Research proposal
INTRODUCTION
In the first step of brainstorming our research project, we narrowed our ideas down in a mind map, focused on the three topics of Bloggers, Voting in Politics and Feminism.
There is evidence of the feminist movement reviving in the recent years such as most recently the Women’s March that took place in many cities across the world. Especially through the Internet and social media, anyone can easily participate in the activist movement, turning Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr in platforms of public dialogue, awareness and change (Chittal, 2015).
According to a poll created by the Washington Post, 4 in 10 British women say to have expressed their views about women’s right on social media (Cai & Clement, 2016). Those findings support that speaking out about feminism on social media has developed into something modern and trendy.
In the past years, influential celebrities have been increasingly seen to raise awareness and speak out on the topics of feminism. One of them is British actress Emma Watson who first publicly spoke out as a feminist in her UN speech for her #HeForShe gender equality campaign and who is also a UN ambassador (Fisher, 2017; “UN Women,” n.d.). After her speech, feminist conversations on twitter sharply increased from 349,266 to 630,30 (Chittal, 2015). However, in some cases, celebrities speaking out about feminism have been criticised for using the trending topic as a popularity tool, lacking credibility (Zeisler, 2016).
With Twitter being “excellent for arguing back and forth in public”, there have been vivid reactions and discussion about Emma Watson’s Twitter posts regarding topics such as the women’s march, the HeforShe campaign, her recent film Beauty and the Beast and her feminist book club Our Shared Shelf (Emma Watson, 2010; Rosenberg, 2013). Additionally, videos on YouTube of her UN Speech and the MTV award speech on YouTube showed high amounts of feedback through the community (MTV, 2017; United Nations, 2014).
RESEARCH QUESTION
Based on the described cultural phenomenon, the topic for our online research is Emma Watson as a celebrity speaking out about feminism and the responses she receives on Twitter.
To specify and clearly define our research, we developed a research question with according sub questiona that provide content and input that allows to answer the main research question. The research question is as follows:
What responses does celebrity feminists Emma Watson receive on her expression on feminism on Twitter and YouTube in the UK?
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What kind of comments and hashtags did Emma receive as a response to these events?
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What are the emotions related to the responses?
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
In this online research, several methods are used in order to clarify the online responses Emma Watson receives on her expression of feminism in the UK. The research will make use of quantitative research through data scraping of big data sets that is visualised through online tools, namely Netlytic and Gephi. In addition, qualitative data is gathered through netnography and online interviews.
TREND ANALYSIS
‘Google Trends’ is a popular trend analysis tool which not only shows the volume of searches with specific keywords but also allows to search in a certain geographical location. In our research, we used the trend analysis to define the trends ‘Emma Watson’ and ‘Emma Watson Feminism’ based on data from the past and present.
DATA SCRAPING AND VISUALISATION
Data visualisation is a powerful tool when dealing with large amounts of information. In this way, data can be more easily understood when visualised either in graphs, charts or pictures. In our research, we made use of Netlytic and Gephi for data visualisation.
Netlytic analyses social networks such as Twitter, YouTube and Instagram through text and hashtags. It then summarises its findings in the forms of a word cloud over time. It can also categorise its findings by feelings (good or bad) and senses (smell, looks, etc). For our research, the analysis provides quantitative data on what people feel about the topics we are researching. Another use of Netlytic, is the visualisation of communication networks. This tool helps us determine are the biggest influencers in our research topics.
Gephi is used to dig deeper in the visualisation of networks with the use of the data scraped in Netlytic. In our research, it helps to better understand the network graphs and provide a visualisation that is easier to read and analyse. This is done by manipulating the shapes, spread and colours which revealed hidden patterns such as key influencers in our research topic.
NETNOGRAPHY
Netnography tries to combine data from the communications and interactions that take place on the internet, serving as direct and honest feedback on a customer-to-customer basis. This valuable data is then processed via content and social network analysis and with the use of big data analytic tools and techniques. Ultimately, the purpose of Netnography is to find the emotional response behind a research topic in online communities. The method of online ethnography proves to be low cost and easy to perform and therefore suitable for our research. It gives us access to authentic emotions and opinions of young women towards the feminism spread by Emma Watson.
ONLINE INTERVIEWS
Online Interviews is a qualitative research method which provides a much deeper understanding of the interviewee’s perspectives, motives and experiences. In this case, regarding Emma Watson’s actions as a feminist and how young women respond to it. Due to its online elements, it is easy to conduct an interview via e-mail, Skype, instant messaging or social media. Thus it is the preferred method for interviewing people in the United Kingdom.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Emma Watson has called herself ‘a feminist’ on multiple occasions and has openly discussed what feminism means to her. Due to her outspoken ideas on feminism, she has received a variety of reactions related to the topic regarding her work, campaigns and other initiatives.
This research will focus on reactions concerning Emma Watson as a celebrity feminist and, (1) her work in Beauty and the Beast, (2) her participation in the Women's March, (3) her controversial photo shoot for Vanity Fair, (4) her feminist book club Our Shared Shelf and (5) her equality campaign HeforShe. These topics are relevant because they are either fairly recent or even on-going which means that related online data on the topic as well as reactions and responses are still traceable.
Neo-liberal feminism can be described as a movement that encourages a balanced life for professional women – managing a career and a happy family-life (Rottenberg, 2016). It is seen important that women have a choice in how they spent their life and are not restricted by men (Kyller and Ringrose, 2015). A more critical perspective on neo-liberal feminism claims that the movement only targets ‘privileged white women’ and does not concern that women all over the world that do not even have basic human rights. According to Jaffe (2014), by striving to get ‘the privileged white woman’ in the top position next to men, neo-liberal feminism creates an increase in social injustice.
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Only a limited amount of literature can be found on Emma Watson as a feminist, however, there are articles about the general topic of celebrity feminism. In Keller and Ringrose’s (2015) research, celebrity feminism is described as a “form of popular feminism made visible recently by young celebrity women eager to publicly claim a feminist identity” – this also relates to neo-liberal feminism. Findings in Keller and Ringrose’s (2015) research show that celebrity feminism provokes both positive and negative reactions from teenage girls. They react positively to the new presence of the topic in mainstream media, however, they are sceptical about the intentions of the celebrity feminists. They realise that some celebrities promote feminism because it is a trend or even a tool for promotion.
Emma Watson has called herself ‘a feminist’ on multiple occasions and has openly discussed what feminism means to her. Due to her outspoken ideas on feminism, she has received a variety of reactions related to the topic regarding her work, campaigns and other initiatives.
Not only teenage girls who are the main target audience of celebrities, but also other opinion leaders, like journalist, have expressed both critique and approval towards celebrity feminism (Hamad, H. & Taylor, A. 2015). Celebrity feminism has initiated conversation on what feminism precisely is, and it has created a greater understanding of post feminism or neo-liberal feminism. However many journalist have expressed caution and cynicism. Nancy Gibbs, editor of Time magazine was critical on how the word ‘feminism’ was being overused by celebrities. Editor of The Guardian Roxana Gay expressed concern on celebrities creating their own definitions of feminism, which can result in conflicting opinions and practices.
In research, Brady (2015) argues that not only journalists and young women have had diversified reactions on contemporary celebrity feminism, but also other celebrities are critical on how authentic celebrity feminists really are.
A criticism is that celebrity feminists use feminism as an excuse for their highly sexualised videos or pictures. Meaning, their actual motivation for this sexualisation is not to express feminism by being ‘a free, independent woman’, but rather as a promotional tool. As response to this critique it can be argued that the foundation of this can be found in the differences between the second wave and the current third wave of feminism. Contemporary feminism strives for social equality rather than standardising a privilege as e.g. voting. With the current third-wave feminism striving for something more abstract, second-wave feminists might misinterpret the intentions.
The varying responses to celebrity feminism from different audiences can be reflected on Emma Watson as a celebrity feminist. A photo of Emma Watson being barely clothed triggered a lot of negative reactions, calling her a hypocrite for being a feminist and half naked (Toronto Sun, 2017). This implies that the feminist movement should not be about ‘being too sexy’, all whilst contemporary feminism stands precisely for being proud of the female body even if heavily sexualised.
In a celebrity forum, direct critique towards Emma Watson’s HeForShe speech at the UN was posted. The author discusses how Emma Watson’s speech implies that women need the support of men to do feminism right as well as negative remarks on the fact that it was a celebrity who had to give the speech (Eliza, 2014).
In conclusion, responses towards celebrity feminism and Emma Watson as a feminist vary. There is an overall different perspective on how celebrity feminists should behave and what makes a celebrity a credible feminist.
ONLINE RESEARCH
RESEARCH PLATFORMS
Social media has played an important role in the latest years' feminist activity such as the rise of Hashtag feminism (Dixon, 2014). Additionally, Twitter, which is the 2nd most popular social media platform, has been used often for political discussions such as feminism (Bode & Dalrymple, 2014; Ugur, 2015). Moreover, YouTube, the 3rd most popular social media platform is useful as it brings a high amount of community feedback through its comments section (Siersdorfer et al., 2010; Ugur, 2015).
HASHTAGS AND KEYWORDS
In order to collect specific data, we used hashtags and keywords in our research. Using keywords in Google Trends, we found data in the time span of May 2012 to May 2017. Additionally, Netlytic was used to collect data from 8th of May to 15th of May. Finally, qualitative data was collected via Netnography in the second half of May. The set of keywords and hashtags used in the preliminary research as well as Google Trends and Netlytic can be found here.
TREND ANALYSIS
Using 'Google Trends' it can be seen that the topic Emma Watson has been paid attention to under a steady level within the past. There is a visible key peak on 5th March 2017, when Emma Watson appeared in the fashion magazine Vanity Fair. She was photographed wearing little clothes, which caused controversy and the topic to be trending and heavily discussed on social media (Yan, 2017). The second abrupt increase in September 2014 can be linked the 20th September in 2014, when Emma Watson gave a speech for the VN where she asked for help to promote her campaign called HeForshe. The campaign strives to attain gender equality all over the world (Emma Watson Gender equality is your issue too, 2014).
According to Google Trends, the topic of Emma Watson in regards to Feminism has experienced was almost not trending at all until a sudden steep rise mid-September 2014 with its peak at the end of the same month (Trend: ‘Emma Watson Feminism’). This can be also be linked to Emma Watson’s VN speech through which she gained a lot of attention and for the first time was publicly speaking as a feminist. From that month onwards there was steady interest in her with another peak on the 5th of March due to the Vanity Fair photo shoot.
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It can be concluded, that both Emma Watson and Emma Watson as a Feminist is a long term trend with steady interest and attention.
Inserting a number of keywords relevant to our research question on 30DB.com shows that opinions on the matter of feminism and Emma Watson are quite divided. An estimated average of 70% positive vs. 30% negative shows that there is still a global debate on the case.
