Motivations for social media usage, the effects of social media influencers on the role of opinion leadership

Social media platforms, which have become a vital part of daily life, highlight different types of personalities to humanity every new day. The new personality that has emerged through social media platforms is the social media influencer. The research focuses on the role of social media influencers as this new emerging "Opinion Leader" identity. It examines this phenomenon from the concept of "Opinion Leadership", the most important concept of two-step flow theory put forward by Lazersfeld et al. The outstanding problem here is: what motivates this new phenomenon to be accepted by society, whether society sees them as opinion leaders, and whether society is influenced by them. Based on these questions, this thesis aims to reveal the motivations affecting the role of social media influencers as opinion leaders in the eyes of users. In this context, the role of opinion leadership by social media influencers was studied via an online questionnaire conducted on 571 respondents and developed using the criteria of quantitative method and purposeful sampling. The results show that users follow social media influencers based primarily on the criteria of "Communication, Entertainment, Imitation, Proximity, Knowledge and Trust" and that, statistically, this is the motivation that determines social media influencers role as opinion leaders. Keywords: Social Media Influencers, Opinin Leader, Opinion Leadership Scale of Social Media Influencers, The Two-Step Flow Theory, Social Media.