Danish fashion blogs: a critical discourse analysis of the fashion bloggers self representation that investigates the discourses, which are articulated through the bloggers communication, and the discourses which are shown through the recipient’s use of the blog.

Just a few years ago, fashion blogs were not a particularly well-known phenomenon. However, it is quite different today. The number of fashion blogs is increasing significantly and women of all ages are trying their hands at the phenomenon that has gained a great popularity in the digital media all around world. Despite that, it is not all fashion blogs that achieve equal success. Some fashion blogs have accomplished becoming so popular, that the women behind the blogs achieve celebrity status. Readers flock and the author of the blog inspires its readers across the country with their “outfit-posts” and fashion tips. In the empirical part of our thesis, we have dealt with the fashion blogs that have reached such a high popularity that it has placed them on a list depicting Denmark’s top 10 most-read fashion blogs.

We have observed two different fashion blogs, in which the difference in communication is palpable. Where one of the two blogs seems very serious and factually oriented, it is not the case in the other blog. Here we meet an author who not only communicates fashion tips and knowledge. She also takes the receiver behind the scenes so the readers gain an insight into the author’s life being lived alongside the blog. Therefore, this blog appears more personal in its communication. After this our analysis delves into how the two authors’ self-representation is reflected in the communication of the blog, which discourses the author is articulating through the text, and how the two types of authors are contrary to each other and their self-representation. We also examine the recipients’ communication. In this part we investigate how the recipients are using the blog and which discourses are articulated based on the recipients’ interaction that is happening in the comment box.
As in the author-analysis we aim to highlight which differences that have an effect on the recipient interaction of the two blogs. Closing the analysis, differences and similarities are discussed and the various discourses are opposed to each other, which makes us able to to subject the self-representation of the bloggers to a critical examination - both from author and recipient point of view. In elaboration of our analysis dealing with self-representation in two fashion blogs, we implicate various theorists – stating more precisely a mixture of Lisbeth Thorlacius’ model “Visual communication on websites”, to help us investigate the tex-tual and visual aspects on the website. In addition to this we employ Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis that works as the overarching scope of both our analyses. Furthermore, we implicate theorists such as Erving Groffman and Anthony Giddens, who both illuminate the self-representation perspective through their own theories.