Consumo e consumismo no mundo do influencing: a comunidade de beleza e moda no YouTube português

Abstract

Mainly composed by young women, the beauty and fashion community on YouTube revolves around content related to makeup, clothing, skin and hair care (Berryman & Kavka, 2017; Ceci, 2023; García-Rapp, 2016). By articulating topics traditionally associated with femininity with consumer goods and promotional practices (Andó, 2016; Genz, 2015), YouTubers in this sector are highly dependent on the financial returns generated through commercial partnerships (Hödl & Myrach, 2023 ). This study aims to understand the insertion of the YouTube beauty and fashion community into a circuit of product promotion and consumption, exploring how influencers relate to key agents in the industry, namely platforms and brands that invest in digital influence. Focusing on the Portuguese context, the study analyzes 13 of the most popular beauty and fashion YouTubers in the country. Based on criteria of popularity and heterogeneity of themes and formats, two to three videos from each creator were selected and subjected to a multimodal analysis. This resulted in a corpus of 32 videos, which were reviewed to map the discursive and visual practices in the digital promotion of beauty and fashion goods. The results indicate that consumption is a determinant element in the industry, and the community's creators promotes a consumerist attitude as a basis for establishing a close relationship with the audience. Beauty and fashion YouTubers adopt strategies aimed at shaping audience perceptions, attitudes, and purchasing intentions, which include aspirational labour (Duffy, 2016) and self-branding (Kanai, 2017), as well as performances of authenticity (Pruchniewska, 2018), in order to achieve digital attention and visibility and, consequently, future profit (Abidin, 2016; Marwick, 2015).