BCM241: Digital Artifact Research Report
My Autoethnographic Experience.
The autoethnographic experience of researching this DA project was insightful and helpful in understanding how to establish an aesthetic and build an audience. Using the 5 steps to autoethnography, I’ll explain how this research has helped me reflect on my observational experience in researching my media niche (Pink et al. 2016).
Multiplicity: Unique characteristics of the niche (Pink et al. 2016)?
- Experience of escapism
- Exclusive to TikTok and Instagram
- Videos are aesthetically pleasing usually including a scenic landscape, daily routine, a street, people – all done stylistically.
- TikTok – evokes emotion, immersive app due to layout, the persona is less personally involved designed to evoke emotive responses from audiences
- Instagram – more personable, app layout makes it less immersive, experience is less emotional as a result
Decentred: What is the experience (Pink et al. 2016)?
- Calming/relaxing
- Aesthetically pleasing
- Sense of escapism – particularly on TikTok
- Value of meaningful aesthetically cohesive videos
Openness: What this study says about other media types (Pink et al. 2016)?
- It showcases the exclusivity of different media niches, how one niche can be an emotional or deep experience while others are limited to a different experience based on content and the collective persona’s experience of the content.
- The aesthetics aspect carries throughout a lot of other media niche’s, studying this media niche I realised the “temporal patterns” in other media niche’s, it’s an important tactic used by most content creators to maintain an audience (Manovich, 2019).
Reflexivity: How my personal experience helped me to understand the niche (Pink et al. 2016).
- I’m very interested in all things film and cinema, I’m doing a global screen media major, I enjoy understanding the relationship between aesthetics and audiences’ experience
- My interest in establishing a personal style, particularly creatively, helped me to understand how it worked for this niche. Observing other content creators achieve an aesthetic led me to understand the importance of having a cohesive feed, not necessarily permanently but in terms of finding a personal style and in turn a relatability to the audience.
Unorthodox: What was unpredictable or unusual about the research (Pink et al. 2016)?
- I found TikTok, in general, to be unusual, I still find the algorithm unpredictable and at times was frustrated with the lack of engagement, though hashtags and audios did help with this
- The supportive nature of the comment sections was also unusual, as I know the internet can be very negative, every comment section I saw was supportive and welcoming to all.
- I also didn’t expect to enjoy the content I made as much as I do, everything I’ve made I’m very proud of, the lack of purpose imposed on this assignment allowed me to express myself creatively and authentically.
Overall, this process of autoethnography has allowed me to further understand the experience of being an audience member within a particular media niche, and how they may differ from other experiences and in turn realising the small nuances between niches that make being an audience member enjoyable.
Aims and Intentions
This project is intended to be able to understand how to create content for this niche successfully through understanding the elements of aesthetics and the functionalities of each platform. The result was a DA that participated and reflected the experience of the niche without compromising my creative aesthetic. In achieving this result the problematising questions I proposed, in the beginning, were subsequently answered.
Q1: What aesthetics appeal to audiences and why
In terms of answering this question, it was not a specific aesthetic that I found appealed to audiences, the more important element wasn’t the colour scheme but the cohesive pattern of content. “Develop a particular style and use it for all the photos in your feed”, then the audience will be drawn into what is aesthetically pleasing, the grid posts of creators of my niche were all cohesive and recognisable (Manovich, 2019). I achieved this within my DA by posting content all made with my old camcorder that had a grainy vintage aesthetic on the footage. All this content seen together on my @rugratbrain accounts makes for an aesthetically cohesive page for the viewer.
Q2: Which platform is better for distributing the content?
Again, this question has faults in that there is no better platform, there are easier platforms for my circumstances such as having an already established audience on Instagram however in terms of which is better that answer is unclear. What I have discovered (explained in detail in my epiphanies blog) is that the two platforms are different in different ways, in terms of persona, experience and functionality. Therefore, there is no clear superior platform for distribution.
Q3: How do you use a combination of aesthetics (visually, audibly, and textually) to create content successfully in this niche?
From observing my niche, I found that relating all the elements of the post together makes for a successful post and a defined aesthetic. For example, many creators would accompany their rainy-day content with sad songs from twilight and an emotional caption. In my DA I aided the vintage visuals with a complimentary old school song, like a calm led zeppelin song. By producing content like this I evoked a nostalgic sense of escapism that proved to be successful with my audience.
Persona
My persona for this niche is discussed in more detail in my persona blog post and beta, though to summarise I adapted my persona based on the platform I was producing for, due to key differences in the personas on each platform I made my persona have more “publicness” on Instagram and more detached and emotional on TikTok to work within the perimeters of persona I had observed in my niche on each platform (Moore et al. 2017, p.2). Across both platforms, my persona is professional, approachable and relatable to therefore be presentable to future employers in providing a possible portfolio for a future career in the film and creative industries.
My autoethnographic experience has been an illuminating experience in developing an understanding of my nominated media niche. Improving my editing and efficiency while also discovering my unique style within the niche has been overwhelmingly rewarding and will be useful for my possible future career in the film industry. By observing a media niche through autoethnography I learnt more than I thought was available about the function of social media creativity, by being an active audience member I gained a new perspective into how the experience of content informs the production of content. I plan to continue my DA beyond this project to further establish myself as an artist in the creative space of the internet.
Reference List
Carolyn Ellis, Tony E Adams & Arthur P Bochner 2011, ‘Autoethnography: An Overview’, Forum, qualitative social research, vol. 12, no. 1.
Manovich, L 2019, The aesthetic society: Instagram as a life form, Data Publics, Routledge, forthcoming.
Moore, C, Barbour, K & Lee, K 2017, ‘Five dimensions of online persona’, Persona Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1–11.
Pink, S, Horst, HA, Postill, J, Hjorth, L, Lewis, T & Tacchi, J 2016, Digital ethnography: principles and practice, SAGE, Los Angeles.
Schellewald, A 2021, ‘Communicative Forms on TikTok: Perspectives From Digital Ethnography’, International journal of communication, p. 1437–1456.
Hallie Rutter 
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