Beauty bloggers and YouTubers as a community of practice

ABSTRACT

Much consumption-related activity online is outside of what is understood traditionally as community and is via user-generated content (UGC), of which blogs and YouTube channels in particular dominate in the beauty sphere. Community of practice (CoP) theory from social learning and organisation studies offers an alternative way to understand these consumption-based UGC practices. This study combines data from 25 interviews with bloggers and YouTubers and their blog posts and videos. Among these UGC creators we find mutual engagement, shared repertoires and joint enterprise. This paper theorises consumption-based UGC creators as a CoP and contributes insights for mangers as to how to engage with them as practitioners and learners.

KEYWORDS:

• Social networks
• new media
• consumer culture
• identity
• netnography
• internet research
• community of practice
• user-generated content

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the support of Dublin Institute of Technology and University College Dublin in the conduct of this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Valerie Gannon

Valerie Gannon is a Lecturer in Advertising at Dublin Institute of Technology. Her research has been published in the European Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Customer Behaviour. [phone].

Andrea Prothero

Andrea Prothero is Professor of Business and Society at the UCD College of Business. She has published widely in the broad Marketing and Society field.