AN EXPLORATORY THEMATIC ANALYSIS ON VIEWERS’ INVOLVEMENT WITH HAUL VIDEO PERSONAES - TAKING BETHANY MOTA AS A CASE STUDY

Researchers have long been studying the impact of Word of Mouth (WOM) and User Generated Contents (UGC) on people’s attitude toward products and services, as well as the combination as electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM). The present study focuses on a new form of the eWOM, namely the “haul videos” on YouTube, which can show what individuals bought and how they reviewed the items. As a rather new phenomenon, the most successful haul video maker Bethany Mota’s most watched haul video has been adopted as a case study to explore the audiences’ elaboration state and involvement with both of the content and its creator. Since YouTube provides a large amount of spontaneous comments generated by the viewers as a natural dataset, I pulled the data using coding skills and used the qualitative method of thematic analysis to analyze the themes generated from the comments. It has been found that viewers who have watched Bethany Mota’s haul video showed a low elaboration state and mentioned about themes relevant to the entire audience involvement process with the media persona. As a qualitative exploratory study, certain limitations do exist in its findings. However, the findings might shed light upon future research or possible hypotheses concerning haul videos in the field of communication or marketing research.

Grantor dc:publisher

Wake Forest University

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Wang, Lei

• comment

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/57434

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:wakespace.lib.wfu.edu:10339/57434