How May I Impress You? A Content Analysis of Online Impression Management Tactics of YouTube Beauty Vloggers

How May I Impress You? A Content Analysis of Online Impression Management Tactics of YouTube Beauty Vloggers by Xiaoxiao Ma Dr. Lawrence Mullen, Thesis Committee Chair Professor of Media and Policy University of Nevada, Las Vegas This research aims at investigating how YouTube beauty vloggers utilize impression management tactics to convey the intended image in an online environment by analyzing their self-presentational behaviors. Two individual coders coded one hundred videos that top trending on YouTube, featuring some single human vloggers who used English as the primary presentation language. Results revealed that first, vloggers had engaged with all four self-presentational behavioral strategies (verbal expressions, nonverbal cues, artifactual displays, and purposive behaviors) in the seemingly amateur videos. Second, a commonly shared feature of top trending vlogs was that they were all designed with abundant and diverting content, indicating that viewers favored the content more than the structure of the vlog. Third, most presenters demonstrated extraverted and likeable personality traits. Fourth, viewers preferred to watch the vlogs with natural props and in simpler environmental settings. Lastly, vloggers chose to use more acquisitive impression management tactics than protective ones in top trending vlogs, and the results showed that viewers also displayed consent to receiving more positive framing.