This research study complied with the University of North Carolina’s IRB requirements for exempt projects, given that collected data would not place interviewees at risk and/or was already publicly available. All contact with interviewees was detailed and respectful: they were informed of the study’s specifics through Initial Scripts and Study Overviews; their interest in participating in the study was affirmed with a Recruitment/Scheduling Questionnaire and Fact Sheet/Consent Form, and re-affirmed with a Scheduling Letter (Appendices G-J); and their preferences regarding recording and note-taking were checked at the start of each interview. At the conclusion of their interviews, interviewees were given the option to receive a $40 (US) Visa gift card via mail or email. They were also given the chance to consider and/or alter their quotations and interpretations of these quotations in a process known as (informal and formal) member-checking, described below.
The decision was made at the outset of this study not to use a pseudonym to refer to interviewees nor to anonymize their data (with the exception of the names and identifying details of companies with which they do business) unless this proved a major concern for them. Even still, privacy was a paramount ethical consideration. All interviewees were told in the Study Overview (Appendix H) and Fact Sheet (Appendix I) they received that, “If it is a major concern for you that you will not be anonymous in this research, we could work together to lessen the potential for your identification.” This followed advice to be responsive to interviewees’ needs by considering ethical
Utilizing audiovisual content drawn from the Internet as data also raised interesting ethical issues, as the online sphere and people’s understandings of it are constantly shifting. Across different Web 2.0 sites, individuals hold varying degrees of perceived privacy that can be unintentionally violated (Eysenbach & Till, 2001). Although everyone interviewed in this study is a public persona, the everyday personal happenings that they share may still feel, to them, quasi-private (King, 1996; Sharf, 1999). Similarly, having these ‘questioned’ or investigated by a researcher may be alienating (Bakardjieva & Feenberg, 2001). By remaining sensitive to interviewees’ subjective boundaries; being respectful and reflexive; and following the co-constructive tenets of constructivist grounded theory, relying upon interviewees’ involvement in shaping interpretations, these challenges were navigated.
The Fact Sheet (Appendix I) that interviewees received noted that their “overall participation [was] likely to be fun and exciting, […] an opportunity to reflect upon what about creating videos makes you enthusiastic and proud.” Many made unsolicited comments during their interviews that suggest this was the case. For example, one interviewee (Seanna) mused:
“I think everybody likes sitting and talking about their passion and what they are really into, so it’s something I wish more people would ask me about. It’s nice having someone who’s actually interested!”
Others agreed that they were “just really happy” to be interviewed (Desiree), that participation was “fun—I’ve enjoyed it” (Cristin), that they were “excited to find out more” (Lucy), and “would love to read the final piece” (Desiree). By the close of their second interviews, several admitted that they had forgotten about the opportunity to accept a $40 Visa gift card—one interviewee (Cristin) was surprised because she had believed all along that these were only available to those outside of the United States. As this study progressed, for reasons that the findings chapters of this dissertation make clear, I became conscious that subscribing to interviewees’ channels, viewing their videos, and actively engaging with them seemed to be some of the most meaningful compensation I could offer.
3.3.3 Data collection.
Grounded theory can be used with diverse data collection methods and diverse sources of collected data; what matters is that these permit researchers “ingenuity and incisiveness” (Charmaz, 2014, p. 26). This study involved the two data collection methods (documentary research and semi- structured interviews) and four data sources (textual content, audio content, interview transcripts, and audiovisual content) mentioned above. Data sources were explored in ordered but intentionally overlapping phases, with several iterative loops made between them, throughout the two stages of initial and theoretical sampling. Data collection methods are described below, as are two relevant conventions I attended during collection: PlayList Live D.C. 2017 and Generation Beauty Toronto 2017.
3.3.3.1 Documentary research.
During initial sampling, continuing through to the start of theoretical sampling, close reading of textual content and close listening-to of audio content were carried out in order to collect
excerpts for data analysis. The monographs, magazines, and podcast episodes described above further familiarized me with the phenomena of interest, containing a larger-than-expected volume of relevant excerpts (relating to, for example, serious leisure careers, emotional investments, and
information practices). Importantly, they also provided perspectives from popular, eminent serious beauty and lifestyle YouTubers that would otherwise have been more or less inaccessible to me.
This documentary material was not approached or analyzed any differently than was interview data, with the exception that it could not be followed up upon; data analysis is described below. During a first read or listen, pertinent passages that touched upon points mentioned above or from interview guides, indicated in-vivo terms, or acted as sensitizing concepts were flagged; during a second read or listen, these were extracted into a Microsoft Word document and headed with their author/issue, title/article, and page number (for monographs and magazine issues), or their episode
number, timestamp, and context (for podcast episodes). While reading or listening, memos that permitted theorizing around content and function19 were written; memos are described below.
As part of initial sampling and theoretical sampling, close watching of documentary artefacts with audiovisual content was carried out in order to collect excerpts for data analysis. Publicly available videos from the YouTube channels of the twelve serious beauty and lifestyle YouTubers interviewed served to familiarize me with phenomena of interest, while also providing additional excerpts for follow-up in interviews and increasing the credibility of this study (discussed below).
Again, this documentary material, which included interviewees’ self-chosen “critical incident” videos, recent and historical videos, as well as videos that could yield especially insightful information, was not approached or analyzed any differently than interview data. During a first watch, pertinent passages were noted, along with their timestamp, in a Microsoft Word document headed with their channel names, video titles, and context. While watching, memos that permitted theorizing around content and function were also written, usually addressing prompts raised by (audio)visual methodologists like Clarke (2005), Gibson (2005), Heath, Hindmarsh, and Luff (2010), Jewitt (2012), Jones and Raymond (2012), Konecki (2011), Longhurst (2009), and Pink (2013), which include, for example: who directed the video; constraints upon its production; its purpose; its intended audience(s); the tasks, activities, and routine patterns it depicts; and tacit cues it contains.
3.3.3.2 Semi-structured interviews.
As part of initial and theoretical sampling, interviews with serious beauty and lifestyle YouTubers were carried out in order to gather detailed accounts of their practices for analysis. Interviews capture individuals’ perspectives on their first-hand experiences (Berry, 1999; Brinkemann & Kvale, 2015; Weiss, 1994). Interviews in grounded theory research “start with the participant’s
19 Function recognizes that these documents contribute to and construct specific performances and images for those in
story and fill it out” (Charmaz, 2014, p. 87; cf. Suddaby, 2006), emphasizing her voice over almost all else. This study entailed two individual semi-structured interviews per interviewee; semi-structured interviews employ guides (or schedules) with pre-prepared topics, intensive, open-ended questions, and probes, but are flexible (Corbin & Strauss, 2015; Luo & Wildemuth, 2009; Rubin & Rubin, 2005; Weiss, 1994; Zhang & Wildemuth, 2009). First and second guides are found in Appendices M and N, respectively.
The first interview (Appendix M) focused on how information seeking, use, and sharing activities and information resources shape serious beauty and lifestyle YouTubers’ information creating practice specifically, and concentrated on 2-3 of an interviewee’s publicly available YouTube videos as “critical objects” in order to investigate creating in depth. The first interview also made use of two additional method-specific techniques: an interview to/with the double (ITTD) (Gherardi, 1995, 2012; Lloyd, 2014; Nicolini, 2009), and critical incident (CI) questioning (Flanagan, 1954).20
The second interview (Appendix N) focused on an interviewee’s background and her serious leisure career; on how various information practices, activities, and resources contribute to this career; and on following up ideas that arose during the analysis of first-interview data.
Most (16 out of 24) interviews were conducted using the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science’s (UNC SILS’) GoToMeeting account,21 in my home,
always with no outside observers. Some (7 out of 24) interviews were conducted over email, using
20 ITTDs are projective walkthroughs that require participants to imagine they have a clone who will replace them in
their practice the next day, to whom they must provide all of the necessary detailed instructions to ensure that the ploy is not unveiled. They foreground “small things […] that may be forgotten in grand narratives” (Lloyd, 2014, p. 104), and beget data that clues researchers into the ongoing concerns that orient a practice (Nicolini, 2009). ITTDs were used to emphasize serious beauty and lifestyle YouTubers’ day-to-day information-creating practice. CI questioning focuses part of an interview on a significant activity or issue, asking participants to “think of/tell about a time when” a memorable series of events of interest occurred. It concentrates on circumstances, outcomes, effectiveness, and importance of this incident or instance, and asks about strategies, thoughts, feelings, and motives (Fisher & Oulston, 1999; Flanagan, 1954; Hughes, 2007, 2012), structuring anecdotes as data and foregrounding real-world perceptions (Fitzgerald, Seale, Kerins, & McElvaney, 2008; Radford, 2006; Redman, Lambrecht, & Stitt-Gohdes, 2000; Ruben, 1993). CI questioning was used to build a picture of serious beauty and lifestyle YouTube information creating by requesting 2-3 of an interviewee’s publicly available YouTube videos, the creation of which stands out to her, as discussion starters for the first interview.
my UNC institutional email address. One interview was conducted in person, in a closed room on the UNC campus with no outside observers, as the participant was geographically local. With the permission of participants, interviews were audio-recorded and shorthand notes relaying important nonverbal information (Brinkemann & Kvale, 2015) were made throughout. Interviewees were prepared for 60- to 90-minute interviews; actual synchronous interviews ranged in time from about 45 to over 120 minutes. I made transcripts from each interview recording and extracted any important nonverbal notes, usually within a day of occurrence, due to grounded theory’s tight coupling of data collection and analysis, and began analyzing email interviews within a day of their return.
While conducting email interviews was not part of the original research design for this study, four interviewees who were time-limited and/or more comfortable communicating in this format requested this asynchronous option, and were sent each interview guide in turn. Email interviews are lauded as ways to include geographically dispersed individuals in studies in a less threatening and more empowering manner, enabling them to become involved with the research at their own pace (James, 2007; McCoyd & Kerson, 2006; Ryan, Coughlan, & Cronin, 2009). Although having to wait on email responses is a drawback for researchers, time is saved by not having to transcribe replies (Meho, 2006). Other potential limitations of email interviews for this study are raised in Chapter 8.
3.3.3.3 Convention attendance.
At the start of initial sampling, I attended two (serious beauty and lifestyle) YouTube-related conventions at which I also collected data, note-taking while watching panels and after interacting with other attendees. The first was Generation Beauty Toronto 2017, held from June 24 to 25, 2017, a weekend-long event hosted by eminent serious beauty and lifestyle YouTuber Michelle Phan’s company that targets online content creators (“if you have an online beauty channel and want to promote your personal brand, then this event is perfect for you!”), beauty enthusiasts, and beauty brands
(About Generation Beauty, 2017). The second was PlayList Live D.C. 2017, held from September 1 to 3, 2017, “where online creators and their biggest supporters come together” (About PlayList Live, 2017).
I purchased tickets to both using public promotional codes; my ticket to Generation Beauty Toronto 2017 cost $120.40 including taxes, and to PlayList Live D.C. 2017, $100.00 not including taxes. My role at each was that of engaged observer and ‘working-from-within’ qualitative researcher. PlayList Live D.C. 2017 was a more fruitful data collection experience, being that it was structured like an academic conference, and included panels, workshops, meet-ups, and networking social events. I was also able to recruit one serious beauty and lifestyle YouTuber in attendance there to this study, and made connections with several others. In contrast, Generation Beauty Toronto 2017 was consumption-oriented and much more individualist, though it did help me to perceive how serious beauty and lifestyle YouTube connects to other practices, social worlds, and social structures (for example, capitalism and commodity-intensity), which aided data analysis (discussed below). Attendance at both conventions increased the credibility of this study, discussed below.
3.3.4 Data analysis.
“Intermeshing” the collection and analysis of data during grounded theory research deepens and expedites understandings (Glaser & Strauss, 1965, p. 7). Collecting a small amount of initial data, analyzing it, collecting more data that speaks to that analysis, analyzing it in line with earlier data, and continuing in this manner is the essence of the constant comparative method, described below, and means that researchers are asking analytic questions of the data, codes, categories, and constructs in their evolving theories from the very outset of their studies (Charmaz, 2014).
Integration and memoing are other ways data analysis moves forward, and are also described below.
3.3.4.1 Constant comparison.
Use of the constant comparative method of data analysis is one of the most—perhaps even
that is collected being assessed and analyzed alongside data already collected and analyzed, including data from the same and other sources; codes that sort, synthesize, and analyze data; categories that encapsulate several codes; and constructs that conceptually abstract the meanings of different categories and relate them. All the while, existing codes, categories, and constructs are also being compared within and between one another and shifted as necessary, ensuring the grounded theory fits closely with the data from which it is generated. Constant comparison begins as soon as data is first collected; from there, each piece of data proceeds through at least three rounds of coding, being open, focused, and theoretical, described below. All of the data sources used in this study, generated from documentary research and semi-structured interviews, were subject to constant comparison.
3.3.4.1.1 Open coding.
Constant comparison begins with open, or initial, coding. I generated open codes22 during
my first or second pass through a source of collected data, as it was interrogated on a word-by-word, line-by-line, or incident-by-incident basis, attempting to encapsulate in short, active gerunds the specific analytic dimensions of any actions or reactions, from participants’ points of view (Charmaz, 2014; Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995). Charmaz (2014, p. 127) stresses that participants’ professed thoughts and feelings should also be open-coded. Where possible, I generated in vivo open codes, which make use of participants’ exact language. An example of an in vivo open code from this study is packaging (described in Chapter 7). Open codes are provisional, altering with further data analysis. During the lattermost stages of data analysis in this study, a data source was only open-coded if it suggested new dimensions (Charmaz, 2014, 2016; Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Corbin & Strauss, 2015).
3.3.4.1.2 Focused coding.
Focused coding follows up on significant open codes, and attempts a coherent storyline via integration and abstraction (Charmaz, 2014; Dey, 1999; Draucker et al., 2007). The goal in focused
coding is to sharpen and condense earlier analyses with elevated codes, some of which become nascent categories in a grounded theory.23 I began to generate focused codes by re-assessing open
codes, taking those with the most “theoretical reach, direction, and centrality” (Charmaz, 2014, p. 141) and applying my “sensitivity […] to tacit elements, […] meanings and connotations that may not be apparent from a mere superficial reading of denotative content” in a data source (Suddaby, 2006, p. 239). An example of a focused code from this study is narrativizing (described in Chapter 5).
3.3.4.1.3 Theoretical coding.
Theoretical coding follows focused coding; it is used, where possible, as another level of elevation that can further hypothesize around or even relate categories based on existing theories and schemas (Charmaz, 2014; Corbin & Strauss, 2015; Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Glaser, 1978, 1992). I generated a small number of theoretical codes from disciplinary theories, extra-disciplinary
theories, and sensitizing concepts. Examples of theoretical codes used in this study are serious leisure career (described in Chapter 5) and ideating (used in Chapter 7). Theoretical codes are always fewer in number since, as Charmaz (2014) warns, they “must earn their way” into a grounded theory (p. 153).
3.3.4.2 Integrating categories.
Constant comparative coding allows researchers to begin to understand the relationships between the theoretical codes, categories, and constructs being developed. Pushing these
understandings further, to full integration, means “researchers really achieve depth of theory” (Urquhart, 2007, p. 352). Several methods have been proposed for grounded theory category integration; Corbin and Strauss’ (2015) axial coding paradigm (of who, when, why, how, and with what consequences) seems the most commonly recommended, though constructivists in particular warn that it may force “a technological overlay” onto data (Charmaz, 2014, p. 150). I integrated categories by sorting data, paying attention, as applicable, to Wilson Scott’s (2004) less-formulaic
considerations of what category, in participants’ words, was in question; when it occurs; where it occurs; why it occurs; how it occurs; and with what consequence(s) it occurs or is understood.
Also, as constructivist grounded theory is open to researchers adapting analysis in order to better portray their specific phenomena of interest (Seidel & Urquhart, 2013), I also used tenets from two supplemental analytic techniques to help me sort and integrate categories: Nicolini’s idea of “zooming in” and “zooming out” on practices, and Clarke’s situational and social world mapping. Both propose ways for researchers to make fine-grained and far-reaching connections with their data, which improve credibility and transferability (discussed below). Nicolini’s (2009, 2013) “zooming” technique is a way for researchers to switch between theoretical lenses, examining the minute details of a practice of interest as well as its broad trails through space and time, and its links within a chain of other practices. “Zooming” works hand-in-hand with Clarke’s (2003, 2005) mapping, which starts from the premise that action is constituted, not merely contributed to, by conditions under which it occurs, and necessitates taking into account the people, things,
vocabularies, values, and worldviews that make a difference to a given practice and within a given social world, or, more broadly, a social arena. Data obtained via interviews, especially ITTDs and CI questioning, facilitated “zooming in” and situational mapping, while data obtained from documents and other forums “where the practice is debated” (Nicolini, 2009, p. 1408) facilitated “zooming out” and social world mapping. These analytic techniques were especially useful as I framed the findings of Chapter 6 and Chapter 7, and some of the concluding synthesis in Chapter 8.
3.3.4.3 Memoing.
Constant comparison and integration, together with memoing, move researchers closer to