Featured image of tarot cards (lanacion.com.ar n.d.) via Pinterest

Content Creation

An ethnographer’s research encompasses their own personal experiences (Pink et al. 2016). This week I immersed myself into content creation and actively participated in the online tarot card niche. Initially my strategy was to replicate content that was already popular within this niche, but eventually, I altered my thinking towards something that was more outside the box.

For my first piece of content surrounding tarot card reading I decided to make a “guess the card” video where I displayed a brief sneak peel of a tarot card and prompted the audience to identify which card it was, based on what the visible aspects they could see. After five seconds I reveal the card, allowing the viewers to compare their guesses. I believed this would be a fun way for me to enter this niche as a new creator to try and differentiate myself. This is very different to the most popular style of video within this niche which is a trend involving generalised tarot card readings targeted at a mass audience.

Prior to this video, I have never created videos like this, thus I had to overcome the initial fear and learning curve. Before the Internet, content creation and distribution was always an expensive and difficult process. However, curating online digital content is dramatically easier, faster, and cheaper than ever before meaning anyone with access to the internet can participate (Blank 2013).

Instagram Slides

TikTok Video

To film my TikTok video I simply used the camera on my iPhone 12 Plus. First I made sure I had sufficient lighting and then closely filmed the chosen tarot card, to ensure that identify the card would be a challenge. After a 5-second countdown, I pulled back the camera to reveal the card. Then in the editing phase, I used the app CapCut which I already had installed, to edit the video by adding the text and background music. 

For my Instagram content, I adapted this video into images so I could upload them as a slideshow. I took a screenshot of the cards’ close-up from the video for the first slide so that users on Instagram could still engage in guessing the card. Subsequently, I utilised Canva to create the next 2 slides, the first revealing the tarot card and the second explaining its signifigance.

Finally, I will be uploading these posts to their respective platforms, completed with captions and hashtags and will observe how the audience responds.

Audio:

References:

Blank, G 2013, ‘WHO CREATES CONTENT?’, Information, Communication & Society, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 590–612, Viewed 2 September 2023, <https://doi-org.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/10.1080/1369118X.2013.777758>

Creswell, John W. (2016) 30 Essential Skills for the Qualitative Researcher, Sage: Los Angeles

Guzman, G de 2017, ‘How to Use Canva: An 8-Step Guide to Creating Visual Content’, HubSpot, Viewed 2 September 2023, <https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-use-canva> 

Lanacion.com.ar n.d., Pinterest, Viewed 18 August 2023, <https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/70016969200202588/> 

Pink, S, Horst, HA, Postill, J, Hjorth, L, Lewis, T & Tacchi, J 2016, ‘Digital ethnography: Principles and practice’, Sage Publications, London; Thousand Oaks, California, Viewed 2 September 2023, <https://moodle.uowplatform.edu.au/pluginfile.php/4102975/mod_resource/content/2/Digital%20Ethnography%20-%20Researching%20Experience.pdf>

Published, AS 2023, ‘How to use CapCut’, Tom’s Guide, Viewed 2 September 2023, <https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-use-capcut>