Zoella Flashcards
Characteristics of web 1.0
Definition:
The second stage of internet, characterised by more user-generated content.
- Podcasting
* Read-only
* One directional
* Millions of users
* Forums
* Owning content
characteristics of web 2.0
curran = Guantlett
- Global access
- Content created by others
- Blogs/wiki
- Interactive advertisements
- Billions of users
- Mobile access
- Guantlellt:
- The web has made it possible for everyday people to share their creativity
- Web 2.0 invited users to play
- A move away from ‘sit back and be told’ culture, towards more of a ‘making and doing’ culture
- Every year more and more people are writing blogs, participating in online discussions, sharing information, music, and photos, and uploading videos
more About Zoella
- Real name Zoe Sugg, is a British social media influencer, youtuber, where she creates content related to beauty, fashion and lifestyles.
- her first vlog to YouTube on February 2009, haul on Primark.
- Zoella’s first vlog was primarily about her daily life, similar to a diary entry, where she talked about her plans for the day and what she was currently doing. Fashion and beauty
- original target audience:
- Age: Primarily teenagers and young adults.
- Gender: Predominantly female.
- Ethnicity: Her content appealed to a diverse audience, but primarily targeted English-speaking viewers.
- Socio-economic class: Middle to upper-middle class.
- Psychographic profiles: Individuals interested in beauty, fashion, lifestyle, and relatable content.
Which social media platforms does Zoella utilise?
- YouTube: Zoella’s main platform, As of last update, she had over 11 million subscribers. -
- Instagram: Zoella shares photos and updates with her audience. = quicker access, get her revunue from has 9 million followers. she has GC for her fans to share her relatable content KNOWN AS CONVERGENCE
- Facebook: Zoella likely has a presence on Facebook, where she may share content and updates with her audience, but specific subscriber numbers may vary.
- Homogeneity of content to showcase continuity between converging media forms
How did Zoella rebrand her image and diversify her brand appeal?
- Expanding beyond beauty and fashion content to include lifestyle topics such as home decor, travel, and personal development.
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High end-luxury brands= consumeristic culture, commodities
- Launching her own product lines, including beauty products, stationery, and homeware, which appealed to a broader audience beyond her YouTube channel.
- Collaborating with other influencers and celebrities in various industries to reach new demographics and expand her brand’s reach.
- Sharing more personal and relatable content, including her struggles with anxiety and mental health, which resonated with a wider audience and humanized her brand.
How did she cater and appeal to them through her earlier vlogs
- Sharing personal experiences and stories that her audience could relate to.
- Offering beauty and fashion tips that were accessible and budget-friendly.
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Incorporating humour and authenticity to connect with her viewers emotionally.
CONTENT: - Highly feminised
- Feminine body language
- In binary opposition to Alfie and Joe
- Soft pastel colours
- Life quotes in peach metallic
- Make-up and hair
VLOGS/BLOGS
Production, Distribution, Exchange
definition:
Production: the process of creating a media text
Distribution: how the product is delivered to audiences, including the marketing campaign.
Exchange: the means by which the audience can experience the product
- Audiences no longer passive consumers but active participants in media products
- Media products therefore require more active features.= Sharing, comments, likes, personalisation.
- New forms of media emerge – the blog and vlog – the podcast, etc.
- Proliferation (growth) of hardware means anyone can create media products
- More variety and diversity in media products – more specialised and niche content.
How can we use these texts (zoella/attitudes) as examples of the internet’s democratising force?
- The rise of Web 2.0 and the proliferation of interactivity on the World Wide Web in the late 90’s / early 2000’s.
- Not only can anyone access the internet – but anyone can publish on it.
- The rise of social media are significant moments in the history of the internet.
- The democratisation of media – the end of audience – the rise of the prosumer.
Product context
- Zoe Elizabeth Sugg, 30
- Partner: Alfie Deyes (creator of PointlessBlog)
- Job before Vlog: apprentice interior designer
- Products: launched range of beauty products with brand name ‘Zoella Beauty’ in 2014
- Main YouTube channel: Zoella (mostly fashion, beauty hauls, favourites videos, with second channel MoreZoella (now called Zoe Sugg) with everyday style vlogs.
- Official website: used her platform to publish written blogs, references to YouTube vlogs.
- Awards – despite falling subscribers, Zoella has won multiple awards” Teen Choice Award, etc
- Author: four novels aimed at Young Adult demographic detailing the life of a fictitious female blogger – works with an editorial team and a ghostwriter through her publisher, Penguin Books.
her videos
- Most viewed Zoella YouTube vlogs:- guest appearance with Miranda Sings- life story vlogs- vlogs with boyfriend Alfie and brother Joe- make-up and fashion vlog- challenge vlogs- seasonal vlogs
- ‘my everday makeup routine’
- ‘halloween and house prep’
- ‘The Zoella Apartment’ - her brand represents domesticity, traditional values suggest housewives, hyperreal of products smelling baked cupcakes e.g. diffusers, socks, cozy fluffy and warm, pillow nate ‘naps fix everything’
Textual Analysis
Zoella apartment
- Direct mode of address – majority of shots are close-ups, opening sequence (diary vlog conventions - set at home at the start of the day), selfie stick filming, handheld POV shots, conversational presenting, informal banter with boyfriend Alfie (PointlessBlog)
- Lifestyle – Ideal home design with a tableau of Zoella products (relates to her interior design career past)
- Commodity fetishism – slogans (naps fix everything)
- ‘Z’ branded Christmas tree, shower gel, notes books.
- Informal style – laughing with friends in a bath full of soft play balls, Alfie and Zoella cuddling up on the show home bed (intimate perspective of vlog).
- Synergy – products available in Boots, Superdrug (Zoella gives a special shout-out to Boots as an endorsement).
textual analysis - my everyday makeup routie,
- Direct mode of address – candid style (sneezes on camera/early morning/just woken up look), static close-up shot, high-key lighting, jump cut editing (elliptical edits).
- Setting - sat on the end of her bed, fairy lights in the background (shallow focus).
- Fashion – braided hair, triangular heart-style earrings, stripy blue/white shirt, necklace.
- Make-up routine products – foundation (Rimmel lasting finish), concealer (Urban Decay naked skin concealer/Collection Lasting Perfection Concealer).
- Non-diegetic S/T – soothing, melodic instrumental tones.
vlogging conventions
- Conventional camera technique – single camera set up, medium close ups, direct address, filmed by the vlogger
- Hand-held camera – amateur feel
- POV shots
- Lighting set up - soft box or ring lights, high key lighting, looks more professional
- Audience interaction – leave a comment, share this, subscribe button (active audience theory)
- Direct mode of address – personal pronouns
-
Unscripted
* Effortless aesthetic
* Codes of realism - Collaboration with other vloggers or bloggers
Parasocial interactions
Conversational give and take between a media user and a media persona
* Informal
* Colloquialisms
* Slang
* Direct address e.g. “you guys”
* Immature and silly behaviour
* Best friend character
Key terms
- Sanitised story content: Content that avoids controversy, taboo language or material that may cause offence
- Single camera edit: filmed with just one camera – usually very quickly
- Everyday mise-en-scène: Using costume, make-up and sets that appear natural
- Narrative currency: Stories that are updated – that discuss items that are up to date
- Amateur aesthetic: A deliberately non-professional filming style
- Breaking the fourth wall: Where the presenter addresses the audience directly
- Candid imagery: Photographs that aren’t posed
- Confessional narrative: Giving the audience access to inner thoughts – also allowing the audience to experience inner doubts and worries
BRAND IDENTITY
- Authentic insight into the personal worlds of Alfie and Zoella
- Best friend character
- Human connections with the youth audiences
- Narratives that deal in honesty
- Innocent presenter style
- Cheery high-key lighting
- Wholesome values
How has the website been constructed to communicate messages about Zoella’s brand identity?
- Zoella’s homepage denotes the use of white space and a grid layout. This connotes a clean and professional feel to the page and signifies that the brand is sleek and sophisticated.= minimalistic
- The brand logo is positioned in the top left of the homepage and is a capital Z using a bold font. This use of just the first letter of her name suggests a sense of fame, and black adds to the notion that this is a mature sophisticated brand.
- rebranded website she tries to apply her audience to a diverse target audience.
- Topics featured: beauty, promotes a clean and healthy lifestyle, love and romance books, mental health, looking after body, consumerist culture and ideology.
Binary Opposition
- real vs. the constructed, links to Baudrillards = sumaclra - Peruades the audience to forget what the real is, what a mother would go through, and how messy things can be. Also the parts that we don’t see gives a constructed reality. = draw our own interpretations.
- Gender binary opposition; Alfie (partner) goes to the gym, wears chilled clothing = promotes the ideologies that men needs to keep fit and zoella has a full face of makeup promoting he home brand which suggest she caters to her appearance/looks and promotes domesticity. wider issues in society
- Femininity / Masculinity
- Happy / Sad
- Single / Relationship
- Affluence / Poverty
postmodernism appliaction
Baurdrillard
- vlogs creators create realistic worlds and invite the audience to become part of that hyperreality
- They construct identities for themselves that are ‘sold’ to audiences who may want to emulate the blogger and use them as role models e.g. instagram = stage-candid photos, images of child (constructing a family brand identity - heteronormative), = positive representation
- Postmodernists claim that in a media-saturated world - we areconstantly immersed in media, 24/7 –the distinction between reality and themedia representation of it becomesblurred or even entirely invisible
- Media reality is the new reality.
- Zoella’s idealised representations of femininity and the beauty myth become a simulacra – a media proliferated copy of herself that transcends the norms of reality to convey a heightened reality and sense of verisimilitude – a beautified hyper-reality.
Semiotics (Barthes)
- anxiety discourse in confessional direct mode of address vlogs.
- Conventional representation of Western womanhood.
- Connotations as a ‘homemaker’ with allusions to the domestic housewife - emphasis on the kitchen.
- Feminine lifestyle connotations – fashionable and expensive clothing, conventional red lipstick and eye shadow make-up, small dog , family gatherings and a ‘cute’ car, feminine friends and aspirational aesthetically pleasing mise-en-scene.
Gender perfomitity in the apartment video
2016
- Decoration/packaging is feminine = soft colour pallet = purple, rose petals
- Flower scented candles, from her mum’s garden = women are associated to the domestic sphere.
- The way Zoella reinforces conventional beauty ideals through makeup, hair and costume
- intresteningly, zoella commodifies feminity
- Discusses about positivity = shows that she caring, nurturing.
- zoella designes her house to make it look clean and appealing to the audience, this suggests conventional ideologies that women must be organised and look after the home
- In contrast, her partner Alfie is absent towards the end of the vlog, highlighting the stereotypical ideas that he’s outside of the domestic role. This reflect van zoonens ideas that men and women are represented differently.
- presented as ‘spectacle’ as he is credited for his efforts for attending gym twice. He’s in ordinary gym clothes (not presentable)
representation feminity
- her commentary reinforce representation of feminity - they expect her to have makeup, Tidy clean house = normalised
- in the xmas vlog: - Positions Zoella in a domestic role. She refers to the need of her Christmas party preparations as something that both her and Aflie to be engaged in. = shes the only one that excutes this
Gilroy in zoella
- Zoella channel unwittingly reinforces cultural binaries through its exclusion of non-white participants
- The channel’s marginalisation of non-white ethnicities suggests a segregated view of UK society, constructing a sense of ‘otherness’ through the absence of those ethnic groups.
- Moreover, the channel’s construction of an aspirational, ideal lifestyle coupled with its reinforcement of beauty ideals might lead an audience to perceive that these are states that can’t be achieved by a non-white audience.
- reaffirms heteronormative relationships
- other collaborators are white females
PEQ
HOW DO BLOGS/VLOGS REINFORCE STEREOTYPES – STARTING POINTS
- portrayal - perpetuate unrealistic beauty standards and societal
- Reinforces sexuality = Heterosexual couple: films with her husbands, and collaborate with other heterosexual couple e.g. boyfriend does my makeup = performative role that are constructed in society. (Judith)
- However, there is an absence of queer people, non-whites – aligns with the gay best friend trope = symbolic alienation.= Reinforces westernised beauty ideal are the standards
- She reinforces gender stereotypes.
- portrayal of motherhood reinforces positive stereotypes. She emphasises maternal traits such as nurturing and domesticity = suggests that these qualities are what it is to be a good mother
- ‘Pregnancy updates, family fun day, ‘baking with Ottie’
- She goes on holidays/travel vlogs = most are family orientated.
- Her brand vs personal insta page = her vlogs she has inspiration of wedding, whereas on her personal page = she is happily married suggests that that these are the steps to attain them things.
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Doesn’t offer diverse representation = which challenges Gauntlet ‘pick and mix theory’
CHALLENGE: - Independent/hardworking
- Economically stable/businesswoman
- E.g. apartment vlog, her brand