Digital Artifact and Research Report

I thought for a long time when I was initially asked to find a niche, I wanted to choose a niche as much as possible in the things I was interested in, which would make it easier for me to research people and markets about it. Because of this, as I wrote on my first blog, I chose nail art as my niche. Before I make my decision, I review which of the things I use regularly on social media is more popular. From my memories, I found that photos and videos about nail art not only have a lot of views, but also many people will interact in the comment area of the video or photo. Not only that, but I also studied professional nail art before this, and I think I can do a good job of DA about nail art.

Autoethnographic Research of a Media Niche

Ethnography is also used in my research as a popular research method these days. Ethnographic story users provide a unique means of understanding specific groups of people, enabling researchers to better grasp public preferences by delving into the rich details of ethnographic stories, as well as the hobbies and emotions of people in their daily lives. Research suggests that ethnographers in a social media environment should delve into an online community to understand the community’s shared culture.

First of all, in the initial stage of DA, I need to select the platform I operate. By searching for the popularity of nail art on different platforms, I choose Instagram, Tik Tok and xiao hong shu as the platform for my DA operation. Secondly, in the process of running DA, I will adjust my business direction with the love and feedback of the public.

Here is the address of my DA: https://www.instagram.com/lyn1720575574/

I experienced a few epiphanies when I adjusted my DA to the liking of the public so that I could manage my DA better.

1.Many people who love nail art have a herd mentality：

On social media, many celebrities will post a beautiful manicure on the Internet. When people see the same manicure on social media, celebrity fans want to get the same manicure as the celebrity, not only in this way, but ordinary people will also feel good-looking when they see the nails of celebrities and want to follow the trend to make the same nails. In addition, when a manicure is popular on social media and after a lot of publicity, many people who like manicures will be tempted to get the same manicure.

2.Posting unsightly manicures can also get the attention of the public:

In the process of my research, I found an interesting phenomenon, when people post a comparison of good and bad nails on social media, they tend to attract more people to watch. Many people will post a set of nail art comparison photos on xiao hong shu, one photo is a perfect nail artwork, and the other photo is a nail art photo with many problems. This behavior will attract a lot of people to interact, and at the same time, they will have a deep impression on the perfect nail photo. I am not the only one who finds that this kind of behavior attracts the audiences I have followed. A large number of nail art bloggers are also aware of this phenomenon, so many nail art bloggers publish such content to attract fans.

3.It is necessary to create a brand effect:

I found that well-run nail bloggers tend to form personal brands in the end, and because the works released by these nail bloggers in the early stage are proving that their skills are good, their fans often believe in the quality of the products they sell. . Therefore, these successful nail art bloggers have formed their own brands by virtue of their credibility, and the successful brands have attracted more skilled manicurists to join the brand. Therefore, more audiences will recognize this brand through different manicurists under the same brand, trust this brand, and buy items under this brand. This is the most successful DA operation in my opinion.

Critical reflection

In my original idea, I would mainly run my DA on two platforms, Instagram and Tik Tok. Mainly update photos on Instagram, the frequency is updated every 5 days, including different styles of nail art. On Tik Tok, we mainly update videos about nail art, which are finished nail art and teaching videos of nail art. However, in the process of actually running DA, I did not strictly implement the plan I made. I didn’t do a five-day update on Instagram, nor did I update a tutorial video for nail art on Tik Tok. This is mainly because there is a problem with my tools for making manicures. In my plan, my tools will be delivered to me on the 8th and 15th, but I know that I still haven’t received my tools today, which greatly affects for my business with DA. In addition to this, I found by researching the blogs of popular nail bloggers and researching groups that love to do manicures that my DA is not doing well. I didn’t make my DA look professional and refined. I think that’s a big reason why my DA isn’t getting the desired results.

If I were to remake this DA, I would still choose Instagram and Tik Tok, but I would have more plans to run my DA. First of all, I will update the pictures on Instagram every day, but this time, in addition to the picture updates, I will also add a copy suitable for the picture to attract the public. In the early stage, I mainly shared the styles of nail art, and after attracting a certain number of fans, I started to do sharing blogs in the later stage. Delicate photos paired with words that share expertise will attract more attention from the public. The second is the operation of Tik Tok. The first point is to carefully select the video type and content, and the second point is to select the appropriate material, and then set the display form of the material according to the content in Tik Tok to create a beautiful video to attract the attention of the public. Not only that, but also ensure that the video sent out complies with the video playback rules of the Tik Tok platform. To sum up, I think following these rules will make it easier to make a DA that attracts the attention of the public.

Ethics and Morality

In the process of conducting autoethnographic research, one thing that is very important is ethics and privacy. In my research, I have always paid attention to protecting the privacy of the participating researchers, covering up the names and avatars of the accounts participating in the interaction, so as not to expose people’s privacy.

To sum up, I don’t think what my DA does is to my satisfaction, but in the process of research I already have a clear idea of running a new DA. In the process of research, I experienced three epiphanies, which provided me with more ideas and experiences. In addition, through my DA, people can see a variety of hand-painted nail art styles, providing more people with new ideas for nail art.

Reference list:

Pink， S， Sinanan， J， Hjorth， L， Horst， H， 2016， ‘Tactile digital ethnography: Researching mobile media through the hand’， Mobile Media & Communication， vol.4