Zoella Audience Analysis
Zoella’s
audience is mainly aimed at teen girls. This is shown by the choice of colours
and content. I believe that Zoella’s audience is apart of an active online
community as Zoella has over 9M followers on Instagram and has over 11M subscribers.
This shows that Zoella has an active community of fans who are obsessed with
her content weekly!
On YouTube,
there is a range of different things you can do for example: you can share,
like, subscribe and comment on someone’s video. Some fans will influence her
content online by saying ‘let’s see a shopping haul’ for example. Zoella’s fans
shape her media content and Zoella will allow that because she wants to give
her fans what they want to please and satisfy them!
In my
opinion, I think that everyone has a parasocial relationship with her. It is a
one-sided relationship; you can really see the comparison as fans vs. famous
youtuber. She will try and engage with her fans to please them for her own benefit
as her fans will like, comment, and share her videos around which maximises her
fans.
Theory
In
relation to Jenkins theory, the internet has allowed fans to gather and create
their own texts and easily share their work. This will maximise their popularity
of the indiduvals as their content has been either liked or disliked by the
fans.
In relation to Shirky’s theory, we are more likely to use the internet
and other technology to respond to texts. Apart of this is to do with the use
of technology, technology is developing more and more, and it is believed that
it has changed our behaviour as we are more interactive towards celebs (comment,
like & share). Technology has become used daily because fans want to
interact with their celebs/idols fire social media such as Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter, Snapchat, and YouTube.
Gauntlett’s
identify theory is about how we use the internet to help us create our identify
and we now have more of a variety of representations to identify with. Zoella
shares her personal stories with her audience which gives them an insight on
her experiences in her day to day life. These small aspects have an appeal and
influence on her audience. This is important for Zoella because her persona and experiences
help influence her audiences. For example, if we take Zoella’s blog post about
her anxiety, her audience members that have anxiety will look deeper into this
topic and would want to base themselves around Zoella and how she deals with
it.
Zoella is
seen as a positive role model because she is inspired many young people to have
confidence when using social media to express themselves. Zoella has also
spoken about her personal storeys and difficulties for example her mental
health issues an anxiety. this builds a relationship between her and the
viewers as she's directly communicating with her viewers hoping that her issues
can help other people’s issues. Zoella could teach her audience about her
identity; She may help a person stuck in the wrong body e.g. transgender. she
could motivate her fans to be ambitious and aspirational in life to achieve the
best.
I believe
that is Zoella uses stereotypes to do with gender as her YouTube is mostly
about makeup, fashion, and beauty tips. this represents her to be girly and
feminine which is associated with female. she also uses a lot of pink colours; this
reinforces the femininity.