Taiwan

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Figure 3. Picky Zubieta’s 2018 Instagram Picture (She does not use a gastric sleeve anymore)

3.2.2. Taiwan

Amanda 劉紀範 @Amanda_isme (See figure 4):

Born on 1987 is recognized for having small roles in Taiwanese and Chinese dramas. Amanda or Liu Ji-fan in Romanized pinyin has expressed on Taiwanese media her desire to transform and offer a change regarding to way women hide their thickness and leave fashion only for the skinny type (Liu, 2018). As an advocate of the plus-size movement, she joined and participated in the production of Air Space Plus’s 2018 promotional campaign, titled “be mine”, a video that aimed to teach women they are worth and sexy despite their body weight or shape “your sexiness has nothing to do with your body” argues Amanda in one line whiting the video (Air Space Plus, 2018).

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Figure 4. Amanda 劉紀範’s 2018 Facebook picture (modeling)

Wang Qi/Mao Bu @chatdeombre (See figure 5):

Mao Bu is a 25 years old, Taiwanese singer, performer and women’s rights activist, who found space on Social networks to develop her art and carrier. On March of 2018 her recognition increased as the result of a video report published first, on BBC News online portal and consecutively in some other news platforms. “There is always going to be someone suddenly coming up to you, and saying: ‘so fat’ you need to lose weight”, expresses Wang Qi during the translated interview presented on the site. In the video she also shares her experience of using a

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gastric sleeve and explains that her willingness to lose weight is not because of body shame but due to health conditions that could affect her carrier and family wellness.

Figure 5. Wang Qi/Mao Bu (Picture from her Facebook photo session called “The humorous Daily life of the female bodies” [女體的幽默日常])

Table 1. Plus-size Micro-celebrities (may 2018) Country Name, Instagram

Zubieta-Kay (entrelibras) 113k 5119 Facebook: 8.4K Blogger, radio host, model

Taiwan Amanda 劉紀範

(Amanda_isme) 15.5K 1,310 Facebook: 72.8K

Actress,

515 127 Facebook:74.4K

Youtube:18.4K

Singer, artist, model

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In order to conduct the netnography, the researcher created a new Instagram Account (See figure 6 and 7), without using a personal profile. This mean was proposed by Lamb’s (2011) when doing online studies and following ethics.

Figures 6-7. Screen captures of the Instagram account utilized for the research

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First, observation took place to analyzed general activity of the plus-size women Instagram accounts, such as: Increase or decrease of followers, change of user ID, daily story narratives, Instagram biography and other. Helped by the screen capture tool of a computer and mobile device, important data and insights were retrieved and used only for this research and respecting ethics. Second, the researcher proceeded to study and look for the most prevalent themes within each account posts. This information was also stored through screen capture and filming functions of a mobile device. Useful captions and hashtags in mandarin language were translated into English and both, multimedia as well as texts, were analyzed together to offer clearer results.

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In terms of general activity, since the first revision of their accounts on May 2018 (See Table 1) their followers increased in number in comparison to June, but the number of posts was similar as showed on table 2:

Table 2. Accounts Data May-June 2018 Country Name, Instagram

This phenomenon was also observed on Piky’s account were posts generated on May reached 5, 000 likes and more, while June’s liking average was under 2, 000 responses, reaction that can be considered a product of the hashtag usage and the type of post (how do they self-present) as explained in the next section. Posts with higher number of hashtags, promoting clothes and

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brands, and portraying glamorous and sexualized poses got more likes. Videos shared by the four micro-celebrities tended to get less comments and likes than images or pictures, specially selfies.

Personal self-revelation was also analyzed, this feature is defined as whether individuals avoid privacy concerns and openly offer names, gender, biography, contact information, mention of interests, family or friends {Papacharissi, 2002; Trammell & Keshelash, 2005; Bartsch, M., &

Subrahmanyam, 2015(P. 345)}. Panamanian plus-size were found more open and willing to offer more information about their families, friends, hobbies, mood of the day and life stories; their profiles are not focused on only one activity, for instance, one moment followers can observe Piky’s picture kissing her husband (see figure 8) or Alexa’s daily story wishing happy birthday to her mother (see figure 9) and the next hour something totally different. Taiwanese also share small details, such as, one or two Instagram friends tagged on their posts, but they do not disclose too much since their accounts already portray a stable theme; Amanda has a personal blog, while the narrative presented by Wang Qi’s profile is someone who fight for the rights of fat people, love singing/performing but that is trying to lose weight and become healthier at the same time.

Figure 8. Piky’s picture kissing her husband

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Figure 9. Screenshot of Alexa’s daily story wishing happy birthday to her mother

RQ1, RQ2 and RQ3 attempt to understand how do Panamanian and Taiwanese plus-size micro-celebrities (women) self-present on Instagram and to find similarities or differences in how these women portray themselves. After the analysis of the selected profiles, seven themes were found as repetitive within the publications and daily stories ; in those themes they share similar characteristics but with different levels and patterns, as it is explained below: