Data collection method

Fig. 3. Systematic combining by Dubois and Gadde, (2002).

neutral presentation of Chiara Ferragni. It was in fact very important that each of the participants underwent the same exact stimulus, without being influenced by the interviewers’ words. In order to put at ease the respondents and enhance their will to freely express themselves, the interviews took place in study rooms where the social setting was very informal and relaxed.

Considering other research methods, the focus group technique was not chosen because the authors were not interested in sparking any kind of conversation between participants. They wanted instead the respondents to reflect and answer without being influenced by anything other than what was showed them. Also, focus groups may put respondents under social pressure and lead them to share only what they think are socially acceptable opinions (Smithson, 2000). The authors wanted their respondents to be as comfortable and as open as possible in order to gather truthful answers about their perceptions.

All the interviewees, after being fully informed about the research process, gave informed consent about their participations: they agreed to their voices being recorded and their answers to be featured on the thesis. However, since personal identity was not relevant for the aim of the research, participants were anonymised.

5.3.1 Design of the semi-structured interviews

The interviews took place in the span of two weeks (from the 27th of March to the 10th of April 2018) and each one lasted around 1 hour and a half with thirty minutes dedicated to video and photo elicitation. The first week was dedicated to Chinese participants, the second to Western ones.

As the semi-structured interview method requires (Bryman, 2012), the authors had designed an interview guide (see Appendix A) to follow during each session. The guide was split into three parts:

1) A set of introductory questions

2) A photo and video elicitation 3) A set of in-depth questions

The first set of questions varied according to the sample interviewed. The Chinese respondents were asked questions about their background, the length of their stay in Denmark, and their knowledge and utilization of Instagram. Firstly, the authors needed to be sure the interviewees had not lived for a long time in the West because according to the literature, living in a foreign country for a consistent period of time can affect how an individual perceive the world (Nisbett & Miyamoto, 2005). Questions about the social media were needed to get an overview about the sample Instagram usage and their familiarity with the world of fashion bloggers. The interviewers did not ask to the Western respondents how long they had been in Denmark as what the researchers were interested in was a sample with a “western mind-set”. Country specific features were not taken into consideration in the research. Also, as for the Chinese, questions regarding the App usage and their familiarity level were asked.

In the second section, since the purpose was to provide an overview of Ferragni’s self-presentation, the selection of video and photo contents was decided ahead by the authors to present the exact same contents to both the samples. Firstly, the interviewees watched Ferragni’s Instagram stories: the “best moments” of 2017, her pregnancy updates, and her business career achievements (See Appendix B). Subsequently, The Chiara Ferragni Collection Instagram account was also showed (See Appendix B). Finally, a selection of pictures that featured the same themes of the videos was also presented (See Appendix B).

The interviewees who already had Instagram application on the phone watched the Instagram contents from their devices while the ones who did not have the mobile app were given the authors’ phones. The participants who had headphones used them, the ones who did not were given a pair. It is worth noticing that the participants were guided in this process in order that the familiarity with Instagram app could not influence at all the participants’ perceptions. The interviewees just had to click on the accounts and on the videos and were often helped by the researchers in doing this.

Finally, in the third section, the same in- depth questions were asked to all participants regardless of their cultural origin. Since the aim of this part was to gather reflections on Chiara Ferragni as a woman, on her behaviour, and on her life, the researchers asked general-open questions regarding Chiara’s behaviour, her life approach, her relationship with others, and her job. By using this kind of questions, the authors avoided influencing the sample’s perception and in turn they gained much more spontaneous responses.

5.3.2 Sample and selection of participants

In this research, the authors chose non-probability sampling method, where not all members of the population have the chance of participating in the study. More specifically, the researchers utilized two different types of non-probability sampling.

Firstly, participants were selected according to a purposive sample. Purposive sampling dictates the selection of units (people, in this case) with direct reference to the research question of the thesis. Research questions often provide the criteria to what different kinds of people need to be observed (Bryman, 2012).

Different criteria were used to select participants. First of all, people from Western countries and China were selected. The reasons for this choice are explained in the introductory chapter called “Research Delimitations”. Sample sizes in qualitative interviews can be relatively small, from 5 to 25 (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009) and precisely eight individuals from each cluster were selected for this research. At this point of the participants’ selection, the researchers utilized the second type of non-probability sampling method, the convenient sampling. This type of sampling allows to select members from a population who are conveniently available to participate to the study. The Western sample was constituted by a French, a Swedish, a Finnish, a Germany, a Danish, a Greek, a Portuguese, and a North American. People from these countries were readily available to participate to the study.

Another criteria was the selection of individuals who had never been exposed in any way to Chiara Ferragni’s figure before. In fact, the authors wanted to test the

spontaneous perception of individuals during their first encounter with Chiara Ferragni to avoid any perception bias due to a different degree of familiarity. Finally, women between 20 and 35 years old were selected. This age and sex group more than any other follows fashion influencers on social media, as proven by Pew Research Center in 2018 (Smith & Anderson, 2018). Hence, these were the people more indicated to be observed. Also, the sample had to show an interest and pre-existent knowledge of the fashion blogger phenomenon in order to be able to look at Chiara as a person but as someone performing self-branding.

Table. 1. Chinese Sample profiles

Chinese Sample City Age

Interviewee 1 Nanjing 22

Interviewee 2 Shanghai 24

Interviewee 3 Beijing 26

Interviewee 4 Shanghai 22

Interviewee 5 Xi’an 24

Interviewee 6 Beijing 32

Interviewee 7 Shenyang 28

Interviewee 8 Shanghai 20

Western Sample Country Age

Interviewee 1 France 21

Interviewee 2 Sweden 26

Interviewee 3 Finland 27

Interviewee 4 Germany 24

Interviewee 5 Denmark 31

Interviewee 6 Greece 23

Interviewee 7 Portugal 24

Interviewee 8 North America 25

Table. 2. Western Sample profiles