Snapchat midterm
- 1. What are the Motivations for Ordinary People to Share Snapchat Narratives? By: Phoebe Edwards
- 2. My research First, I went onto the good ol’ Google and researched what has already been said about Snapchat Narratives…Surprisingly, there really wasn’t much out there even though Snapchat stories have been around for a few years now. For the most part, people have only talked about how celebrities use Snapchat as another medium to advertise their lives and brands. But no one has talked about how Snapchat can give a regular person their own sort of Reality TV outlet. I’m not interested in celebrities though; I wanted to find out why normal people post the types of stories that they do to their MyStories. What’s their motivation? So, I created a survey that helped me answer my questions.
- 3. Questions Asked and Answered More than half of the participants said that they post photos to their MyStory to create a continuous movement of events and create a longer story than the 10 second maximum allows. This shows me that people aren’t just interested in taking photos or videos and showing them to people, but sharing parts of their lives. Further, an overwhelming majority of people said that their stories are accurate representations of their lives. This tells me that people aren’t simply on Snapchat for fun, but to document parts of their lives.
- 4. Questions Asked and Answered (Cont.) One of the most important questions I asked was, “Would you say your MyStory serves as a sort of Reality TV look into your own life?” A solid 40% of people agreed that it did. Obviously, this tells me that people do indeed think of their MyStory as a normal person’s Reality TV, but I still don’t know why? The second most important question I asked was, “Why do you post photos/videos to your MyStory?” Almost 50% of people said that they “want people to know what they’re up to,” and almost 30% said that “they want to entertain their followers.”
- 5. Analysis of My Questions My last question told me what I wanted to know: The majority of people either post to entertain their followers, or post to broadcast their lives. I asked myself what these two things have in common and realized that they are the basis of a Reality TV show. Think about it. Why do Reality TV shows exist? Simply because celebrities want to share their lives and entertain people by doing it. This helped me conclude not only why people post to their MyStories, but also how it can be perceived as a regular person’s Reality TV.