MY MEDIA NICHE
Throughout the production of my digital artefact, I utilised auto-ethnographic research methodology to help investigate and understand my audience’s experience within the media niche.
I created a distinctive online presence, by making a Tik tok account that was based on astrology.
For my media niche, I decided to focus on something I personally love and enjoy, and can relate to.
My media niche for my digital artefact is mainly targeted for teenagers and young adults who are either in high school or beginners at university, and who of course love astrology.
For this particular niche, it was understood that these specific groups of people enjoy their time utilising social platforms, particularly Tik Tok and Instagram.
So ultimately, that is why I chose to use Tik Tok for my digital artefact, to have a better chance at attracting the audience with my chosen media niche.
This niche is widely known, and I believe that ever since Tik Tok existed, it has clearly shown the public how young adults and teenagers are particularly drawn to that platform. Although Tik Tok is utilised by various niches, it is noticeably evident that it is particularly popular with astrology.
I personally can relate to this niche as I am a young adult myself and who loves to read and watch content on astrology. So therefore I clearly understand what this niche is like. I also personally enjoy using Tik Tok throughout the day and believe that this platform is definitely used the most regularly on a day-to-day basis.
Also, by being surrounded by friends who are around my age, they also spend a lot of their time on Tik Tok. It is easy to pick up and observe the current trends of my chosen niche as I am part of this niche myself and immersed around these people every day.
Whenever I wake up in the morning, I find myself scrolling on Tik Tok. It could be any time of the day and I might be with friends or even alone and decide to make a Tik Tok just because. The majority of my Tik Tok videos are on astrology and I can honestly spend hours watching them.
I know all my friends do this too because there are always some popular tik tok video that is trending at the time that is heavily discussed amongst young adults and teenagers, relating with one another.
IMPORTANCE OF MY AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH
In order for my Digital Artefact to successfully exploit itself on the media, I needed to utilise autoethnographic research to expand my expertise on the media niche.
Auto ethnographers “…use personal experience to illustrate facets of cultural experience, and, in so doing, make characteristics of a culture familiar for insiders and outsiders” (Ellis et al. 2011).
As mentioned above, by being constantly immersed around people who share similar desires about astrology like myself, and are consumed in the world of tik tok, has allowed me to continuously conduct autoethnographic research for my digital artefact. It gave me the ability to constantly mould and reflect on trends that appeared from time to time.
Ultimately, as a person part of this media niche, I wrote down my observations and conducted a scientific investigation of my personal experience as part of the niche.
I also put myself in other people’s shoes to see how they might interpret astrology as a media niche. For example, a young girl around the age of 10 may be more attracted to astrological content that is fun and lighthearted, compared with a 20 year old girl who may be more attracted to astrological content that is more factual based.
Some ethnographic research skills I utilised to help find out more in my media niche is observing how this niche interacts with each other and their cultural and social environments.
The types of symbols, language and shared meaning that are heavily used in their world.
Another way I conducted an investigation for what best suits my media niche was by, creating a field site for astrology.
There were so many ways to expose astrology out in the media world. it’s not like it’s not already vastly popular in the media world, but there were still ways to make this media niche expand even more.
NEED TO COMPARE AND CONTRAST VARIOUS SOCIAL PLATFORMS
To decide to use Tik tok as my main platform, I was drawing comparisons between all potential field sites. This allowed me to visually see the positives and negatives if I were to utilise a particular platform for my media niche. I highlighted this in my blog post 2.
Astrology is active across many platforms which is why my mind map was full of complex potential ideas and perceptions. My mind map featured branches that lead to the main sub heading which included other media platforms astrology is displayed on. The little notes surrounding the subheadings were my ideas and thoughts that came with that particular media platform and how I thought they interact differently to each other (what might one platform have that the other doesn’t).
The main branches of my mind map included:
- Music
- Tik Tok
- Podcasts
- Apps
It was important that my research includes when, where and how I engage people who love the media niche, astrology. Ethnographic research are known to, “observe and/or interact with a study’s participants in their real-life environment” (Spotless, n.d). Ultimately, I had observed and interacted with this study as I am a part of this media niche myself, thus continuously conducting autoethnographic research. From there, I was able to determine new ways to interact with people in this niche.
After drawing out my mind map, I found I was personally most interested in utilising the following media platforms for my media niche:
- Twitter
- This would allow me to get creative by making memes about astrology that people can interact with, such as like, comment and share.
- Podcasts
- I researched some astrology podcasts that already existed and listened to some. I found them very interesting to listen to and could see myself doing something similar. https://theastrologypodcast.com/
- Instagram
- Because I am so familiar with this media platform. I can see myself making an astrology Instagram account.
- Tik Tok
- This platform is extremely popular nowadays. I think it is also fun to make videos, so can see myself having fun mixing Tik Tok and astrology.
- App
- I personally look at an app called ‘Astrology’ every day that tells me my sign’s mood for the day and many other factors about my sign. I would be interested in creating a new version of this.
Some questions I had to help me with problematising my media niche included:
- How would an audience used to view things visually to change to listening to a podcast? (If I were to choose that as my platform).
- Would people rather watch videos with text on them like Tik Tok, or have a still photo with an in depth caption like Instagram?
- TikTok brings more a fun side, whilst Instagram can be deeper and more meaningful
As a student majoring in Marketing, my media niche connects to my future career through understanding how to capture and gage an audience’s attention the most effectively, which is ultimately the route of Marketing. Thus, I used these skills to autoethnographically develop my DA.
CONSTANT ALTERATION OF MY DIGITAL ARTEFACT AND KEY EPIPHANIES
Another step conducted during the creation of my digital artefact and also helped me prompt my key autoethnographic epiphanies were by, commenting on other people’s pitches and providing them with feedback. I talked more about this in my blog post 3. This step in the process really made me reflect on my own digital artefact idea and the media niche I had chosen, and ultimately gained a better understanding in the areas where I could have some room for improvement.
This gave me the perfect opportunity to self-evaluate my entire project through autoethnographic research, by re reading the criteria and task instructions in order to use that to integrate within my own digital artefact.
After commenting on a few other people’s pitches, due to their very different ideas and concepts for their media niche, it meant I had to help critique their work using different techniques to match their concepts. This allowed me to practice adapting to multiple possible ideas, and I use this to help think of what I could personally also do better in my own digital artefact (which also was very different from the three ideas I commented on.)
After providing feedback to my peers, this helped assist the investigation of my media niche to an even greater extent.
I wouldn’t have been able to list the correction that I believe needed to be made, unless I conducted feedback to other people’s work.
KEY EPIPHANIES
I then started integrating the corrections I had discovered from other people’s pitches into my own work and begun to make it the best as possible.
My Tik Tok account on astrology took a lot of time of me constantly reflecting and changing, and utilising autoethnographic research.
Conducting the autoethnographic research made me begin to also:
Lead to my first epiphany, that the time of day was impacting my levels of interaction
- Posting at different times (morning, midday, night) to figure out at what time of the day do I receive the most interaction. Out of all the times, it was in the evenings that I found had most interaction
- Ultimately, I started posting consistently in the evenings every few days
As I noticed a pattern with the posting times, (my content would receive more interaction with the audience, when posted in the evenings, rather than mornings or midday).
My other epiphanies included:
- Maybe there was enough astrology out in the media and mine wasn’t creative enough, (not a unique topic and doesn’t stand out as much)
- Was my DA too fun based and could have been more factual?
These epiphanies prompted me to do more autoethnographic research on whether astrology was almost already ‘too’ popular in the media, and what I could still do differently.
SEARCHING THE WEB
I had conducted some web searching and came across a website that was on the seven current most popular astrology tik tokers. I came to realise that although some were factual and insightful, the majority were still personas trying to come across humorous whilst utilising astrology as the topic.
After also conducting some ethnographic research, I had concluded that there are a lot of tik Tok pages like my Digital Artefact, and there was room for mine to stand out even more. I also noticed that on my FYP I constantly was watching videos very similar to the videos posted for my DA.
RESEARCH, BRAINSTORMING, OBSERVING
Ultimately, after researching, thinking and observing, I had decided I want to make my DA more insightful and informational on astrology. My DA included more facts and daily readings on zodiac signs. This allowed my online persona and public persona to come across more informed, and I was able to emulate these qualities in my DA more.
Overall, whilst I have had a lot of fun creating my DA, the feedback has helped me consistently reflect and shape my project to something better.
The use of the autoethnographic research methodology, overall, really helped me shape my content for my chosen media niche into something more creative and out of the ordinary, thus allowing me to have a well-developed online presence. Furthermore, it helped me identify any key epiphanies that arised and get to understand my media niche to its full extent.
AUDIO:
REFERENCES:
Alex Brady and Carina Hsieh (2022), ’60 Fascinating Things you Didn’t Know About Your Zodiac Sign’, Cosmopolitan, viewed 19th October 2022, https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/g10260801/zodiac-sign-facts/
Craig VanSandt (2021), ‘What If… We Could Promote Epiphanies?’, Inside Uni, viewed 18th October 2022, https://insideuni.uni.edu/business/what-if%E2%80%A6we-could-promote-epiphanies
Emma Cionca and Lillian Fu (2020), ‘Astrology Extends into Social Media’, The Epic, viewed 18th October 2022, https://lhsepic.com/7701/in-depth/astrology-extends-into-social-media/
No author (2022), ‘Finding and Marketing your Business Niche on Tiktok’, Blink;tech, viewed 18th October 2022, https://www.blink-tech.com/social-media/tiktok-marketing-niche/
No author (2022), ‘Top 7 Astrology Influencers on TikTok’, Izea, viewed 17th October 2022, https://izea.com/resources/astrology-influencers-tiktok/
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