PART THREE……THE REFLECTION

For PART ONE…. “The discovery” in my series, CLICK HERE to learn about the beginning process of my Auto ethnographic research of Bonny Rebeccas content. And for PART TWO…. “The Patterns” in my series, CLICK HERE to learn about the next phase of my Auto ethnographic research of Bonny Rebeccas content.

Before starting my auto-ethnography research on my behaviours when consuming Bonny Rebecca’s content on Instagram and Youtube, I had an overall feeling as to what my findings would be.
My initial thoughts on how my results would pan out turned out to be reasonably accurate to what I discovered about myself when consuming content by social media influencer; in this case, Bonny Rebecca.

Throughout the research process, I noticed many patterns in my behaviours. Where I was, what time I was consuming, and the feelings associated with the content.
For example:

• 99% of the time, when consuming Bonny’s content, I was in the comfort of my own home during downtime in the morning and at night.
• I always felt inspired and had many profound thoughts about the topic discussed in her videos or Instagram stories.
• I found myself being more present in each moment and not wanting to be on my phone as much after consuming her content, which sounds silly considering researching consuming using social media.
• I felt good about myself and where I am in life every time, I consumed her content.
• I would only disengage when Bonny spoke about a topic, I wasn’t interested in.

Throughout the Autoethnographic process, I gained insight into how Bonny Rebecca’s content makes me THINK, FEEL and ACT.

I feel my behaviours from this experience are due to a mix of who I am as an individual and the lifestyle influencer chosen for this research topic. As an influencer, she portrays herself as authentic and has conversations that feel intimate, which I think contributes to my behaviours during and post-consumption of her content. Typical actions of an influencer/“micro-celebrity” are to cultivate a sense of authenticity, intimacy, accessibility, availability, and connectedness with their audiences (Lawson 2020, p. 4). Bonny does this, and from sharing her true self impacted me in many positive ways.

My study has addressed all areas I set out to achieve, which I mentioned in my “project pitch” post. ‘Discovering how social media influencers can impact the lives of their followers.’ For ethical reasons, my ethnographic study was based on my own experience. However, I do acknowledge that this purely based on one lifestyle influencer and not the lifestyle influencers as a whole.

If I were to continue my ethnographic research, I would love to broaden my field site. From one social media influencer and explore another that may bring out different thoughts and feelings that could affect me in the other way then Bonny Content has. It would be interesting to see the different kinds of impacts influencer culture can have based on the content they produce, whether that be a negative or positive impact.

Thank you for coming along this discovery with me

until next time

Lucy xx

Reference list

Lawson, Caitlin 2020 ‘Skin deep: Callout strategies, influencers, and racism in the online beauty community’, New Media & Society, online version, p.4.