3 Research Questions and Methods
3.6 Data Analysis
3.6.2 Reflexivity
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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 their Instagram profiles in chapter 3 (p.35). Therefore, this section focuses more on the manifestation they have constructed online. Lastly, summaries of the researched profiles are provided for understating the participants more fundamentally. According to observations online, I retrieved the information and sorted them into three categories:
the participants, the revealing of their children, and the settings of pictures.
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4.1 Rose (29, divorced)
Rose is the mother influencer I have been following for one year. Rose has been sharing her unique style on Instagram for five years. When I saw the interviewee’s profile for the first time, I was surprised that the participant is already the mother of a 3-year-old daughter. She dressed very differently compared to the other interviewees.
Through the interview via Skype, Rose told me that she was undergoing a divorce from her husband. A few days after the interview, I saw the result’s update through her Instagram feed. Rose had officially divorced her husband. Rose is currently living in Tainan and working in her brother’s tea shop. With the custody of children, she needs to make a compromise between work and raising them. Since the interviewee has to work in Tainan, her daughter mostly stays with her grandmother on her side in Kaohsiung. When she has free time, she goes back to Kaohsiung very often to be with her daughter.
Rose has vibrant colors for outfitting ideas, which she shares almost every day.
The contents she shares primarily focus on four themes: outfits, sponsored products, her daughter, and random thoughts. When it comes to outfitting ideas, Rose has a unique style compared to other interviewees. Her doll-like dressing style makes her look similar to college students.
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In the photos, she wears bright and dynamic colored dresses, such as pink and purple (see Figure 4). It is hard to see mothers in the offline world wear a similar style as Rose. Rose usually stands still in her pictures. She does not do exaggerated postures when she shares her outfits. Rose prefers calm and cold facial expression when presenting herself. Regarding the facial expressions she has on her profile, there are different manifestations for different contents.
Figure 4. The Content of Rose’s Dressing Style
Sponsored content is the most significant portion of her Instagram feeds. Rose possesses the widest diversity of sponsored products among all interviewees. As her profile reveals, her self-presentation is closely involved with the product type. For
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infants or children (Figure 5). Unlike cool looks when sharing outfits, Rose creates a happy and harmonious atmosphere in most of the sponsored content when promoting the products.
Figure 5. Rose’s Sponsored Contents
Rose frequently shares her daughter and funny moments on Instagram. She records clips and takes pictures for her daughter and then posts them through Stories. Rose is very interactive with her followers, as she replies to almost every comment. However, it seems that she does not have much time to do live-stream on Instagram since she has to work most of the time.
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4.2 Emma (35, married)
After sending interview invitations to 40 mothers who met the criteria of this research, the current researcher a few weeks later felt the need to seek out more mother influencers. Therefore, the researcher’s sister provided this mother’s profile, mentioning that this mother is a nice person. That was how the researcher met Emma.
Emma is a mother of 3 sons who currently works as a YouTuber. Emma was a clerk in a duty-free shop at the airport before her first pregnancy. Right after she became pregnant, she quit her job. As her husband works outside, she takes on most of the child-rearing responsibility. Emma decided to be a YouTuber when her kids were of school age. She records the things she wants to share and then posts them on YouTube, which is where Emma started to accumulate her subscribers. The contents on her YouTube channel are mostly about the errands she runs, the tasks she has done, home arrangements and utilities, or trips or camping experiences. The videos on her channel are all shot, edited, and uploaded by herself. The time she started her Instagram account was earlier than establishing a YouTube channel.
The reason why Emma received tremendous attention on Instagram is because of her fame as a YouTuber. Her YouTube subscribers are interested in her daily and thus started to follow her on Instagram. Compared to other interviewees, Emma does not share many pictures of herself, which is uncommon among Instagram influencers.
Although Emma’s selfies and self-portraits are fewer than other interviewees, she still left clues for me to explore her manifestations. Emma does not position herself as a fashion influencer or a beauty blogger and does not have to share a delicate beauty inspiration with her followers. However, Emma always puts her makeup on when posting a selfie. It seems that Emma also feels the need to maintain her images as a
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As an influencer on Instagram, Emma has very little sponsored content (Figure 6).
Most of Emma’s contents are inspired by her life as a mother. She shares house, family, and daily routines relevant to the videos she created for her YouTube channel (see Figure 7). She receives more comments when she shares things about her cooking and her house. Most viewers ask how to make a dish or where to buy certain goods.
Figure 6. Emma’s Sponsored Contents
Figure 7. Emma’s Main Theme
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Emma’s frequency of posting is not set in stone, as it is sometimes twice a day or sometimes once a week. From her frequency and captions on Instagram, I can tell that Emma does not specifically have any plan to share with her followers. Additionally, Emma shares photos of her working situation, such as editing her YouTube videos (Figure 8). She uses her Instagram profile as a way to promote her YouTube videos.
The content Emma shares on Instagram has constructed a professional image of herself.
Figure 8. Emma’s Working Scenario
Regarding her interaction with followers, Emma seldom replies to their comments on Instagram. Instead, she “likes” every comment to show that she has read their comments and to make a connection to her followers.
From the aspect of aesthetics, Emma lightens the tones of her photographs to them appear consistent. From her house utilities to her Instagram profile, she presents her fondness of white-colored theme through the pictures. Moreover, there is one thing I noticed when Emma shares photos of her children. She does not expose their faces if
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avoid exposing her children. Emma is careful about keeping her children’s privacy in the online environment (see Figure 9).
Figure 9. Emma’s Content of Sharing Her Kids
4.3 Annie (26, married)
Annie has a son and is now pregnant with another baby. At the age of 26, Annie is currently both designer and CEO of her own jewelry brand. She is also a fashion blogger with an agency contract and has established her own YouTube channel, which is linked to her biography. Annie is an entrepreneur who started her own jewelry business early at the age of 19. Three years later, Annie succeeded in branding her jewelry and launched it on the market. Currently, her husband lives in Hong Kong and works there.
I met Annie from the sponsored content of Instagram. Annie has been using the function of “promote” on Instagram to improve the visibility of herself and her jewelry brand. Annie figured that Instagram is the best option for an individual businessperson
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with a tight budget. Creating an account of herself and showing her lifestyle is her own marketing strategy of increasing brand awareness.
Annie describes herself as a lifestyle blogger, in which her contents cover outfitting ideas, foreign trips, and family on her profile. The holistic style of Annie’s presentations changed after the birth of her baby boy. Annie’s portrait is tied to her baby these past years. She presents a large number of pictures together with her baby.
(Figure 10). In the photos of Annie holding her baby boy, she always laughs. Moreover, she looks relaxed when carrying her baby.
Figure 10. The Content of Annie Sharing Her Outfits with Her Baby
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Her profiles in recent years have become more commercialized compared to the startup year. Infant product sponsors interest in her frequent sharing of her baby. Annie has been sharing more sponsored items due to the birth of her baby. Furthermore, she uses her profiles as a marketing tool. She shows her fashion style with items from her brand as a way to promote the brand and herself (see Figure 11).
Figure 11. Annie’s Content of Her Jewelry Brand
4.4 Cathy (30, married)
Cathy was one of the recommendations from Instagram’s algorithm, whose son is the youngest among all interviewees’ children. Her former job was as a nurse. Cathy
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career path into an online clothing shop. She started her business career by selecting clothing in South Korea and then selling them online. Cathy stopped working due to a planned pregnancy one year ago. Currently, she is fully concentrated on her influencer career and pouring all efforts into nurturing her kid. Additionally, she writes blog posts on another platform where she mainly shares and promotes infant products.
Cathy started her influencer career due to the increasing number of followers.
Cathy shares a lot of travel photography and outfits of herself. She has attracted followers with her consistent and coherent color scheme, for which she believes that a visual impact is way more compelling than words on Instagram. The contents Cathy generates mostly relate to travel, outfits, and daily life (see Figure 12).
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Cathy began to share maternity knowledge on her profile when she confronted the transition into motherhood. She also established an Instagram account of her baby and linked it to her biography. More importantly, she introduced herself as a mother and nurse in her biography, thus revealing her aim towards exerting professional influence online. The explicit description of herself also shows the persuasiveness of her experience and knowledge.
When Cathy shares her nurturing tips, she especially tries to create a more credible image of herself. She has established several specific hashtags to sort the feeds related to her baby. These feeds primarily demonstrate how to nurture a baby properly. When Cathy posts pictures of infant meals, she also reveals her baby is eating the food (Figure 13). Cathay shares detailed instructions along with closer shots of the infant meal. The image Cathy has created for herself as a mother influencer is more than just being pretty and bright on social media. She tries to devote herself to the virtual mother community and present her motherhood identity through the feeds.
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Cathay shares detailed instructions along with closer shots of the infant meal. The image Cathy has created for herself as a mother influencer is more than just being pretty and bright on social media. She tries to devote herself to the virtual mother community and present her motherhood identity through the feeds.
Apart from the professional knowledge, Cathy also shares many instant clips of her baby through Stories. The presentation of Cathy and her baby creates a bidirectional force. It helps Cathy receive more sponsored products that are infant-related, strengthening her identity and image in return.
4.5 Katie (38, married)
Katie is a well-known blogger for shopping recommended by the Instagram algorithm. Katie has introduced a wide variety of products on her blog, where she presents herself a shopaholic. Katie was rather famous for being a fashion buyer for almost ten years before leaving to give birth. Working in the fashion industry allows Katie to accumulate her fashion knowledge and proceed with the influence career.
Being a fashion buyer has triggered her motivation to leverage social media as a channel of influence. Her skill at analyzing different products and fashion items has helped her influencer career proper. Katie quit her job as a fashion buyer when she wanted to fully concentrate her time and energy on her baby. She also has had more time to share her lifestyle on Instagram. Katie incessantly leverages her influence even when she was pregnant.
The beginning of an influencer career started with her sharing on Instagram and her prestige in the fashion industry. Katie is very productive in generating fashion-oriented content. Moreover, she introduces herself as a former fashion buyer in her
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biography, specifying her purpose of manifesting her specialty. Katie presents a lot of street styles and luxurious styles on her profile (Figure 14).
Figure 14. Katie’s Fashion Outfits
Moreover, she posts instant fashion information and provides dressing ideas for different occasions through her posts. People come for fashion tips or outfit inspiration, although the items Katie possesses are mostly luxuries. The contents and experiences
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related to fashion also attract sponsors to collaborate with her. More than just promoting their products, the sponsors also invite Katie to participate in fashion events as a celebrity. Showing herself at fashion events collides with the image of ordinary mothers (see Figure 15). As a mother influencer, Katie has established noble and fancy identities on her profile.
Figure 15. Katie’s participation in the Fashion Events
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The aesthetic sharing of selfies has continued after giving birth to her baby. As a mother influencer, she also started sharing the contents of her children, including child-rearing thoughts (Figure 16). On her profile, Katie has created plenty of her hashtags.
The hashtags classify her trips, outfits, lifestyles, random feelings, especially mothering life, and her children.
Figure 16. Katie shared her nurturing tips
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4.6 Anna (33, married)
How the researcher met Anna was also from Instagram’s algorithm. Anna is a flight attendant. In the biography section, she explicitly writes that she shares her outfits, nurturing tips, and life on her Instagram profile. Anna wishes that her Instagram profile can be a book where Anna is the writer writing stories for her followers. She lives in Tainan when she does not have to work. Currently, Anna is spending her time resting and staying with her family due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In her biography she links her podcast and YouTube channel as other ways to exert her influence online.
On Anna’s profile her manifestation of self involves pictures and selfies visually.
She also creates the presentation of self in a more textual way. Anna shares lengthy captions compared to other interviewees (see Figure 17). The caption’s length is similar to a small story, even when she shares an outfit of the day. Aiming her profile as a book full of stories, Anna utilizes texts to create a more vivid image of herself.
Figure 17. Anna’s Lengthy Captions
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Similar to other interviewees, Anna smiles a lot in her pictures and also presents happy scenarios of family life. Anna and her daughter’s photos show a sense of harmony, which looks like they are always happy together (see Figure 18). Furthermore, she is constructing herself as empathetic and considerate through her elaborate words.
Anna shares her stories in great details. In Anna’s captions, we do not see any negative sentiment even as she has described herself as a sensitive person. Instead of sharing negativity, the texts seem to be encouraging and motivating. She presents a warm and friendly self by shaping a positive self on her profile.
Figure 18. The Content of Anna’s Daughter
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4.7 Cara (40, married)
Cara is special. She is the most famous among the participants, because she is also known as a celebrity. Being an Instagram influencer was not her priority. Her first intent was establishing a Facebook fan page after she quit her job. The idea of changing her career path was mainly due to her willingness to share her life with kids.
The prestige of Cara comes from two aspects. One is as a mother influencer herself, and the other is her husband. Similar to Katie, Cara’s job grants her the opportunity to get closer to fashion. Cara has been a part of the fashion industry for a long time, as she was a senior PR for a luxury brand. The job made her closely relevant to the newest fashion trends. The experiences of holding events or creating campaigns also allow her to accumulate connections and establish a professional image in the fashion industry.
Apart from being involved in the fashion industry as a previous PR, she is a famous man’s wife. Her husband is a well-known radio host, DJ, musician, and psychologist.
More importantly, her husband is the son of a great illustrator and writer. Thus, her reputation is beyond any simple description. Her influence has leveraged various platforms. Years ago, Cara established a blog site with a friend to share cooking recipes.
Moreover, she has been participating in events and interviews as a celebrity. Recently, she has a YouTube series that shares her marriage and relationship with her husband.