I know quite a lot of people working in research relating to vaccines / viruses and in climate change e.g. glaciology, just because I happen to live near a large UK university. They are regularly quoted in journals and one friend is regularly interviewed by Sky / BBC etc. While I think it's kind of cool, I'm not sure they'd be viewed in that way by the general population. The probably get paid 10% of what people get at Google / Facebook.

YouTube influencer would probably impress more people. That's just the way it is.