2 Literature Review
2.5 Summary
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2.5 Summary
Mother influencers are now rising at a different side online compared to mothers in the past. They share their daily lives on social media via their efforts at managing their self-presentation. It is not a one-way activity when users engage in social media and produce contents there. In other words, their preference for posting can also be molded at the same time.
The best illustration of such a case is the encoding and decoding model of communication by Stuart Hall. Hall (2001) explained how specific meanings and values are produced, disseminated, and interpreted. According to Hall (2001), the audience decodes particular messages when they actively immerse themselves in social contexts and manufactured information through collective action (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Encoding and decoding of broadcast structures (Hall, 2001, p.165)
Motherhood is very dynamic. It grants various meanings not just in different cultures, but also through the travel of time. Lee (2007) stated that the different images of mothers constructed in every specific period in Taiwan are not just discourses in the
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culture of the masses. They are phenomena happening around them at the same time (Lee, 2007). Mother influencers unquestionably deserve further exploration in contemporary society.
According to the index produced by the Executive Yuan’s Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics about gender equality in Taiwan, Taiwan is at the highest level among all Asian countries (Drillsma, 2019). However, does this mean the mothers in Taiwan have thrown off the ideologies of being good mothers? Do mothers no longer bear the burden that patriarchal societies have bestowed upon them? Are the mother myths still influencing them without any awareness either fully or partially?
This study takes a look at the manifestations of mothers and further examines easily-accessed social media platforms to search for the meanings and values in modern society. To date, the intent of exploring mother influencers’ self-presentation in Taiwan is still insufficiently explored, and no studies have empirically addressed the topic from a socio-cultural angle. Therefore, I investigate this crucial issue to understand how mother influencers present themselves publicly and offer social ideologies through their presentation online.
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Chapter 3
Research Questions and Methods
This chapter discusses the process of how this investigation aims to be conducted.
The current research shall explore how the reproduction of a good mother in Taiwanese society influences mothers in the modern era. By looking into mothers’ profiles, I want to seek significance in how they portray themselves on social media, especially the image-based platform of Instagram. To uncover how socio-cultural norms are embedded in their minds, this study’s primary focus is mothers’ perspectives on their presentation of selves as well as their Instagram accounts.
The research plan is to conduct online observations and in-depth interviews with mother influencers. Social media empower users to manage their presentations and to make an unknown person famous rather quickly. Additionally, different from users with private accounts, influencers operate public accounts and have numerous followers. Their points of view are more noteworthy and valuable than just mother users in general on social media.
3.1 Research questions
To obtain answers to this topic, more precise information is required to be found through relevant questions. I seek to answer the following questions.
1. What spurs mother influencers to present themselves on Instagram?
2. How do mother influencers recreate their mother impressions through self-presentation on Instagram?
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3.2 Research design
Based on the purpose of this research, the examinations will adopt a qualitative approach. I utilize a two-stage investigation, including online observations and narrative inquiries to answer the research questions.
The qualitative approach provides ‘strong validity’ in investigations, in which data are obtained from narratives and everyday stories (Gray, 2003, p. 71). In other words, while a quantitative investigation provides preliminary results of the overall population, qualitative analysis fills the gap in failing to realize further implications of the participants’ knowledge. As Creswell (2014) explicated in the book, the qualitative approach can explore and understand “the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem” (p.4).
Data collected from the qualitative approach is said to provide a more detailed description for explaining why culture is a specific way (Constable, Cowell, Crawford, Golden, Hartvigsen, Morgan & Turner, 2005). Gray (2003) suggested that a qualitative approach to cultural studies can dissect humans’ meanings in everyday life and how they relate to their identities or even social relations. The flexibility that qualitative methods have is suitable for the “dynamic natural and cultural process” (Gray, 2003, p.
18).
3.2.1 Online observation
An observation can get a better picture of the participants. Researchers are able to utilize the materials gathered from observations to complement their study (Gray, 2003).
By observing Instagram profiles, I are able to log essential information, including their photos and dialogues in the observation stage, so that I can get acquainted with the participants’ backgrounds and be familiar with their social media usages in advance.
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During the investigation online, I will observe the participants regarding their Instagram profiles. An observer means that the process will be running without any interaction with the participants. In other words, this type of observation intends to eliminate the existence of the researcher in the process (Owen, 2014). Therefore, the researcher will not affect the dynamics of the observing situation (Owen, 2014).
In the modified categories developed by Dewalt and Dewalt (2002), they precisely defined the observation type this research shall use toward Instagram as passive participation (Owen, 2014). Passive participation takes place when the researcher does not have any interaction with participants and acts like a complete observer (Owen, 2014, p.3). To be more specific, the researcher is on-site and is able to choose whether to interact with participants when embarking on passive observation (Owen, 2014).
However, the level of passive involvement can be elevated since the researcher could choose whether or not to interact (Owen, 2014). Passive participation undoubtedly inherits the benefit of pure observations and explains the situation that a researcher can’t be fully excluded in the environment being observed.
3.2.2 In-depth interviews
In the second stage, I will adopt in-depth interviews. More specifically, the narrative inquiry method takes place in this investigation since it is appropriate to the fields of social science (Constable et al., 2005). Interviews allow one to delve into a more profound aspect rather than just the surface when looking to explore “attitudes, opinions, and behaviors” through participants’ responses (Gray, 2003, p.94). The in-depth interviews with the participants follow the semi-structured paradigm in this research. Semi-structured interviews perhaps exist as the most widespread type in human and social science (Denzin & Lincoln, 2018). They enable researchers to adapt interview inquiries and to come up with relevant questions based on participants’
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responses. On the other hand, in-depth interviews make questions more answerable by extracting participants’ responses in a more profound sense (Gray, 2003). Researchers could derive meanings from the participants’ “attitudes, behaviors, and experiences”
through in-depth interviews (Nolan, Hendricks, Williamson & Ferguson, 2018, p.746).
As Bryman (2015) noted, in-depth interviews avail researchers with viewpoints to optimize the theory.
Riessman (2008) believed that narrative interviewing could form a more detailed analysis instead of merely brief answers or general points. Compared to a quantitative approach, interviews exhibit the rareness and preciousness of information from the participants. The rareness and preciousness factors strengthen the profoundness of the research, which thus enables the researcher to take a closer look at the meanings that are created through their stories. Narrative inquiry also allows researchers to investigate in an interpretive way (Nolan et al., 2018), as it elicits and analyzes the narratives from participants (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach & Zilber, 1998). A narrative investigation is the design of inquiry from individual life stories (Creswell, 2014). Stories are exhibited as part of “flux and flow of identity” (Gray, 2003, p. 109) and represent individuals’ daily life (Lieblich et al., 1998; Constable et al., 2005).
Interview participants can integrate their views of lives during the process of narrating events or when responding to questions (Creswell, 2014). Namely, when participants account for their life stories, they adopt their identity in society and social groups and change their center and lifestyle choices (Nolan et al., 2018, p.747).
Consequently, narratives grant meanings through their interpretation in a particular time frame and are confined within a specific culture when participants share their incidents and experiences in life (Riessman, 2008).
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To sum up the benefits of the narrative methodological framework, it inherits detailed and thorough information for the researcher to explore, while granting the researcher with fluidity and reflexivity during the research (Nolan et al., 2018). Thus, the researcher will be able to find out the socially-constructed knowledge (Nolan et al., 2018) or shared characteristics, processes, and facts (Campbell & Hart, 2019, p.1683) that are revealed among participants’ narratives.
3.3 Participant sample
To meet the goal of this research, I employed purposeful sampling. As scholars have stated, purposeful sampling is a widely-used strategy among qualitative research (Palinkas, Horwitz, Green, Wisdom, Duan & Hoagwood, 2015). Specified in purposeful samplings, I strategically selected intensity sampling to fit the purpose of exploring different types of mother influencers according to the established categories on Instagram. The purposeful sampling strategies modified by Suri (2011) indicate that intensity sampling aims at developing understandings of the phenomena studied (Benoot, Hannes & Bilsen, 2016). Scholars have adopted this kind of sampling to identify important participants or participants with many stories (Draucker, Martsolf, Ross & Rusk, 2007). Hence, via intensity sampling, this current research selected participants who can best uncover the particular phenomenon of culture that this research aims to explore. Benoot, Hannes, and Bilsen (2016) believed it is crucial to choose intensity sampling as a strategy, because it affects further analysis.
Scholars have correspondingly regarded intensity sampling as a rich source of interest (Suri, 2011; Benoot et al., 2016). As Teddlie and Yu (2007) noted, intensity sampling is a means for either seeking representative or comparability.
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Through intensity sampling, this research invited Taiwanese women with kids, who are deemed to be Instagram influencers, to participate in the study, because they may be under more pressure when exposing themselves online compared to unknown mother users on Instagram. Participants were eligible for the investigation if they met the following criterion: Taiwanese mother users with over 1000 followers. Li (2018) stated that influencers with 1000 to 100,000 followers are in the “up-and-coming”
category, influencers with over 100,000 followers are in the “popular” category, and influencers with over 1 million followers exert the “highest online influence” (p.535).
Also, the children of the interviewee are all aged under 12 since Child Welfare Act of our country explicitly defined “children” as the individuals aged under 12 (Executive Yuan, n.d.). The age frame includes the children aged from 0 to 6 who are considered as the groups that needs special care, namely can’t be left alone or be taken care by inappropriate caregivers (Executive Yuan, n.d.).
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As the beginning step of the first-stage investigation, this research surveyed Instagram for one week to see what mother influencers Instagram recommended from its algorithm. Within the 7 days of survey period, the Instagram accounts recommended by its algorithm and met the criteria of this research were classified as Figure 2. The accounts own by mother influencers with children aged over 12 were excluded. And, the accounts own by father or both of the mother and father were excluded. The accounts of influencers who are not mothers were excluded as well.
Figure 2. The Instagram categories of mother influencers recommended by its algorithm
The purpose of surveying the popular recommendations of mother influencers by Instagram was to ensure the proper gathering of information among different types, which helped me find distinct answers among different categories of mother influencers.
I aimed to recruit at least three different types of mother influencers among the recommendations by Instagram. I would look into the aspect of whether different types of mother influencers have different usages of social media. However, only 7 of them replied and accepted to participant in this research. To be more specific, 7 participants
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from Blogger, Personal Blog, and Video Creator categories joined the research. The above three categories were defined as the professional accounts on Instagram. On Instagram, individuals would proceed to choose their accounts whether they were creators or businesses. The above process was to determine the profiles in similar professional accounts for the Instagram algorithm. On Instagram, the Creator type was best for public figures, content producers, artists and influencers, and the Business type were best for retailers, local business, brands, organizations, and service providers.
According to my experience, individuals are allowed to choose their preferred categories and freely define themselves as creators or businesses.
In a nutshell, the 7 participants in this research chose and displayed their categories on profiles according to their wills. As I have observed, the “blogger” and “personal blog” mother influencers did not exhibit much difference. The consistent contents of these two types of mother influencers would be later discussing in chapter 4 (p.43).
3.4 Procedure
In this research, I conducted two-staged investigation with online observations and in-depth interviews with each participant individually for this qualitative approach. The first stage was to obtain the fundamental information from the participants. The second stage were in-depth interviews following a semi-structured paradigm. The essential data source was derived from both of the observations and the interviews with the mother influencers individually.
The seven participants invited to join the current research were consented before the interviews started. The mother influencers from 3 different categories invited by Instagram direct message and accepted to join this research. I had observed their
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The Interviewee’s children are all aged under 12, and they have over 1000 followers.
Due to the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, all the in-depth interviews were conducted online via Skype or LINE as the mother influencers requested. By conducting the in-depth interviews in Mandarin, the interviewees were able to share more viewpoints and elaborate their perspectives without language barrier. The basic information of the interviewees shows as Table 1 (p.30).
Table 1
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As mentioned above, the investigation involves two stages of data collection.
3.5.1 Online Observation
In this stage, I obtained the fundamental knowledge from the mother influencers’
profiles. Information revolved around the following question: What are the mother influencers presenting on their profiles?
The primary data collected from the mother influencers’ profiles were mainly about the contents they have posted on Instagram. In a sense, the observation took place on Instagram. The data source was from the profiles of the influencers who had agreed to participate in the study.
To understand the participants and briefly study their social media usages in advance, the observation period of the chosen profiles was 30 days. I logged the data as a summary of their profiles in the observation period for grasping a better understanding of the participants (see Table 2, p.31).
Table 2
A summary of the researched interviewees’ Instagram profiles
Interviewee The information
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The summary of participants’ profiles should help to get a better idea of whom were interviewed and get a deeper understanding of the participants as well as their social media usages. Most importantly, the interview questions were derived through the observation stage and thus were narrowed down to a more straightforward direction for the construction of mother influencers’ self-presentation on Instagram.
3.5.2 In-depth interviews
In the second stage of data collection, the data source was from in-depth interviews with the mother influencers. Here, I am able to get a better understanding of the mother influencers’ perspectives about constructing their identities and self-presentation on Instagram.
To achieve this goal, a list of related questions was asked of the mother
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and their usage of social media for manifestation towards public. Recorded interviews were indispensable materials during the investigation, which I transcribed for
evaluation and analysis.
3.6 Data analysis
In this section, the analysis of the collected data followed the methodological model of narrative analysis by Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, and Zilber’s (1998). I adopted the method to analyze the content of participants’ narratives by developing salient themes. This categorical approach of analyzing the participants’ narratives were “primarily interested in a problem or a phenomenon shared by a group of people (as cited in Zacharias, 2011, p. 125)”, which generated profound analysis from the participants’ narratives (Lieblich et al., 1998).
The analysis process undergone through extracting the relevant texts from the participants’ narratives, developing main classifications, sorting into categories, and drawing conclusions from the analytic results (Lieblich et al., 1998).
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The primary approach of the narrative analysis was the content of participants’
narratives or stories, including the “surface content” and the “underlying or latent content”, which defined as categorical-content mode (Earthy & Cronin, 2008). The approach was appropriate to answer the research questions in this study for sorting out the similarities and the significance among the participants’ narratives. Figure 3 shows the process of how the information were extracted from the two-staged investigation.
Figure 3. The process of sorting out the information
3.6.1 Ethical Considerations
All participants were consented and fully-informed about the research purpose before interviews started. The participants joined in this study were requiring to be anonymous in this research since they considered themselves as public figures in Taiwan. Their real names and Instagram profiles will not be shown in this study.
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3.6.2 Reflexivity
In this research, I’m obliged to clarify my position since the researcher’s roles are essential in this study. A researcher of a study said to be not only a “coaxer” in the research process but a “story-teller” when constructing the research (Gray, 2003, p.109).
In a sense, the researcher of the current study required to stay self-reflexive throughout the research process to ‘go beyond “the subjective” when using our own (and others’
experience) in our explorations of cultural process’ (Gray, 2003, p.75). Namely, it’s necessary to keep myself in a reflexive state and be cautious within the research process.
Since I’ll be completely involved in the two-stage investigation, I will continually reflect upon the position of myself in the research process. Gray (2003) concretely stated that having “reflexive awareness” at every stage granted fairness and ethics (p.112). I endeavored to build knowledge true to the participants’ narratives since I am both an observer to the participants’ Instagram accounts and an interviewer in the in-depth interviews. Thus, bearing a self-reflexive mind reminds me of my position in this research and avoids myself from being subjectivist. Being continually reflexive strengthens the “credibility” of qualitative research, as well as deliberates how the research interests were situated throughout the research (Campbell & Hart, 2019, p.1685).
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Chapter 4
Interviewees and Their Instagram Profiles
Mother influencers possess different personalities and stories of their personal lives. After conducting an online observation of the participants’ Instagram accounts, I obtained fundamental information from the participants. This section will introduce each interviewee and present insights into their engagements on Instagram. The interviewees are introduced with a pseudonym to assure anonymity in this research. As Chapter 3 notes, the interviewees are from 3 different Instagram categories: “blogger”
(43%), “video creator” (14%), and “personal blog” (43%). As I have mentioned in chapter 3 (p. 29), the “blogger” and “personal blog” types of mother influencers do not exhibit much difference. They share consistent themes, such as sharing their outfits, dining-out experiences, and travel photography.
During the online observation stage, I gained fundamental knowledge from the interviewees’ profiles. More importantly, on the basis of self-presentation, I will offer a broader illustration on how they present themselves on their profiles and what they show in their pictures. The information I collected to understand the interviewees comes from their Instagram Stories, Instagram feeds, biographies, personal profile pictures, and their interactions with their followers. Table 2 lists a brief summary of
During the online observation stage, I gained fundamental knowledge from the interviewees’ profiles. More importantly, on the basis of self-presentation, I will offer a broader illustration on how they present themselves on their profiles and what they show in their pictures. The information I collected to understand the interviewees comes from their Instagram Stories, Instagram feeds, biographies, personal profile pictures, and their interactions with their followers. Table 2 lists a brief summary of