– Re-uploaded on the 2nd of September and edited on the 4th of September 2020 –
As I looked into my media niche, I noted that I have a growing interest in the body positive community on social media. This interest began when I discovered the social media influencer Mik Zazon. Thanks to the algorithm on TikTok I had found her account and have become a fan ever since. As seen in my last post, ‘My Media Niche‘, her advocacy for the body positive community, and the self-love community, is highly presented on her TikTok account. Her TikTok bio presents a link to her Instagram account, which also connected me to her website, which then led me into a rabbit hole of all her projects and other online media accounts, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Gmail and Liketoknow.it . Her website is powered by linktr.ee and is very organised and easy for all her fans to use! This can be seen in the field site mind-map above.
Her social media accounts are filled with a mixture of videos and photos that are presented in either a scripted or unscripted nature. The unscripted photos and videos are mostly of her spreading support for the body positive community, heart-filled captions, stories about her struggle to find self-love and photos radiating confidence.
The scripted content is for sponsored posts, such as Vital Proteins, Audible, Adobe Lightroom, Olay Skin, Onyx + Rose and CVS Pharmacy (I would love to further research more partnerships she has been involved in).
Through her website, I was able to discover that she also is apart of three projects/ companies!
Mik Zazon is Co-founder of ‘The Rose Events‘, partnered with social media influencer Gabby Mate, who has an Instagram account, @gabbymate.
Also, Mik created a 30 day fitness and wellbeing retreat called ‘HIIT30‘ which has recently hit 5k members. Mik also has her own clothing line called ‘Shop Common‘, with a small starting range with t-shirts and jumpers. This fun little company sells merchandise online (via a website that is powered by Moby Dick Unlimited), that has prints such as ‘cute belly’ and ‘Normalize Normal Bodies’ to again make to body-positive community step out of social media and into individuals’ everyday lives though comfortable outfits.
Later it was advised by my tutor to consider further networks and interconnections that could be added to the field site I had created on Mik Zazon. This point made by my tutor is also encouraged by Burrell (2009, p. 191) who expressed that by exploring further into various networks, they become foregrounded in the field site and can be understood as constraining and facilitating particular movements and when they are considered and noted they are laid out for the researcher to follow and consider when collecting field notes.
I decided to expand by looking more into what is found in the body positive community on TikTok, which included multiple hashtags, music/ dancing trends, different discussion points that are common in the community and more, which can be seen when clicking the link bellow (after clicking the link you can either click ‘start slideshow’ or ‘Show full map’ to view the field site/ mind-map).
https://www.mindmeister.com/1606607674/body-positive-community
Field site of body positive community on TikTok:
I am starting to become more interested in the sense of unity in this community and how TikTok assists in attracting more viewers and body positive creators. I took this into consideration when adding more interconnections to my field site. I noticed from previous use of the app, that what mostly comes into use when being a participatory member in the community is focusing on certain trends. Building numbers takes part when creating a new ‘trendy’ dance to a positive song or creating a video with complementary body positive hashtags.
Also, certain activities can be connected to the body positive community, such as commenting, sharing, liking and reacting to multiple videos. These interconnections work together as glue that holds the community together, especially when you partake in these activities in a positive and supporting manner.
I have noted this because I believe that these avenues in the field site I created will help build my understanding of this community. Burrell (2009, p. 182) stated that the field site involves identifying where the researcher should ideally be located as a participatory observer. With this in mind, I will use my field site as a guide to have a full experience of what it is like to be engaged and active in the body positive community on TikTok and whether my sensory experience continues to feel positive. Or, I could possibly be stirred into a new direction during my research.
Reference List
[Mik & Gabby in Thailand in 2018] 2018, image, The Rose Events, Squarespace, viewed 13 August 2020, <https://www.theroseevents.com/our-story>.
Burrell, J 2009, ‘The Field Site as a Network: A Strategy for Locating Ethnographic Research’, Field Methods, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 181-199.
Darkbean 2019, [Giph of social media applications icons], online video, 13 June, Giphy, viewed 14 August 2020, <https://giphy.com/gifs/huyZxIJvtqVeRp7QcS>.
Zazon, M 2020, Despite my rough day today, my spirits are high because @shopcommen launch is in 30 minutes!!!, image, Instagram, viewed 14 August 2020, <https://www.instagram.com/p/CDmTE5AjObA/?utm_source=ig_embed>.
Zazon, M 2020, It’s no secret that social distancing has made this introvert curl into my little introverted corner, image, Instagram, viewed 14 August 2020, <https://www.instagram.com/p/CD1yoZ5jJi5/?utm_source=ig_embed>.
Zazon, M 2020, Life with an autoimmune disease, image, Instagram, viewed 14 August 2020, <https://www.instagram.com/p/CDzj0ptjFsz/?utm_source=ig_embed>.
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