PART 1: RESEARCH PROPOSAL

YOUR NAME: Marybeth Fair

TOPIC: I am studying the social media app Instagram and the social media persona accounts
prevalent on the site.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS: How do the accounts of social media persona women on
Instagram negatively influence their followers?
AUDIENCE & SIGNIFICANCE: I am conducting this research in order to help followers of
such accounts understand how these accounts influence their minds and lives.
CONTEXT: This issue is important and timely because of the explosion of popularity of this app
in recent years. In September 2015, Instagram hit 400 million monthly users (CNBC). Many of
these accounts are social media persona accounts, pages dedicated to showing artful pictures of
women and their lives. Often having hundreds of thousands of followers, these women have a
significant, and often harmful, influence over their followers. I plan to investigate this negative
influence in order to inform their followers.
EXHIBIT: To illustrate my discussion of social media persona women, I plan to focus on case
studies of specific Instagram accounts within the larger lens of completed studies on social media
influence, celebrity influence, technological influence, etc.
KEY SOURCES FOUND SO FAR:
MLA Citation

Type of Source

What does it offer?

"Instagram Star Essena

Website News Article
O'Neill: Social Media Is Not
Real - CNN.com." CNN.
Cable News Network, 4 Nov.
2015. Web. 10 Nov. 2015.

a testimony to the negative

effects I am investigating

"Diana Marks
(@dianamarksofficial)
Instagram Photos and
Videos." Diana Marks
(@dianamarksofficial)
Instagram Photos and
Videos. Web. 10 Nov. 2015.

an example of one of the

accounts I am discussing

Website/ Social Media

Account

Wortham, Jenna. "On

Website News Article
Instagram, a Thriving Bazaar
Taps a Big Market." The
New York Times. The New
York Times, 14 Dec. 2012.
Web. 10 Nov. 2015.

explains how these Instagram

accounts create profit,
showing that these photos are
created to influence their
viewers

Vries, Dian A. De, and

Rinaldo Khne. "Facebook
and Self-perception:
Individual Susceptibility to
Negative Social Comparison
on Facebook." Personality
and Individual Differences:
217-21. Print.

Journal Article

explains how Facebook leads

to more negative social
comparison, which can in turn
lower self-esteem

Clay, Daniel, Vivian L.

Journal Article
Vignoles, and Helga Dittmar.
"Body Image And SelfEsteem Among Adolescent
Girls: Testing The Influence
Of Sociocultural Factors."
Journal of Research on
Adolescence: 451-77. Print.

explains the results of a study

that suggest viewing ultra-thin
women can reduce teen girls
self-esteem

PART 2: EXPLORATORY DRAFT

Through this project, I hope to accomplish a study of the negative effects social media persona
Instagram accounts have on their followers in order to make these followers aware of the
influences they are under and allow them, if necessary, to make changes to their following habits.
This topic is personally interesting to me. I have an Instagram account, and while I do not follow
many social media persona accounts, I often see photos from these accounts on other websites.
When I see these pictures, I wonder about the emotional and mental effects of these images. Do
they affect most people the same way? How strong of an effect do they have? Are they, as many
claim, inspiration to build a healthier lifestyle and achieve fitness goals, or, as I plan to argue, do
they lead to low self-esteem and a false sense of realistic women? The prevalence of these
accounts, some with hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers, convinces me that this
problem is important. If those many followers are exposed to this content daily, the effects of this
exposure are important to research.
Instagram is a social media app where users create a profile to share either pictures or 15-second
videos. Many women use this site to garner large followers by posting artful photos, inspiring
quotes, perfectly arranged meals, the outfit of the day, and more. These women gain followers
mostly through posting photos with many hashtags (a technique for assigning a topic to a photo),
hoping users will stumble across their account and follow them. The more followers they gain,
the more people to discuss their account and lead to more followers, and the cycle continues- or
such is the hope of those who make these accounts. In the description for their page (bio),
many have links to other social media platforms, and almost all have an email listed. Companies
whose consumer base matches the followers of the account can contact the owner and offer
sponsorship, paying the owner to post a photo with their product. In this way, the women can
realistically make a livelihood out of this social media account.

In just the very beginnings of research into specific social media persona accounts I have
conducted, I immediately found an interesting array of self-descriptions for the owners of these
accounts, listed in their bios. Fitness junkie (@dyedblonepony), Food, Crossfit, Health
(@kimmysheri), Foodie, Fitgirl, Lifestyle (@stefaniegoldmarie), Art addict (@sofikulin),
etc. The most thought-provoking self-description, however, was digital influencer with blue
eyes and 1.2 million fans (@dianamarksofficial). Digital influencer is such a perfect term to
describe these women. They have such a powerful influence- they can send whatever
information they choose into the pockets of hundreds of thousands of people. I am not the first to
be concerned about what information they choose and the effect it has on their followers. Just
last week, a digital influencer named Essena ONeill deleted her Instagram, YouTube, and
Facebook accounts, claiming that the lifestyle she was purporting was not real life (CNN). The
internet has clamored to praise her for being honest and fighting back against the lies of social
media. I intend to bring a new perspective by investigating many accounts. Rather than focus on
the creator, as was mostly the case with this example, I instead to fully study the followers.
The intended audience of this project includes those who follow these social media persona
accounts. These Instagram users will benefit by gaining the knowledge to critically evaluate what
they choose to view every day. They can adjust whom they follow, or even simply how they react
to photos, by understanding how they are influenced by these images. If my findings result in a
loss of followers to these accounts, the creators of these pages stand to lose.
I plan to start my essay with a brief explanation of a digital influencer and how the industry
works. Then, I plan to dive into specific examples of Instagram accounts. I can look at the
comments on the photos to see how the followers responds. I plan to supplement the
investigation of these accounts through more general scholarly articles. They will note a general
phenomenon in social media, and I will provide specific examples in these Instagram accounts. I
plan to make the points that the portrayed lifestyle of these accounts is fabricated, that these
photos promote an unhealthy body image, that they promote obsessive behavior, and they cause
dissatisfaction with the reality of their followers lives.
I have found many sources to support my argument. Multiple news articles have been published
on the story of Essena ONeill, making her an ideal case study. She has also released two videos
explaining her decision to quit social media, providing an ideal primary resource. I have found
an abundance of examples of social media persona accounts, all of which will help to find
examples for my project. There are also many articles that can be related to my argument.
Specifically, there is a New York Times article explaining the profit behind these accounts. An
article in the journal Personality and Individual Differences provides evidence of social media
use leading to negative social comparison, and an article in Journal of Research on Adolescence
explains the correlation between viewing thin models and negative self-image. These articles can
be then applied to Instagram specifically to support my claims. My audience expects evidence of
statistics and scholarly research. I plan to provide both of these types of evidence to fulfill these
expectations, but also dive into specific examples from the accounts I am discussing. The digital
influencers themselves will likely disagree with me, as I am, in essence, warning their followers
of the danger in following their accounts, often a lucrative source of income for these women.
They will likely point to their followers who claim these women inspire them to live a healthier
lifestyle.

I have a few questions and concerns regarding this project. First, I plan to hinge a significant
portion of my argument on specific examples from Instagram, so I will have many direct quotes
or examples from the site. I am not sure how to cite Instagram in MLA format. Also, in the
paragraph where I explain these accounts, I did not use a source. I consider the workings of these
common knowledge, so do I have to find a source to cite that information? I am also worried that
I will get bogged down in the specific examples and my paper will become too lengthy. Finally, I
am concerned that my paper is too expected and overdone, that there has already been a large
number of papers discussing the negative effects of these images of beautiful, unrealistic
women on their viewers. It would be interesting to argue in favor of these accounts, but I am not
sure how much evidence I could find supporting that claim.