BangsaBangsa Bersatu menggariskan usaha badan tersebut dalam menyokong penglibatan orang kurang upaya (OKU) dalam pendidikan dan infrastruktur negara anggotanya. Jenama juga mampu memainkan peranan mempromosikan penglibatan OKU melalui mesej jenama mereka. Mesej jenama berupaya menyokong usaha dan ideal penglibatan OKU melalui penggunaan mesej berulang dan tersedia ada di mana matlamat utamanya adalah untuk mempengaruhi tingkah laku dan sikap golongan sasaran. Kajian kes pelbagai ini membandingkan komunikasi jenama daripada sepuluhjenama dari Malaysia dan Amerika Syarikat dengan menggunakan model semiotik Saussure. Kajian mendapati bahawa Common Fate (\"Takdir Sepunya\") merupakan prinsip asas gestalt dalam kebanyakan komunikasi jenama mengenai penglibatan OKU di kedua-dua negara dan tatanama positif telah digunakan sebagai penanda yang menggariskan persepsi positif sesuatu organisasi terhadap penglibatan OKU.

The study proposes a new Islamic model for advertising agencies that embraces a normative perspective framed by Maqasid Al-Shari’ah. The phenomenological research design was adopted through semi-structured interviews carried out on 25 advertising industry practitioners and academicians well-versed in Maqasid Al-Shariah. The findings reveal that advertising agencies applied various Maqasid Al-Shari’ah principles in their codes of conduct, but they did not adhere to the same set of standards whilst academics recommended that Maqasid Al-Shari’iah elements be embedded in a standardised code of conduct and implemented in an ecosystem that ensures professionalism and sustainability. The study is significant as it examined both advertising agency and academic perspectives giving birth to the Model of the Implementation of the Advertising Codes of Conduct using Maqasid Al-Shari’ah that visualises how best to implement Maqasid Al-Shari’ah.