Abstract
Abstract Cosmetics play an important role in our everyday lives. However, the variety of different products and brands appears confusing to consumers. Products vary from basic, indispensable, everyday items such as soaps, shower gels and shampoos, to decorative cosmetics and high-end skin creams with specific, “innovative” ingredients for every skin type imaginable. In recent years, beauty blogs have become a popular platform to seek information on cosmetic products. Such blogs often contain chemistry-based content, which is only rarely written or at least double-checked by someone with a scientific background. Often such blogs reach a readership of several million users per month. But which role do chemical aspects play in beauty blog texts? This paper describes a qualitative content analysis of 60 recent posts from six popular English-language beauty blogs. The texts were coded according to categories such as the number of chemistry-related terms, supporting information for such terms, positive and negative claims regarding chemical aspects, references to studies etc. Based on the distribution of the categories, three main types of blogs could be distinguished: The “scientific type”, the “semi-scientific type” and “the non-scientific type”. By color-coding the different categories, a difference between these types can be easily depicted. The paper will discuss first findings and ideas on how to make use of corresponding analyses of beauty blogs for the teaching of chemistry.
Highlights
Each day every one of us is confronted with an enormous amount of media messages, ranging from print-based newspaper articles to advertising or social media
As outlined in this paper, social media in general and blogs in particular are ubiquitous in the daily lives of the students and “it is futile to try to stop their influence at the classroom door” (Chao, Parker, & Fontana, 2011, p. 324)
Our research showed that beauty blogs contain a large amount of science-based information which is often not sufficiently explained and/or not supported by any empirical evidence
Summary
Each day every one of us is confronted with an enormous amount of media messages, ranging from print-based newspaper articles to advertising or social media. Especially social media platforms have gained massive popularity. Statistics show that the number of social media users worldwide has increased from roughly a billion in 2010 to 2.6 billion in 2018 (eMarketer, 2018). Young people are heavy social media users. Recent surveys among American teenagers showed that 76 % of the 13–17 year olds use social media sites daily (Lenhart, 2015). Blogs, which are considered to be a type of social media, have become a widespread communication platform for both sharing as well as retrieving information in the last 30 years. Forty-seven percent of US internet users in the age group between 18 and 29 read blogs on a regular basis (Statista Survey, 2018), even though other social media platforms such as Instagram gained popularity in recent years. Many of the popular blogs reach a readership of several million unique visitors per month
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