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hyelin-kim-world · 4 years

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Do beauty influencers redefine beauty standards?

Beauty standard is determined by the mainstream media. Few years ago, TV and magazines were primary sources for getting information so that celebrities on TV are representatives of ideal female images (Polivy & Herman, 2004). The culture of YouTube Beauty gurus has gained the most viewership among many forms of traditional media. Now in the modern society, beauty influencers seem to reshape beauty culture.

When you search ‘Instagram model makeup’ on online, there is a type of makeup you can see the most – false lashes, nudy and plumped lips, fluffy eyebrow and winged eyeliner. Most of females on the pictures look flawless and unattainable for ordinary people. With high use of photo editing app, girls are editing their face to look attractive to their followers or friends. This can create a toxic beauty which can have a negative impact on and even beauty brand marketing working with influencers promote consumption on their products to be look like the girls they admire.

The majority of the biggest beauty gurus are young, skinny, white and heterosexual women. When you search “My Everyday makeup” on YouTube, most of videos are featuring white, skinny and blonde girls. It is relatively hard to see women with colours and minority group. In the US, YouTube is used by 96% of the users in the 18-24 age group who are relatively vulnerable to accept information by the platform.

Girls and young women especially are extremely influenced by mediated images showing female models and results lower self-esteem, body image dissatisfaction and even depression (Harrison & Cantor ,1997). Researcher Bandura (2009), in his social cognitive theory, the mass communication-focused model and sociocultural perspective body image lead the unrealistic image of female beauty.

Although there is a form of beauty standard on social media, the power of influencers is evident that Ingrid Nilsen, beauty and lifestyle Youtuber, met with former president Barack Obama to discuss issues important to her fan base.

Reshaping beauty standards by influencers means that it becomes more diverse when it comes to express their self-confidence and their own beauty. Many beauty gurus have started to talk about their insecurities when it comes to their body image and appearance. It has been positive to young followers saying that it is okay to be yourself. Few months ago, one of the most famous beauty gurus, publicly came out and a huge of her fans support her being herself and saying, “I am me and you are you”. Within about five hours of posting, the video topped the YouTube trending page with 5.5 million views. After her posting, the Human Rights Campaign tweeted support for her and she got millions of support messages through twitter, Instagram and any social media platforms.

In the last few years of YouTube and social media culture have shown radical changes of approach to contents. There is no doubt that it has become more authentic and diverse but there is a still gap which can be developed to appeal viewers.

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References

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Harrison, K., & Cantor, J. (1997). The relationship between media consumption and eating disorders. Journal of communication, 47(1), 40-67.

Polivy, J., & Herman, C. P. (2004). Sociocultural idealization of thin female body shapes: An introduction to the special issue on body image and eating disorders.

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hyelin-kim-world · 4 years

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FOMO on social media: why do we feel missing out all the time on social media?

Have you ever felt not evolving enough in anywhere while using social media? And fear of that? Yes, I have, actually, a lot. In one word, it is called “FOMO”, described as that anxious feeling you get when you think other people might be having a good time without you. Nowadays, it seems that the correlation between social media and loneliness has become automatically positive supported by many studies and experiences from users. Researcher Hodkinson (2016) suggests that advertising markets use those psychological approach to appeal consumers and it actually works really well.

The main benefit we can take from social media is connecting with others in the most convenient way. By connecting with others, we can also easily get information about them such as what they are doing and where are at. However, people tend to post the highlight moment of their life – who would post of themselves sitting on the couch with pyjamas and eating cookies? None. So, we are being exposed to those posts travelling, having a good time with friends, going fancy restaurant and etc. By doing so, all negative emotions start from here.

In Turkle’s study (2017), Alone together, some of the teens felt that they need to be available 24/7 to their friends because they are afraid of missing something from during unavailable moment. By understanding the study, It is clear that in today’s “always on” world, the less conversations but more text going on in our life and it makes people feel lonelier. However, different outcomes can be led depending on individuals’ personalities, in the work by Rebecca et al. (2018) social media use decreases loneliness among highly social people. It can also mean that people who are not relatively social to others can experience an increase of loneliness. Recent research by Hunt et al. (2018) suggests that limiting the time of use on social media to 30mintues a day for three weeks had significant reductions in loneliness and depression as compared to another group with no control. Students even experienced a significant decrease in anxiety and fear of missing out.

During quarantine, there is the emergence of different FOMO, fear of missing partying on zoom. This FOMO is prompted by screenshots of other peoples’ video calls, which can make other people feel lonely. For someone who live with their family, seeing their friends’ having a great time with their flatmates is also different FOMO through social media.

By seeing all these phenomenons, FOMO is inevitable whether it is in lockdown or not. Social media is the root of most FOMO in our life. Although social media can lead to fear of missing out, there are ways to consume it more mindfully. Beyond staying in touch, social media can actually be a good tool to meet people who share the same interests with you. It can lead to build a new form of community which you can meet people in real life.

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References

Hodkinson, C. (2016). ‘Fear of Missing Out’ (FOMO) marketing appeals: A conceptual model. Journal Of Marketing Communications, 25(1), 65-88. doi: 10.1080/13527266.2016.1234504

Hunt, M. G., Marx, R., Lipson, C., & Young, J. (2018). No more FOMO: Limiting social media decreases loneliness and depression. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 37(10), 751-768.

Nowland, R., Necka, E., & Cacioppo, J. (2017). Loneliness and Social Internet Use: Pathways to Reconnection in a Digital World?. Perspectives On Psychological Science, 13(1), 70-87. doi: 10.1177/1745691617713052

Turkle, S. (2017). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Hachette UK.

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hyelin-kim-world · 4 years

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Online activism: a tool to solve problems with technology or ineffective way to spread the messages

Around 125million hashtags are shaded by Twitters 328 million users every day. While they are being used to express their emotions or statement in their life, political discourse also take place on the platform. Nowadays, ‘movement’ does not take serious for people as much as in the past due to the intervene of Internet. The enter of creating movement is becoming easier and easier which can be seen positive as well as negative in some way. Especially Hashtag movement is something you could see a lot commonly on social media whether it is by influencers or non-profit organisations. Although you might think that you are not involved in online activism, maybe you already did. Not only hashtag movement but also online petition is also part of online activism. Even Freelon et al.(2016) claimed that digital platforms have become ‘essential’ tolls for 21st-centry social movements. For younger generations, this type of movement seems like a utopian dream, but it would be not for older people.

The #Metoo hashtag first went viral on Twitter two years ago when actress Alyssa Milano urged victims of sexual abuse to share their stories on Twitter. During that time, more than the hashtag was used more than 19million times on Twitter. It piled up and up and all of sudden, it became worldwide movement eventually. A majority of #Metoo tweets were in English but after few months, it also went viral in multiple languages. Individuals from different backgrounds and ethnicities shared all of their sexual abuse experiences. Through lens of social media, this movement is already predicted by McLuhan (1964) who mentioned the rapid emergence of what we now refer to as the digital era, an explosion of computer use, and the creation of a board reaching internet.

However, according to the US Pew Research Centre, Americans aged between 18 and 49 are more likely to have used hashtags related to a political or social issue than those aged 50 and over. Not only age, but also education matters because people need to learn how to use social media or Internet to engage in hashtag or online movement. Old generations’ opinions are less likely to be reflected in modern society where primary sources for getting information is online space.

When it comes to its effectiveness, it is questioned that if online activities lead to actual action in real world. Taking #Bringbackourgirls campaign as an example, it emerged as an online campaign to raise awareness of the abduction of nearly 300 girls in north-eastern Nigeria by the terrorist group Boko Haram. The hashtag quickly became viral and even First Lady Michelle Obama uploaded her picture with posters displaying the hashtag. However, due to the difficulties facing in real life to change the situation, there was a lack of positive results and it ended up losing popularity.

Overall, online platform can be a tool to spread the message of social movement quickly, but it still requires actual action which will solve the problems. in offline world.

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References

Freelon, D., McIlwain, C. D., & Clark, M. (2016). Beyond the hashtags:# Ferguson,# Blacklivesmatter, and the online struggle for offline justice. Center for Media & Social Impact, American University, Forthcoming.

McLuhan, M. (1966). Understanding media. New York: the New American library.

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hyelin-kim-world · 4 years

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Staying at home but make it meaningful: How social media raises people donate amid crisis

Last January, Instagram added ‘donation’ button to raise donation to followers on users’ story. It can appeal to followers that donate to nonprofits in simplest way – just click and go. Non profit organisations even can make their own stories or a quiz to make people participate and raise donation.

Social media has been crisitising in long period of time due to its negative effect on people but this time it can be seen differently because of its influence. During quarantine, staying at home is challenging for all of us but public figures and companies have been trying to encourage people to make it more meaningful. COVID-19 has a series side effect for nonprofits so that people are trying to help them with their power on social media. Front liners at hospitals, supermarket and pharmacy are the ones who really need help from us. Fundraising campaign behind the Instagram trend has tremendously been helping to raise more funds for them.

As an individual case, a 99-year-old British war veteran captain Tom walked 100 laps around his back garden before his 100th birthday on April 30th to raise money and gained global admiration. His original target was £1,000 and thanks to media coverage has now raised more than £27m for NHS (National Health Service). His small effort makes bigger change to the world. The reason why he did this fundraising was that he wanted to thank the NHS staff who helped him with treatmenat for cancer and a broken hip.

Al Jazeera English https://youtu.be/4zeIeYuxxqA

Run for Heroes, which launched at the end of March has been also taking a big role for helping them. It encourages people to run 5km for health, donate £5 and nominate five people to do the same. By encouraging others to participate in the campaign, the campaign has spread really fastly. This can be explained by the study which shows that responses to the solicitation are open to the public so that there is a social pressure to donate or participate among the group of friends (Meer, 2011).

After being nominated by Sir Fo Farah, comedian Jimmy Carr participated in the campaign, so it went viral more. Their goal for each day is running £5,000 from runners and through Strave app, people can track their progress and earn a Run For Heroes badge each week that they complete the challenge.

@run.for.heros https://www.instagram.com/p/B_Sr1hugwwP/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

It is clear that the mechanism of social media fundraising takes the benefits of “connection” in social networking sites (Saxton & Wang, 2014). Accelerating fundraising through social media is the best and easiest way to approach especially for millenniums but it can be difficult for people who are not familiar with using social media such as elderly people. Furthermore, there are too much social media fundraising going on so that people are overwhelming about which one is the best to donate. Some organisations do not provide enough information and simply ask for people to donate which would not appeal no ones.

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References

Meer, J. (2011). Brother, can you spare a dime? Peer pressure in charitable solicitation. Journal of Public Economics, 95, 926-941.

Saxton, G. D., & Wang, L. (2014). The social network effect: The determinants of giving through social media. Nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly, 43(5), 850-868.

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hyelin-kim-world · 4 years

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New Normal: More Rise of social media influencers in online marketing industry

In the crazy and chaotic time, social media spikes – in March, compare to February, the number of social media users increased by 3.7%. It means that the role of social media influencers has become more important as they are content contributor on social media. Social influence marketing was referred to “the golden child’ of online marketing. They not only increase the sale of the brand directly with promoting products but also improves brand awareness in a long term. Research also finds that influencing marketing outcomes the relationship between influencer content value and consumers’ trust in branded content (Lou & Yuan, 2019).

Retrieved from: Napolenocat.com

Prior to COVID-19, influencers were sharing a lot of their travelling lifestyle and the best moment of their life. However, they are now sharing their ‘normal’ life which is more relevant to our life such as workout videos and recipes. It definitely appeals more to followers and increases engagement in their contents. Furthermore, they also share some health advice and suggest followers to involve in domination to charity with showing sympathy.

In this game, brands are not an exception. Amid crisis, offline sales are taken away from their profit list so that they should inevitably focus on online strategies. Brands are now learning from influencers about how to deliver relevant and consistent messages to keep their audiences engaged during crisis.

On the other hand, whether they are really influential when it comes to sale is still controversial. Following by ANA (The Association of National Advertisers), it was found that only 36% of influencer marketing activities is effective whereas 19% of them are admitted as being ‘ineffective’ and the rest of them was neutral about it.

It has been also controversial the ethic and authenticity of influencers so that there are still remained questions to influencers whether they really like products they promote or not. Due to the lack of authenticity in some paid collaboration posts from influencers, viewers are confusing whether they are being advertised.

During this time, there is a lot of misinformation by influencers on social media so that WHO (World Health Organisation) is partnered with TikTok which is increasingly being used by not only teens but also adults during lockdowns. According to the study by Audrezet et al.(2018), followers may question to collaboration with brands by influencers because it does not seem ‘authentic’. To keep authenticity of Instagram, Instagram is also fighting back against automated apps people use to gain fake followers, likes and comments and using third party for that.

So, will influencers still be ‘useful’ when it comes to online marketing amid crisis?

To answer this, my answer is Yes. There is no doubt that influencers are making an influence to people as their title is literally ‘influencer’. However, the effectiveness of cost can be reconsidered so that micro influencers , with10,000 or fewer followers, are highly in need in the online marketing industry as they are getting the best for brands and businesses.

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References

ANA (2018). How ANA members are using influencer marketing. https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DLjgZ7QXo9UJ:https://www.ana.net/getfile/26389+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=kr&client=safari

Audrezet, A., De Kerviler, G., & Moulard, J. G. (2018). Authenticity under threat: When social media influencers need to go beyond self-presentation. Journal of Business Research.

Lou, C., & Yuan, S. (2019). Influencer Marketing: How Message Value and Credibility Affect Consumer Trust of Branded Content on Social Media. Journal Of Interactive Advertising, 19(1), 58-73. doi: 10.1080/15252019.2018.1533501

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