Zoella- media language and representation

Zoella has rebranded herself to Zoe Suggs.

How to textually analyse a website:

  • Homepage and other pages
  • Codes and conventions
  • Layout and design
  • Composition
  • Font size, type of font (e.g. serif/sans serif), colour 
  • Images/photographs - camera shot type, angle, focus
  • Mise-en-scene – colour, lighting, location, costume/dress, hair/make-up 
  • Graphics, logos
  • Language - formal/informal mode of address?
  • Anchorage of images and text
  • Elements of narrative/structure around the site
  • Interactive features
  • Menu bar and navigation – structure and design of the site

Terms to use in exam:


Multimodality- many forms of communication. where media text communicates through text, images, sounds etc. An example of a multimodal form of media is film as it combines sound and vision.

Hyperlink- A word you click on to go somewhere else.

 Hypermodality- leads us from place to place.

 Homepage- the main page of the website.

Above the fold- when designing the website, it needs to be top heavy, above the fold (this concept is also used for newspapers).

Thumbnail- preview image designed to spark interest within the audience.

Footer- copyright and who the site is designed by etc.

Main navigation/ menu bar- used to change from one place to another- user experience.

 Carousel- the slider  which moves the screen down (scroll bar).

Banner ad- ad that comes on the top of the page as a banner.

 Social media icons- used to search other products (web 2.0, above the fold).

Positioning- where audience is placed by producer.

 Hyperreality- more real than real.



Key theory 5- Postmodernism, Jean Baudrillard

"we live in a world where there is more and more information and less and less meaning."

To what extent is Zoella a hyperreal construct?

Zoella is hyperreal as she is everything a teenage girl would want to be, she's ideal.
She has no sexual appeal and in her hyperreal construct she has no hobbies apart from make up, beauty products and clothes.


To what extent is Zoella more real than real?
Zoella, much like other vloggers, is based on a mode of constant hyperreferentiality, and it is impossible to understand without an intimate knowledge of Barthesian referential codes. 




Paradigmatics of vlogging:
  • breaking the fourth wall (direct address)
  • binary opposition
  • amateur aesthetic
  • codes of realism
  • high-key lighting
  • single camera edit
  • invitation into private spaces
  • aspirational content
  • presenter pov
  • unscripted narrative (mistakes are made, most being deliberate, "fixed" with jump cuts)
  • leaving bloopers and mistakes implies that she's a normal person who makes mistakes
  • she's in her living room making it more informal and personal, as if the audience is having a private chat with her, makes he seem more human
  • high key lighting- professionally lit
  • use of postproduction filters- images are colour graded to look softer and more "natural"
  • her dress functions as a symbolic code of summer, happiness, girliness, youth- less sexualised, more "cute"

How can Zoe Suggs address a vast and anonymous audience while at the same time giving an illusion of friendly face to face communication?


 Key theories to use for online media:

  • Roland Barthes- Semiotics.
  • Levi Strauss- binary opposition.
  • Stuart Hall- representation theory.
  • Judith butler- gender performativity.
  • Paul Gilroy- ethnicity and colonial theory.
  • David Gauntlet- theories of identity.
  • Jean Baudrillard- postmodernism.

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