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Zoella
Component 2, section C - Coggle Diagram
Zoella
Component 2, section C
para social interaction:
refers to the illusion of a genuine relationship with someone - members of the audience feel as though zoella is their friend
example - "baby room tour" video, August 25th 2021
- shoutouts to illustrator's work/brands in the video
- lots of direct address - like she is on a video call
- limited editing, casual clothing and tone - chatting with Alfie as if the camera wasn’t there
- encourage audience to become part of the community + watch more of her content
- ongoing and regular communication - "stay tuned for the next video to see the final result"
- escapism - like a fly on the wall
- aspirational - giving the brand names of things just incase an audience would want to copy
^ high end expensive brands - reinforcing her aspirational lifestyle
"bestie day in Brighton" video, June 6th 2022
- 'bestie' describing the relationship with her and the audience - "come along with me"
- direct address - "you know when..." relatable anecdotes
- getting ready - like two friends on face time
- mentioning favourite shops - allows audience to buy similar items and embody her personality
- stereotypical things to do with friends - shopping, photo-booth, eating out
- informal langauge when with friends - swearing
- "this is so me" - joking having a laugh together
industry:
regulation:
- internet watch foundation works to block illegal content such as child abuse. However there is much debate about the extent to which other online content can be regulated as there is no official regulatory body to regulate content
- regulation of online content is virtually impossible due to its sheer amount of content and multitude of sources (livingstone and lunt)
^^ GOV.UK released a guide to online safety in December of 2022 with a motive to "make social media companies more responsible for their users' safety"
issue with this guide:
- "removing content promoting self harm" - difficult to regulate, users who have survived self harm cant post anything showing scars
- "remove all illegal content" - easy to access content from other countries where these things might not be illegal
- "empower adult users with tools so that they can tailor the type of content they see" - placing power/responsibility back to the user, users wont be able to know what is harmful until after watched
- "remove content that is banned by their own terms and conditions" - different platforms/owners will have different terms and conditions, not an overall view of all social media
- "protect children from content which promotes or glorifies suicide, self-harm or eating disorders" - not clear cut - challenging to regulate what is and what isn't (can easily be embedded in a video that isn't clear to the naked eye), and there is now law against it
- "reduce racist, anti-semitic and misogynistic content" - content has to be placed into these sections (opinionated), giving only a small number of people the power
- "putting ofcom in charge" - ofcom has 1,000 people in their regulation department - not enough to regulate the whole internet (whereas youtube has 30,000 in their regulation department alone)
youtube guidelines:
youtube has its own set of guidelines that each user has to follow (eg, fake engagement, suicide and self harm and child safety)how does zoella cause a risk to these guidelines??
- risk of her mental health being romanticised - leading an audience to want to be like her - para social interaction
- mental health advice to audience - no medical input / false information / impressionable audience
- hyper-realistic lifestyle - unachievable lifestyle through her wealth + motherhood/parenting
- promoting unrealistic beauty standards - gender perfomity
- promoting materialistic lifestyle + owning excessive amounts of make up - advertising wasteful use of expensive products
website:
- colour palette - pastels, black + white, reflects who she wants us to see her and her brand
- very much reflecting her aesthetic life - looks like pintrest
- "zoella wrapped" - intertextual reference to spotify wrapped
- image looks like polaroids - capturing the real moments in her life
- almost constructs a hyper reality of her life
- helps to construct + act as a guide to a life like zoella
- aims to reflect her personality + audience
how its changed from 2017:
- 2017 - feels much more like her personality - hand written masthead and fairy lights
- 2023 - now feels more like a brand, more professional - now for a far older audience
ways of earning money from youtube:
- youtube partner programme allows users to monetise their content by showing adverts alongside their videos once they have achieved a certain amount of views
- sponsorship - content creators are paid to endorse or promote particular products, often in the form of reviews. when a brand is more aligned to the content it is supporting
- broadening the appeal - influences move into the wider media to broaden their appeal (zoella has written books, creating synergy + encouraging readers to visit her channels)
examples of zoella's advertising on her videos:
- squarespace pre-roll ad (skipable) on preganancy video
- coupons for beauty products as overlay ads on getting organised for 2022 video
^^ key elements of brand recognition
- brand extension (into beauty products)
- synergy through using different media (books)
**key issues of digital online media:
- rise of online media - disrupted the power structures that traditionally operate within media industries (curran and seaton)
- alternatively online media industries have merely reinforced the dominance of major corporations (Hesmondalgh)**
positives?
- allow for diversity - out of the top 10 most followed on twitter four aren't white, and 50/50 male and female**
- breaking away from hegemonic groups**
despite this ultimately UGC are being produces on a platform that is owned by a large conglomerate (meta owns facebook, instagram and whatsapp)
importance of gatekeepers:
- in traditional media commissioning editors, channel controllers, etc make decisions about what is published
- ordinary people get to bypass these gatekeepers - Zoella is an example of this
- It could be argued that as her organisation has grown, she has become a gatekeeper
impact of technology on production, distribution ect:
advantages -
- allows her to advance quicker through her career - the fast pace of technology
- allows her to produce/distribute/market on the same platform (easier to create and make money)
disadvantages -
- cancel culture
- moves quickly - hard to stay relevant, can fall quicker than they rose
- hard to stand out - easy for anybody to access/become a creator
Multi channel networks:
organisations that curate sometimes thousands of different channels
- offer content creators help with marketing, promoting + monetising their content in return for a percentage of revenue
- youtube purchased by Google for $1.65bn in 2006
effect of digital convergent platforms on production:
- allows to distribute/circulate to a broader audience (different age groups)
- allows to produce a wide range of content; beauty range and books
- links on each platform to another - all connected, never ending lop of her content
- all of her platforms have the same look / aesthetic (synergy) creating a recognisable brand
effect of economic factors:
zoella able to acquire multiple different revenue streams through her digitally convergent platforms (e.g adverts on vids, books, merch, beauty line, ect)all of her money coming from ads - issues -
- pressure to keep interaction and engagement high - sponsorships rely on views
- having to promote products that they are aware of and actually recommend and use (if the product is damaging it can reflect badly on her brand)
theory
gauntlett:
Zoe having much more different topics + variety of subheadings for audiences to construct their identities -
- "hair, donuts, interviews and climbing" constructing the image that femininity is about allot more than stereotypes
Van Zoonen:
argues our understanding of gender is constructed through the media - women's body are viewed as a spectacle for mens vision
- zoella presented as more decorative + put together compared to Alfie - her viewed as the spectacle
butler:
gender is social constructed through performance based on repeated acts
- zoe performing in an aligned way with our expectations of femininity - providing her audience with the tools for a ritualised gender performance butler has highlighted
- becoming a role model for teenage girls watching - they then carry that stereotypical feminine identity around with them (naive)
- however also constructs a more progressive feminine identity through being a working mum + more masculine activities (rock-climbing)
Hall - reception theory:
preferred - take on board the content shown, share with others, view her as an aspiring role model
negotiated - understand the intention behind the videos (helpful), but also find it damaging to the idea of having to do this 'routine' every morning to look beautiful - harmful towards younger audience
oppositional: wouldn’t engage in videos - find them harmful (promoting unrealistic + unnatural beauty standards) products not suitable for all
bell hooks:
The idea that feminism is a struggle to end sexist/patriarchal oppression and the ideology of domination.
- Zoe is a straight white female - hasn't been represented to be 'struggling'
Levi-Strauss:
The idea that meaning is dependent upon (and produced
through) pairs of oppositions.
- boy vs girl
- you don't need to have both to understand one - Zoe and Alfie performing traditionally in their masculine and feminine roles
Hesmondhalgh:
The idea that cultural industry companies try to minimise
risk and maximise audiences through vertical and
horizontal integration, and by formatting their cultural
products (e.g. through the use of stars, genres, and serials).
minimising risk -
- vlogmas - already established successful idea
- 'more zoella' second channel - Horizontally integrated into her brand - without the risk of changing her original channel, can explore other forms of videos
- doesn't need to worry about risk because she such an established brand (promoting sex toys)
shirky:
audience members as passive consumers of mass media content is no longer tenable in the age of the Internet - as media consumers have a now become producers
- audience is active in producing content (e.g questions sent in about general lifestyle
- content tailored to her audience's specific wants
- can follow 'trends'
- technology makes content accessible to audience
- para social interaction - directly engaged with, not watching something for the sake of watching something ("comment down below", "let me know what you think")
- continuous dialogue between audience/producer
however:
- although people are sending questions in, gives the illusion of an audience participation - however this challenged the idea as untimely zoella is still in control (prepares her answer before filming, not an authentic response)
- zoella not being able to read and response to every comment - phatic communication (people commenting for the sake of communicating rather than having any actual meaning)
context:
- fashion, beauty and lifestyle blogger, vlogger and author
- blog started in 2009, expanded into youtube later that year
- 4.9 million subscribers, at its peak in 2017 with over 11m subscribers
- launched a range of beauty products, zoella beauty, in 2014
- first book Girl online released in 2014 and was the fastest selling book of the year
social context:
- videos filmed, edited and uploaded by zoella herself to start with, now she gets help from 'team zoella'
- her success grew with the rise of popularity for online bloggers between 2010-2017
- collaboration with other other vloggers/influences to widen audience
- public appearance at events such as loose women, this morning and celebrity bake off
- interviews with magazines. eg cosmopolitan to target younger girls
- appeared on charity single do they know its christmas in 2014
economic context:
- mobile phones cameras + editing software has become more sophisticated and less expensive
^ meaning average people like zoella can produce and distribute their content without a 'production company' (no gatekeepers)
- uses cross media platforms to develop her brand, increasing commercial potential of her
- starting off initially as a hobby and unpaid - now considered a commercial brand due to monetisation of videos, advertising, sponsorships
- therefore she is guaranteed a mainstream populist large audience to please her sponsors
- diversified into others areas of merchandise (synergy) to make more money
audience:
girls - targeted through
- emotive content
- stereotypically feminine activities
- creation of 'ideal' women's life
- intimiate confessional tone
teenagers and young adults - targeted through
- use of social media - convergence
- everyday activities and in line with those of the same demographic
- use of language and tone
BC1C2 - targeted through
- partnerships with companies who target similar demographics (boots/ASOS/H&M)
- middle class values and ideology embedded into videos
Mainstream aspirers - targeted through
- mainstream topics/brands/ideas
- promotion of an aspirational yet attainable lifestyle
uses and gratifications:
personal identities -
- finding a new hobby + identity of hair and make up
- embraces flaws in her appearance - identifying and relating to her
- videos can be inspirational
personal relationships:
- creates conversation between friends and family who share the saem intrest in her videos/tutorials
- discussion between make up fans in comments
surveillance:
- learning about new make up brand + tips - applying to audiences own routine
diversion:
- distraction from everyday life - escapism + guilty pleasure
- social interaction - feeling as through your there getting ready with her - on face time (in casual location, talking directly to her)
gender represented:
traditional:
- very stereotypical representations of femininity - pastel, pink tones, hair care, make up focused
- posing in thumbnails - stereotypically feminine, always looking beautiful (for e.g made video of baby room even when pregnant, still making effort to look good - pouting)
- mode of address in video titles - targeting a younger female audience - defining what femininity is about
subverting:
- However then breaks away from these stereotypes through sex positive vibrator sponsorship - breaking tabu about female sexualisation
- relationship with Alfie subverts stereotypes - open about her being the main earner in the household / doesn’t want to get married - a more progressive representation
- embodying a more maternal role in recent years
- videos such as "hair, donuts, interviews and climbing" constructing the image that femininity is about allot more than stereotypes(Gauntlett)
"zoella does my make-up" video:
- Alfie becomes the 'gender troubled' performer. Butler would argues the resulting representation of alfie in make up is comical
"zoella does my make-up" video:
- the very act of zoella 'making up' alfie demonstrates that his masculinity is a performance based construct that can be easily changes + manipulated
- more wide ranging identities are constructed that audiences can connect with and borrow from
postmodernism:
phatic communication:
where the content of the message is meaningless but whats important is the act of communication
postmodernism -
- the media seems to be more real that the reality its representing
- hyper reality - a constructed reality that we accept
- simulacrum - a construction of a reality that seems real
Zoe Sugg as the real person but Zoella is the simulacrum:
- zoe sugg represented as a friend + 'one of us'
- zoella's wax figure for eg shows an audience would be interacting with the figure and brand name
Baudrillard - argues that in contemporary media texts, instead of referring to anything real, we continually see + hear references to other texts
- media creates a hyper reality
postmodernism in relation to zoella:
- hyper reality created through showing 'edited highlights' of her life
- videos follow the same patterns + have the same aesthetics
- her content is interconnected - refers to other videos + socials - build engagement + excitement allows hyper reality
through "hair, donuts, interviews and rock-climbing" video
- time lapse/slow motion - fragmented narratives (engages audience + provides variety)
- quick straight cuts that jump through time (car journey) - audience prefers
- referencing sponsor links in description - content is interconnected
- hyper reality of relatable moments, not all are perfect but are included to seem 'real'
- phatic communication as new information isn't learnt, but audience is entertained