Netnography
DESIGN AND PROCEDURE
This qualitative and quantitative part of research is focused on online observations, namely Netnography, in four different online communities. The platforms and communities were chosen based on their relevance to our research, their activity and interactivity and the amount of data provided. To start our online qualitative and quantitative research, we created a mind map to guide us in finding appropriate online communities.
Mind Map – Online Forums
When looking at platforms it was important to us that at least some of them were targeted at the UK to provide regarding the geographical component of our research question, and that responses were unbiased, hence we could not have chosen only feminist forums or only forums dedicated to the Emma Watson fanbase. Since our research question was focused on the responses Emma Watson receives on her expression on feminism in the UK on Twitter and YouTube, of course it was important to include those two platforms in our Netnography research. Furthermore, Our Shared Shelf as a discussion group and platform is slightly biased being founded by feminist Emma Watson, however, it will provide us with experts on not only feminism but also Emma Watson's actions and expression in regard to feminism. Reddit as an addition is an unbiased platform with very high activity and a broad range of users, where we hope to gather a great diversity of responses.
We decided on following online communities to conduct our research:
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Twitter (Keywords: 'Emma Watson Feminist', 'Emma Watson Vanity Fair'
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YouTube (UN / HeforShe Campaign Speech & MTV Award Acceptance Speech)
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Reddit UK (Community in which foreigners can ask members from UK about their culture and opinions)
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Our Shared Shelf (Goodreads)
Twitter is an online platform that is based on microblogging. The network consists of more than a billion accounts, however, only 510 million users are active on a monthly base – the activity is still relatively high and still makes up enough data flow for our research. On Twitter, there cannot be any groups formed, however with the use of hashtags and keywords information is put into categories and can be found easily (Smith, 2016). For this research, the keywords “Emma Watson” and “Feminist”, and “Emma Watson” and “Vanity Fair” were put together. Comments out of all mirco blogs using these keywords were picked out and looked at for in terms of relevance and clarity. We focused on Microblogs or “tweets” that had emotions, opinions or news about Emma Watson being a feminist. In this way we could collect a lot of archived data, acting as passive researchers.
YouTube is an online social media platform which allows anyone to upload videos of any kind, and allows users to like and comment on these videos. YouTube has gained a reputation of having very active comment sections on videos in which people speak their uncensored mind (Lange, 2007). Though YouTube is originally an American platform, it nowadays reaches across the globe with activity in all but four countries; China, Iran, Tajikistan and North Korea (Google, 2017; Talmadge, 2017). This leaves YouTube reaching 191 countries where people are free to post, like and comment, it can help us get a very broad and 'international' view on our research topic. Emma Watson’s speeches on feminism can all be found on this platform, and the comment sections are filled with relevant content as to people’s opinions. Therefore there will be a lot of relevant, recent and unbiased data found in this online community.
Reddit is a place where social news is shared and rated but it is also used as a discussion website. Over 500 million people visit Reddit on a monthly basis, which makes it the #5 most visited website in the UK (Alexa, 2017). Reddit is known for the numerous responses on discussion subreddits such as for example, /r/AskReddit, therefore the data is rich with a high level of user activity. The same happens in a similar subreddit called /r/AskUK, in this discussion group outsiders ask people from the UK in all kinds of political, social or cultural topics. Therefore, asking for the responses and feelings from the UK about Emma Watson’s actions as a feminist is the type of relevant data used to further our research, acting as active and overt ethnographers.
The group Our Shared Shelf on Goodreads is a feminist book club created by Emma Watson herself that features a discussion board in which members of 'Goodreads' can take part. Open to anyone who is willing to join, the group has over 191,000 international members so far, that discuss topics not only regarding the monthly book publication, but also feminism in general. As the group was only founded in the beginning in 2016, members are still very active and passionate in their contributions, providing rich data (McCluskey, 2016). It is relevant to our research since it will provide us with the opinion of people that are aware of Emma Watson's participation in the feminist movement and are supposedly feminists themselves. The discussion board allows us to start conversations on Emma Watson expressions as a feminist and gather direct responses from within the community, acting as an overt and active researcher. We will create a new discussion topic in the "Feminism" discussion sub-board (7,779 comments so far), as well as participate in the "Feminism in the UK" threat (2262 views) to gather information more relevant to our specific target group (Goodreads, n.d.).
ENTRÉE AND DATA COLLECTION
As ethnographers, we decided to take on both, active and passive and overt and covert, roles when immersing into the four online communities. The mixed styles allowed us to gather data by observing and also participating in the online communities.
For Twitter and YouTube we decided to stay covert and passive ('Lurker'), which means simply observing, not revealing one's identity and selecting relevant data for our research question found in existing conversations. This method of data collection is also referred to as "archived". The decision was made due to both platforms being hard to engage in. Twitter is more focused on retweets and individual reactions rather than broad, deep and diverse discussions. On YouTube, we will only look at comments of selected videos of the Emma Watson's UN Speech and the MTV Award Speech which are directly relevant to our research questions. That is why in this case, simply observing is sufficient in collecting the necessary results (Björk & Kauppinen-Räisänen, 2012).
Regarding the Our Shared Shelf group on Goodreads as well as Reddit UK, we decided to take on the role of the active and overt ('Participant') ethnographers, introducing ourselves as researchers in various threats, using a pre-written entrée which can be found here. That way, we are able to gather specific responses directly towards our research question and we can lead or control where the discussions are going. This kind of data is also referred to as "elicted" data. By interacting with the target audience, a much clearer picture can emerge which can help us understand and answer our research question better (Björk & Kauppinen-Räisänen, 2012).
Looking at the ethical issues of our research, we made sure to read the forum and website rules before gathering data on all platform. Acting as 'Participant' ethnographers, we ensured anonymity for all contributions on Reddit UK and Our Shared Shelf discussion boards, as stated in our Entrée. The Entrée also allowed us to fully disclose our identity and obtain permission before publishing.
For the data collection, regarding Twitter and YouTube, we selected 50 relevant and diverse comments as we agreed the sample was a good size to work with. On YouTube For Reddit, we gathered 54 relevant comments in the discussion thread self-created by us. Lastly, regarding the Our Shared Shelf discussion board, we only ended up with 20 comments, since the relevant answers on the discussion thread we started ourselves were limited.
Once the data in the four online communities was collected, we used the program ATLAS Ti with the purpose of highlighting and coding relevant quotes for the analysis. We then visualised our outcomes using Microsoft Exel and Word, with the intend to make the outcomes easier to understand, organised and more appealing.
DATA ANALYSIS
PROCESS
As a start to analysing the data, we came up with ten codes that were decided once we had observed some comments and responses on the chosen four platforms regarding our research topic. The codes are as follows: 'Criticism', 'Hating', 'Confusion', 'Sadness', 'Informative', 'Compliments', 'Loving', 'Inspiration', 'Support', 'Humor' and 'Sarcasm'.
Word Cloud – Codes
Due to the fact that these codes can be overlapping sometimes, and quotes could contain several messages or emotions, more than one code can be used per quote from a member of a community.
To analyse the results, quotes are given a certain code based on the emotion or action towards Emma Watson, for example, "Sadness" is only used when sadness is expressed towards Emma Watson and not when sadness is expressed to other commenters."Criticism" is a code used to mark quotes that have an argumentative critique to Emma Watson being a feminist, "Hating" is used when commenters are negative, in a rude and hateful way. "Confusion/Loving/Compliments/Sarcasm/Humour/Sadness” is used when reactions express confusion/love/compliments/sarcasm/humour/sadness towards Emma's actions or her being a feminist. "Informative" is used when the commenter writes with the purpose of informing others about Emma Watson and Feminism, with not necessarily an opinion, by showing a video, picture or article. "Support" is used in case the comments reveal that writer stands behind Emma Watson as a Feminist.
RESULTS
Table of Coding Example Quotes
In the graph above, examples of quotes and the corresponding coding are displayed. Again, to some quotes more than one code has been applied.
Table of Frequency of Codes and Comparison
In the graph, the total amount of every code given can be found in the second column. In the third column, it is shown what percentage of all the quotes from the communities were given this specific code (frequency). Moreover, in the third column is shown, in percentage, how often the code is used in comparison to the other codes.
Table of Frequency of Codes (Within Total of Codes)
The graph visualises the percentages of the codes found in all four forums. As mentioned a quote from one person, could have more codes if it fits the quote. Therefore the graph shows not how many percentages of the quotes were either supportive or compliment, but how often the code was used in comparison with other codes. The code "Support" was used most often, followed by "Compliments". After that, the code "Criticism" was used most.
Table of Frequency of Codes (Within Total of Quotes)
In this graph is visualised how much percentage of the quotations, were given each code. 33,3 percentage of all the quotes from all four platforms could be coded as "Support". This means that one-third of the section o the community mentioned they supported Emma Watson being a Feminist, or they let know in another way that they support Emma’s mission.
The example used is the graph is a comment reacting on the Reddit UK community. The commenter supports Emma Watson, however, she does not compliment her, and does not talk about inspiration or love. The code "Support", was mostly used in combinations with codes like "Compliments", "Inspiration", "Loving" but also with "Criticism".
In a follow-up to the code "Support", most quotes, namely 27,6 percentage, were coded as "Compliments". The code "Compliments" was also often used in combination with other codes like, "Support" or "Loving". The example comment originates from the OursharedShelf community – the commenter expresses compliments to Emma, calling her a "genuine, non-commercial and an honest feminist".
The third most used code, “Criticism”, was used for 26,4 percentage of all the quotations. The code was used on its own most often but was also be in combination with "Hate" or “Sarcasm”, accounting for negative comments towards Emma Watson. The code was also used in combination with "Support" or "Compliments", representing comments that showed support but also implied that she still had a lot to learn or that she could have done a few things differently.
The quote used in the example table expresses critique how Emma Watson is not intersectional enough, and only discusses sexism.
The codes "Humour" and "Sadness" were barely used. Commenters were quite serious about this topic and either explained what their ideas were in a very serious matter, or they used love or anger to express their emotions.
Table of Frequency of Codes in Online Communities
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In this table, the results are organised by the codes used per community. The total refers to the total number of codes used in each community. Additionally "Total # Quotes" refers to the total number of quotes that were coded in each community. Finally, the percentages refer to the number of times the codes were used per total of quotes in each community.
At first glance, it is noticeable that there are several disparities between the different communities. Our Shared Shelf has the biggest difference in responses and feelings when compared to the YouTube comment section. For example, Our Shared Shelf had the highest percentage for "Compliments" with 65% out of the total quotes in the community, while YouTube had only 18%.
In contrast, when it comes to the code “Hating”, Our Shared Shelf had 0% while YouTube had 16%. The results show that YouTube was the biggest receiver of the “Hating” comments towards Emma Watson’s actions as a feminist. Together with the code “Criticism” with 36%, these two negative responses make up for half of the quotes from the YouTube community. On the other hand, YouTube also received the most “Loving” coded comments with 9 hits out of 24 total hits inside the code category, which makes this community the one with the most contrasting responses and feelings.
When it comes to “Support” for Emma Watson’s actions as a feminist, Twitter scored the most with 22 hits out of 58 total hits inside the code category. It also makes for 44% of the comments coded from Twitter.
The code “Informative” was only found in the Twitter community and it made up for 30% of the coding given to the gathered quotes in the community. In a similar matter, the codes “Humour” and “Confusion” also made the biggest appearance on the Twitter compared to the other communities with 2 out of 3 codes and 5 out of 10, respectively.
The Reddit community demonstrated mostly positive emotions and responses, the biggest percentages are for the codes “Compliments” and “Support” with respectively, 27.7% and 20.4% of the total coded quotes in this community. In 3rd place, the “Criticism” code appears with 18.4%. Although Redditors gave mostly positive feedback, they were not afraid to point out some criticism towards Emma Watson’s feminist actions as well.
Visualisation of Responses in Online Communities
In the above pie charts, the four chosen communities are once again visible. The codes which represent positive emotions and responses were coloured in a green scale, while negative emotions/responses were coloured in a red scale. Additionally, “Confusion” and “Informative” which are neutral responses, were coloured in a gray scale.
When looking at the pie charts, the difference between Our Shared Shelf and the YouTube is once again seen by the majority of positive responses from Our Shared Shelf users compared to the number of negative responses from YouTube users, which make up almost half of the quotes.
Furthermore, similarities are seen between Our Shared Shelf and Reddit communities, as both have more than half of positive responses and also a similar amount of “Criticism” responses.
Overall, it is observable that Emma Watson mainly receives positive emotion and responses on her actions as a feminist, especially “Compliments” and “Support”, especially from Our Shared Shelf and YouTube communities. Whereas the main negative response she receives is “Criticism”, mainly predominant on YouTube community.
CONCLUSION
Overall, it is observable that Emma Watson mainly receives positive emotions and responses on her actions as a feminist, especially from Our Shared Shelf and Reddit communities. “Compliments” and “Support” are the predominant codes when it comes to positive responses. In other words, the results show that the general public, represented by the Reddit /r/AskUK community, is mostly positive towards Emma Watson and not only her fans, who are the majority of the participants on the Our Shared Shelf.
Moreover, Our Shared Shelf showed a surprising number of “Criticism” for a book club created by Emma Watson herself. Comments were often started with “Compliments” but sometimes followed by criticism about her lack of intersectionality. Intersectionality is the way racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia among other oppression institutions are interconnected and how it is impossible to discuss one without the other. In Emma’s case, Our Shared Shelf’s participants criticized that she only discussed sexist issues.
Additionally, YouTube received the most negative responses, where “Criticism” is most predominant. In general, “Criticism” is also the third most used code. That is due to the controversial subject around the feminism definition, people expect Emma Watson to act in a multiple of different ways because they perceive feminism differently. Some of the criticism given to Emma Watson was related to her lack of discussing men’s problems in her HeforShe campaign speech.
Furthermore, the Twitter community was the only community coded with “Informative”. Twitter is a platform often used as a news dissemination system (Ediger et al., 2010). In other words, people use Twitter to talk about what is on the news so it is only natural that they often share news articles link with each other. That is the case with Emma Watson, where most of the “Informative” quotes were links to articles about her appearance on Vanity Fair. “Confusion” was also used very often to code Twitter quotes. In this case it is due to its 140 character limitation which makes it harder for people to discuss intricate topics such as feminism.
ONLINE INTERVIEWS
DESIGN AND PROCEDURE
This qualitative part of our research consisted of semi-structure interviews, with the intend to approach three young men and women within our target audience. Since the data scraping and Netnography were not always limited to the geographic boundaries of our research question, the interviews aimed to focus on the British audience. The interviews offered the chance for the participants to express their opinions, thoughts and feelings on Emma Watson's expression on feminism on Twitter and YouTube and therefore directly offered answers to our main research question as well as sub questions. With the interviews being semi-structured, there was a higher flexibility in the interviews and the opportunity to gather deep information.
We contacted two young women and one young man from the UK through private messages via the platform Facebook and informed about our research. Once they accepted to participate, we were able to conduct online Skype interviews. The two young women were selected due to both of them being active on Twitter. One of the girls was personally more involved in feminism (as seen on her Twitter profile), whilst the other one appeared to be actively following and retweeting Emma Watson. The third participant was chosen rather randomly trough personal connections, knowing that he had a Twitter account and was active on YouTube. By choosing three differing participants, not only in gender but also their interest and Twitter and YouTube activity, we hoped to be able to collect answers with diverse angles on the research topic.
DATA ANALYSIS
By conducting online interviews with three individuals that matched the audience research throughout the project, different opinions on the matter of Emma Watson’s feminism were given. The complete interview transcripts can be found in Appendix IIX. Two of the three individuals said to have been inspired after seeing the UN speech and expressed how this specific speech caused them to acknowledge themselves as feminists. The situations addressed by Watson in the speech were recognised and with that gained more ground on account of reliability and credibility of Watson as a feminist. The other interviewee expresses to not have really been aware of Watson’s feminism, but solemnly of her performance as an actress. He became only recently familiar with her actions as a public feminist with Watson winning the genderless MTV Award.
The two female interviewees both claim to have had Watson’s influence as a motivation to cross the line to officially become an active feminist. One female interviewee claims to be a very engaged and up-to-date active feminist, while the other is a silent feminist who does not "burn her bra in the streets" but does find importance in making a stance in public as a feminist. Participating in the Women’s March is considered a low-key stance making. The male interviewee claims to not be very interested in the feminist movement and does not find it interesting enough to research.
TWITTER AND YOUTUBE ACTIVITY & USAGE
The social media engagement differs between the interviewees too. The female interviewees both have an active Twitter account which they use for their feminist purposes. Emily A. claims to be a very active online feminist and dares to speak what is on her mind and heart to the public world wide web, while Pippa S. says to use Twitter as a platform to gather information from, but is not an active participant in discussion herself. Both female interviewees use their Twitter feed for leisure tweeting also. The male participant - Tom E. - uses his Twitter account for leisure tweeting only, but is much more of a covert approach and scans through his Twitter feed mostly, without creating content himself. He does not use Twitter for feminist purposes.
By all three interviewees, YouTube is used as a social media platform where they get their musical inspiration from. Emily A. is the only one to claim that she uses YouTube actively as a source to find inspirational videos that match her beliefs and ideals, and mentions how she watches Emma Watson’s speeches. Pippa S. has seen the speeches too and is using YouTube as a mean to view feminist manifests from other feminists from time to time. Tom E. claims to use YouTube as a platform to gather his music from and entertain himself with popular, humorous videos on a daily basis. The two female interviewees claim to sometimes be active in the YouTube comment sections, other than Tom E. who says to be annoyed by the "unsupported claims" made by people on YouTube, and he, therefore, does not wish to partake in these discussions.
EMMA WATSON'S ACCOUNT ON TWITTER
The reasons given as to why the interviewees were interested in following Emma Watson in the first place differed also. Pippa S. says that she started following Watson because she was a "major Harry Potter geek", and only afterwards learned about feminism and what role Watson played in this movement. Emily A. says to have Watson’s Harry Potter stardom as a secondary reason to have followed Emma Watson on day 1, with that specific motivation being subsidiary to her feminist role and example. This implies that Emily A, even though she was a fan of Watson’s performance in the Harry Potter series, found Emma Watson’s feminism the main reason to follow her on social media and become a public supporter of her statements. While Pippa S. says to have followed Emma Watson for being a fan of the Harry Potter series first, and only afterwards learned of what Watson was representing and fighting for. Tom E. does not follow Emma Watson on Twitter nor the videos on YouTube related to her since he does not have a high enough level of interest into her life nor the movement she represents.
THE UN SPEECH & HEFORSHE CAMPAIGN
The two girls interviewed said that after watching Emma Watson’s speech they felt very inspired or even moved. Both explained that they were able to recognise issues addressed and therefore related to the content. They also state, that it was the first time they were made aware of Emma as a real feminist and one of the girls even went as far to say that she “became a feminist after listening to that speech". Therefore it can be concluded that this video of the speech is very impactful and emotional, convincing and encouraging the viewer. Emily A. even shared the video with her friends after having watched it, viewing its content as informative and inspiring and passing down awareness.
In regards to Emma’s involvement in the HeForShe Campaign, one of the girls who wholeheartedly supported the campaign, described it as a big "game changer" that could eventually get not only women but also men to engage in the movement. The other female interviewee agreed, claiming that the campaign was great because it addressed both men and women and giving everyone equal responsibility for the issue. She further complimented Emma, saying "her transparency and honest commitment make her one of the most inspiring and strongest feminists of this century" and referring to her as "the definition of feminism". Overall, both answers imply, that the campaign can be very inspiring in an honest, educating and eye-opening approach.
In contrast, the third interviewer Tom E. took a completely different stance, arguing for Emma Watson to use her public commitment to feminism as a popularity tool to create a favourable image. In his response, he ridiculed Emma’s actions and presented her feminist involvement as commercial rather than a political and serious engagement. It has to be considered that he did not fully watch the video but only was aware vaguely of expressions and actions - generally knowing that she was publicly getting involved with feminism.
Further addressing the HeForShe Campaign, he further claimed that in his eyes feminism had grown into a trend in which anyone in today’s society could participate (e.g. by taking part in the women’s march) and which celebrities like Emma Watson or even Beyonce use to “achieve some favourable headlines in the news and an image of being a great role model”. The responses evoke a feeling of annoyance and tiredness of the topic.
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THE MTV AWARD ACCEPTANCE SPEECH
Emma Watson’s MTV Award speech left an impression on both female interviewees, with Pippa S. claiming to be "proud as a woman and as a feminist". The second female interviewed added that Emma "fights for justice and equality, who points real problems, whatever it be during awards, as a UN ambassador or in her daily life". Both girls were impressed by her passionate commitment in every part of her life and valued her effort raise awareness on the topic whenever possible. It was further pointed out that the MTV Awards were great opportunity to address a possibly yet uneducated "diverse audience". The responses were supporting and complementing Emma, almost revealing a slight 'obsession'.
Again, the third male interviewee offered a different perspective on the MTV Award speech. He argued that the MTV award for 'Best Actor' was not the first to be genderless and stated that “the topic of the genderless award is fake news”. His response can be interpreted as angry and criticising, playing down the hype about of this event.
THE FEMINIST BOOK CLUB 'OUR SHARED SHELF'
Whilst both female interviewees support the Our Shared Shelf feminist book club, only one of them is an actual member. She shows her appreciation of the community, claiming for it to be very empowering whilst spreading awareness and educating. Especially as a feminist, she saw a great opportunity in not only discussing literature in the online community but also topics regarding feminism itself. Pippa S. was not part of the book club due to a lack of interest in reading and literature. However, the overall responses were supportive of her actions and thankful for offering such an opportunity for education and dialogue.
The male interviewee had not heard of the book club and therefore was not showing a response.
THE CONTROVERSIAL EVENTS
When asked about the controversial topics of Emma Watson’s role as Belle in Beauty and The Beast as well as the naked photo shoot for Vanity Fair, all participants agreed that the criticism was unnecessary. One of the girls interviewed explained: "Controversy will always be a part of who she is. As a public figure, as a political figure, every moment of her life will be reviewed and evaluated." The interviewee showed some anger, frustration and lack of understanding regarding the criticism. She further questioned why feminism would forbid Emma Watson to take part in an "artistic photo shoot". The second female interviewee approved, noting that "feminism is about being able to make choices and not have anyone questioning every single move you make". Her response reveals support and defence towards Emma Watson.
The third male interviewee claimed for the criticism to be ridiculous, saying: "Arguing that her playing Belle has some kind of impact on feminism is like saying that Johnny Depp is an advocate for pirate’s rights". He feels agrees with the other two girls interviewed, saying that her being a feminist should not impact any of those two events. He further added that it was the media and the news report exaggerated scandals in the need to find something to talk about. In his response, he was ridiculing the criticism in a humorous, almost sarcastic, comparison. In that way, he is defending and supporting Emma, which is also evidential in his last words: "just let her do what she wants, we’re all human".
CONCLUSION
The online interviews have resulted in different opinions regarding Emma Watson. The sample of people was too small to accurately represent the whole internet population, yet gives a clear overview of the opinions of three individuals who are active in online communities.
The overall attitude towards Emma Watson as a feminist was positive by two of the three interviewees. The interviewed women express that Emma Watson has played/is playing a major role as a feminist role-model in their own feminist beliefs. They both follow her on Twitter and are engaged in the YouTube comment sections of videos in which Watson expresses her opinion and raises awareness. The women defend Watson in online discussions and claim to see her as a source of inspiration. The interviewed has a far more criticising point of view on Emma Watson and says that she would merely use these feminist public appearances as a promotional tool or as a mean to draw more attention to her. An explanation for this difference in points of view could be that the women do indeed identify themselves as feminists, while the male says to not be too interested in the matter nor Emma Watson as a person.
When looking at Watson’s own feminist platforms; HeForShe and OurSharedShelf, the women interviewed express to be
Emma Watson for Vanity Fair
familiar with them and are actively supportive of them too.
One of the women though expresses to not be active in the Our Shared Shelf community herself though due to a lack of interest in reading and literature. Again, the male had an opposite opinion and claims that feminism nowadays is more of a moneymaking trend rather than an actual movement.
The controversies around the Vanity Fair shoot and Watson’s role as Belle receive a somewhat similar response by all interviewees; it is confusing and unnecessary. The interviewees agree that neither the shoot nor her role as Belle in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast has anything to do with being a feminist.