In my last blog post I identified the media niche I wanted to focus on for my ethnographic research project as being travel vlogging. However, as travel vlogging continues to become increasingly popular, with the growing number of people pursuing this as a career, I have decided I need to narrow this niche down even further. With the limitation of time to conduct this research, I will be focusing on a specific vlogger and investigating their online community pre and during COVID-19 to explore how this niche operates.
To immerse myself as a participant observer in the online ethnography of travel vlogging, I must first understand the network of relations involved in this particular field site. “A field site is neither a physical or virtual space, it is a term for the lived experience of a network of relations”. “An advantage of defining a field site as a network is that it is produced as a continuous space that does not presume proximity or even spatiality in a physical sense” (Burrell, 2009).
The online community of the The BucketList Family is not confined physically, it expands over a range of social media platforms, that can all be included in this ethnographic study.
With the narrowed down field site of my research being the family of travel vloggers ‘TheBucketListFamily‘, I can begin to map the network of connections involved in this field site. If you are unsure of who the BucketList Family are, watch the video above as it pretty much sums them up in under 2 minutes!
This family consists of five travel journalists – Garrett, Jessica, Dorothy, Manilla & Calihan.
Their adventure began on the 15th of August 2015 when they sold everything for an adventure around the world. After 3 years of life on the road and visiting over 65 countries they are now based in Hawaii.
Below I have mapped the network of relations encompassed in the brand, specifically the platforms they utilise, the following they have, some of their major partnerships and anything else associated to their brand.
PLATFORMS – The main platforms The BucketList Family use to share content and have gained the biggest social media following on, is Instagram with 2.4 million followers, and YouTube with 1.13 million subscribers.
PARTNERSHIPS – A few major brands The Bucket List Family have worked with include People Magazine, Parents Magazine, and Forbes Magazine, along with Go Pro, Land Rover, and varied hotel partnership opportunities, including Taasa Lodge in Tanzania and Visit South Africa.
SHOP – Aside from their large social media presence and sponsorship deals, they also have other avenues to their brand such as an online shop with photo presets, apparel, recommended camera gear, zero waste kits, and a BucketList Cartoon which is coming soon.
PARTICIPANTS – Participants play a huge role in the field site of the BucketList Family. People who consume the media produced by the travel journalists are positioned in this field site just as much as the vloggers themselves. On social media, a field site is often “fluid associations among persons that largely do not know each other, mediated by the platform’s affordances, characterised by emotional intensity and channeled by a common focus” (Massimo, 2018). In this case the common focus is the content produced by The BucketList Family and the fans who consume their content.
Ethnographically exploring this media niche will provide me with many skills and valuable insights such as:
- Equipment used to produce travel vlogs
- Skills to create and edit vlogs
- Platforms that are successful for travel vloggers and those that are not
- What makes the content unique and engaging
- The overall branding strategy and how it helps differentiate one travel vlogger from another
- Avenues that help make it a more feasible career – photo presets, merchandise, sponsorship, subscriptions etc.
- The type of people engaged in this community, for example different genders, age groups, countries, languages etc
- The content produced before and during COVID-19
Being a creative at heart, this research is relevant to my future endeavours in the creative industry in varied ways. Firstly I would like to upskill and learn the craft of videography and editing, as well as become more proficient in photography. With my current major in Marketing and Advertising, The Bucket List Family is also a great example of a strong and identifiable brand in the vlogging community. Their page and its content gives me inspiration to one day develop a brand of my own.
At the end of the day, without the marketing skills utilised by The Bucket List Family, they would not have such a strong online presence. Social media is continuing to grow rapidly and I think if anyone can establish a niche in the online world that engages thousands of people, it makes for a viable career.
My research into the world of travel vlogging and how Covid has impacted their content creation, could provide useful insights to other vloggers, and creatives trying to adapt and survive in a time where travel is momentarily on hold. It could also be useful to upcoming travel bloggers, wanting to understand how each vlogger has their own unique take on content creation and why audiences feel so connected to the vloggers they invest hours of time in.
Whilst conducting my ethnographic research, it is important I take in consideration my own perspective that has developed overtime. Perspective “involves identifying your bias and challenging your own assumptions along with “recognising how your own cultural background frames and shapes your personal experiences and influences the way you comprehend the world” (Moore, 2020). It is important for myself to go into the research as a 22 year old, white Australian female, with an open mind, in order to look at things differently, and bear the fruits of the research.
To problematise this media niche I would like to incorporate the impact COVID-19 has had on the travel vlogging of The Bucket List Family and travel vloggers in general. With a field that relies heavily on travel experiences to share with followers, how has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted on the content creation of travel vloggers? Have they adapted in anyway, or is their brand established enough for it to last through months or even years of an international travel ban?
I am eager to delve in deeper into the community of The Bucket List Family to further understand its community and brand as a whole.
Until next time,
Georgia x
References
Burrell, J 2009, ‘The Field Site as a Network: A Strategy for Locating Ethnographic Research’, Field Methods , 21:2, pg. 181-199.
Massimo, A 2018, ‘Ethnography and the Digital Fields of Social Media’, Viewed 13 August 2020, https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2018.1465622
Georgia Woods 