Exploring Identity

Zoella vs Tanya Burr

Zoella - 
- Childish, sans serif fonts with pastel colours
- Basic use of vocabulary suggests a young audience
- Capitalisation of titles and relevant thumbnails are easy to understand and navigate
- Presents an aspirational view of adult life, with many photographs being used for aesthetic purpose
- Many hyperreal representations of drink, holidays and other situations
- Lots of hyperlinks to products in order to buy, leads people down a 'rabbit hole'
- Very easy to navigate with a plain user experience
- Animated fairy lights add to/symbolise her girly aesthetic, as well as the use of pink and white
- Often posts her room and things like that and this makes her seem like an adult trying to cling onto her own childhood


Tanya Burr - 
- Similar layout is again easy to navigate and has a nice user experience
- Serif font presents her much more sophisticated and grown up
- Male gaze theory could be applied here as she posts many photos of herself and she could be doing this in order to sell products
- More of a woman, quite sexy but not too much
- Her images are mature and she focusses on being herself and being normal
- You can see that she works hard and puts in a lot of effort, and her breaks look well deserved
- More down-to-earth, most of her photographs aren't staged and you can see she is much more normal


Both bloggers are multi-modal: They use multiple modes in order to present the product. The blog combines image and text, whereas their videos combine images and words. However, the internet itself is 'hypermodal', as they go beyond what they have to do  - there's a lot going on and they combine much more. Zoella often tries to grab the 'zeitgeist' of the time and although she channels this through stereotypes it often is so far over the top it is unnecessary and unappealing. This emphasises her hyperreal output and the way that she lives her life being a hyperreal 'icon' for younger girls. She bases her life on many things such as the 70s, and on stereotypical views of lifestyle.

DAVID GAUNTLET - CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY
JUDITH BUTLER - GENDER PERFORMATIVITY

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