- Between weeks 8 and 14, each student should provide a weekly reflection (500 words) on the data you have collected to date.
- What data did you collect?
- What is your initial impression of the data?
- How have the data you have collected this week changed/progressed your thinking about your research project?
- What challenges did you encounter while collecting the data?
- What are your next steps?
This week, after speaking to Professor Greene and reassessing my weekly timeline for data collection, I decided to move my content analysis of Instagram and TikTok fitness pages to this week and next. My literature review from last week proved to be limiting in the scope of my research and what formal research papers and studies analyze in comparison to my own personal research goals. Thus, I have decided to do a content analysis first in order to get access to more content and then dive deeper into a more nuanced study as my project progresses.
I began my content analysis on TikTok, taking note of how many fitness videos popped up on my For You Page. I then followed the accounts that came up as well as a few others across the platform as a means of a sample to examine the content they are producing. I looked at what the content of the video was, who it was aimed at reaching, camera angles, clothing, music, and other factors that may have been noteworthy. From here, I will continue to take notes on these pages and find themes and comparisons among how information is shared and the aesthetic/performative reasons behind this. In addition, I will be looking at Instagram pages and following a similar process of content analysis in order to figure out exactly where I will go with my research as it relates to the questions that I brought up in my original project proposal.