Data di Pubblicazione:
2015
Citazione:
Beauty discourse and Web 2.0: the case of makeup Gurus / G. Riboni. ((Intervento presentato al 8. convegno Discourse, Communication and the Enterprise tenutosi a Napoli nel 2015.
Abstract:
Over the last few years, Web 2.0 genres have contributed to radically revolutionizing the ways in which brands market their products online as well as the ways in which consumers discover and purchase them. The rise of genres used to communicate about makeup and cosmetics has had a dramatic impact on the makeup industry. As a consequence, a very dynamic digital community of makeup lovers has originated and spread worldwide. Members participate by sharing information and tips, doing products’ reviews, announcing new collections, tutorials and how-to’s (Kedveš 2013). Even though makeup companies have realized the potential of Web 2.0 genres and have adopted them relatively quickly, most users bypass their social media accounts as they find amateurs’ accounts more appealing and trustworthy. The convergence of electronic word of mouth (Phelps et al. 2004), personal narrative, and audience engagement which characterizes these online profiles (often referred to as “beauty vlogs” ) results in entertaining as well as informative content which may receive as many as ten times the visits as those of the major beauty brands (cf. Pixability 2014). While differentiating between unaffiliated amateurs and users who are more or less officially sponsored by cosmetic corporations is not easy and maybe not even desirable (Burgess/Green 2009: 57), the amateurial discourse arguably dominates the online makeup domain. A plethora of makeup lovers have become so well-known and influential that the expression “makeup gurus” has been coined to designate them. According to the traditional definition, “gurus” are people gifted with wisdom as well as leadership abilities who consequently emerge as spiritual guides to be trusted. On Youtube a guru is someone who has a “guru account” and posts videos to educate people about something (YouTube, 2010; Anarbaeva 2011).
Since YouTube is free and everybody can open a channel (provided with the same identical template and functions) on the platform, it can be hypothesized that the most popular makeup gurus distinguish themselves from the others and stand out thanks to, among various factors, their ability to utilize the genre (Spyer 2013). Consequently, those videos which receive the most hits and enjoy the widest circulation seem to be more representative of the genre while, at the same time, proving more likely to affect it.
Starting from these premises, this study sets out to investigate the generic, rhetorical and linguistic practices of online amateur makeup lovers and focuses its analysis on the language of the so-called “makeup gurus”, i.e. those people who dominate Web 2.0 “makeupsphere”.
The analytical framework adopted in this research is discourse analysis and is rooted in a constructivistic view of discourse. According to this view, the latter participates in “the social construction of reality” (cf. Berger/Luckmann 1976). As a consequence, social labeling and identities are arguably best investigated through a discourse analytical approach. In order to examine labeling and identities in the online makeup domain, a corpus consisting of fifteen videos posted on the three of the most subscribed Youtube How to & Style channels (which interestingly also rank within the top 300 most subscribed channels of the whole Youtube platform) has been selected. More specifically, makeup tutorials realized by Michelle Phan (USA), Tanya Burr (England), and Lauren Curtis (Australia) have been collected over the course of seven months and examined in order to identify their prevailing discursive features. The analysis focuses on the discursive representation of beauty and makeup as well as on the identity of makeup gurus. As regards the latter, special attention is devoted to the con
Tipologia IRIS:
14 - Intervento a convegno non pubblicato
Elenco autori:
G. Riboni
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