Melbourne Fashion Influencers: Contextual Report

Want to catch up to speed? Check out my previous blog posts here: https://charlotte3adams.wordpress.com/category/bcm241/

• So what happened?

My DA has evolved from ‘Wealthy Melbourne Influencers’ to ‘Melbourne Fashion Influencers’.

Now what does this mean? Melbourne Fashion and Lifestyle influencers are a media niche in itself, creating content on Instagram and TikTok for their young, Australian fan base. My DA first centred around various influencers, but was narrowed down to both Sam Guggenheimer and Izzy Armitage, two fashion influencers who were born and raised in Melbourne.

Together, they host a podcast, Just For Girls which has been a major contributing factor in the development of my chosen media niche. Through my DA, interacted and immersed myself within the niche, through creating Pinterest content, interacting with others in the Just For Girls private Facebook group as well as on TikTok. Proliferating my content on differing platforms allowed my scope to broaden, and I was able to gain a deeper understanding into the niche.

• Some context:

Throughout my ethnographic process, I underwent extensive background research to guide my investigating into my chosen media niche. Dr. Chris Moore’s weekly lecture content provided me with essential background information, which guided my focus and provoked further research in both academic and non-academic areas. Through the information displayed within the content, I was able to explore the ethnographic skills (Creswell 2016) and elements to incorporate into my research and then apply to my content creation and platform proliferation blog posts.

Further qualitative research information was guided by my attempt to be a careful observer (Merriam et al. 2016).

• Critical reflection of the autoethnographic process

The process of autoethnography was fascinating, and highly valuable as a media consumer and worker within the industry. Throughout this process I was able to critically reflect on my experience as a member of the Melbourne Fashion Influencer niche, all while producing my own personal content relative to the niche and online community. The different skills of ethnography, including, comparing, contrasting, reflexivity, sensitivity and flexibility assisted my approach to both content creation and the immersion within the niche, which thereby assisted my reflective blog posts. With mapping, a major element of the autoethngraphic process, the visual displays highlight the evolution of my Digital Artefact.

Slide to compare!

• Persona, an extension of myself

Throughout my DA, I created an online presence, a very similar identity to that of my own. This persona was displayed on TikTok, while interacting with videos in comment sections, through a niche facebook group and on Pinterest, when posting relevant pins to my account. The online presence was displayed in an authentic and realistic manner, which allowed many users to connect and interact with my persona in a positive manner. Utilising my name and pictures of myself in my profile pictures, users were able to identify that I was a real person who, like them, was also within this niche. The only element of my online persona, that differed from myself, was my increased confidence to connect with others online within this niche and posting content to a broad, and sometimes critical, audience.

• Creating Content

The autoethnographic process assisted in creating original content for my DA, this included remixing images and content from Instagram to post on Pinterest. The exploration into the niche, involved a deep-dive into the group on Facebook, which I thoroughly enjoyed interacting with users and creating content within. The Facebook group acted as field-site for my autoethnographic research (Burrell 2009). I would’ve liked to post on TikTok and believe this content would’ve been valuable in reaching a niche audience and connecting with users who currently view this style, format and type of content.

Key Take Aways

• Platform Proliferation is hard

I found the process of platform proliferation to be challenging, as I wanted to connect with the niche audience, but some platforms felt oversaturated, like TikTok, and I didn’t really know where to begin. I believe further iteration and trial and error would’ve allowed a deeper understanding into what works and what doesn’t. Knowing the style of content was important to reflect the style of the social media platform, for e.g. Pinterest was limited to predominantly photos and occasionally short-form portrait videos.

Within future endeavours, I would attempt to share varying content consistently for a few weeks to experiment with different platforms and content styles. Consistency is key!

• Content Generation is even harder

The actual part of creating content was very challenging, with my niche surprisingly being quite broad! The fashion/lifestyle niche, no matter the circumstance, is not restricted to one specific style or format of content. Due to this, I found it challenging to generate authentic, relatable content that my desired audience would connect to and see value in. Due to being sick throughout the semester, I found the process of content generation even harder.

In future, I would endeavour to create a social media content plan, and constantly evaluate what works and what doesn’t, to adapt for my audience. By having a clear content plan with various ideas, I feel ad though I could stick to the structure and not be stuck on when to post or what to post.

First production timeline, could be updated to be more specific.

• Autoethnography through interactions

Although, not much content was generated directly from the Facebook group, I found this to be highly insightful in what was relevant and trending at the time. The participatory media culture of this niche allowed my interactions to be authentic and valuable, and gain an insight into the ideal audience members within this social group (Langlois 2013).

In future projects, I would aim to analyse the group and content generated by others, to then form ideas surrounding content generation and which platforms to post on. I feel as though this could have greatly guided my content creation and overall trajectory of my project. I think this would’ve been executed most effectively using the mapping technique, a skill relevant within the autoethnographic research process (Burrell 2009).

My autoethnographic research process was highly valuable, and I look forward to transferring the various, valuable skills I learnt into other Digital Artefacts, my current job in social media and my future career in social media marketing.

REFERENCE LIST:

Moore C, (2023), ‘BCM 241’, online videos, BCM 241, University of Wollongong, viewed 2023.

Creswell, John W. (2016) 30 Essential Skills for the Qualitative Researcher, Sage: Los Angeles, accessed 5 August 2023.

Burrell, J. (2009). The Field Site as a Network: A Strategy for Locating Ethnographic Research. Field Methods, 21(2), 181–199.

Merriam, Sharan B. and Tisdell, Elizabeth J, (2016) Being a Careful Observer, in Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation, Jossey-Bass: San Fransisco, accessed 15 September 2023.

Sobolewska, Emilia, Smith, Colin F., and Turner, Phil, (2009) Auto-Ethnography: Problems, Pitfalls and Promise, Submission to HCI Ed 2009, accessed 15 September 2023.

Wall, Sarah, (2006) An Autoethnography on Learning about Autoethnography, International Journal of Qualitative Methods 5 (2), accessed 15 September 2023.

Langlois, G. (2013). Participatory Culture and the New Governance of Communication: The Paradox of Participatory Media. Television & New Media, 14(2), 91-105. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476411433519