Award Date

August 2017

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Journalism and Media Studies

First Committee Member

Lawrence Mullen

Second Committee Member

Olesya Venger

Third Committee Member

Benjamin Burroughs

Fourth Committee Member

David Dickens

Number of Pages

93

Abstract

This research aims at investigating how YouTube beauty vloggers utilize impression management tactics to convey the intended image in an online environment by analyzing their self-presentational behaviors. Two individual coders coded one hundred videos that top trending on YouTube, featuring some single human vloggers who used English as the primary presentation language.

Results revealed that first, vloggers had engaged with all four self-presentational behavioral strategies (verbal expressions, nonverbal cues, artifactual displays, and purposive behaviors) in the seemingly amateur videos. Second, a commonly shared feature of top trending vlogs was that they were all designed with abundant and diverting content, indicating that viewers favored the content more than the structure of the vlog. Third, most presenters demonstrated extraverted and likeable personality traits. Fourth, viewers preferred to watch the vlogs with natural props and in simpler environmental settings. Lastly, vloggers chose to use more acquisitive impression management tactics than protective ones in top trending vlogs, and the results showed that viewers also displayed consent to receiving more positive framing.

Keywords

Impression Management; Vlogger; YouTube

Disciplines

Communication | Sociology

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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