Browsing by Author "Mäenpää, Sanna"

Aims. This study evaluates and analyses sustainable consumption choices by using fashion blogs. Different studies concerning blogs have been executed earlier in Finland, but studies concentrating precisely on ethical and ecological aspects have been rare. The aim of this study is to examine in which ways ethical and ecological values are presented in fashion blogs. The theoretical background covers several topics including sustainable consumption choices, ethical and ecological fashion, fashion blogs, consumership and blog marketing. Methods. The data selected for this study consists of six blog posts from six Finnish bloggers. The bloggers were chosen discretionarily from predefined criteria. The blogs had to be professionally written and somehow address ethical and/or ecological matters. The blog posts should also have been recently released to include the most current topics. This thesis was executed as a qualitative study and the data was analysed with a qualitative content analysis. A quantitative analysis was also used in support for the qualitative analysis. Results and conclusion. Ecological and ethical aspects were considered diversely in the data and after the qualitative content analysis, five main categories were combined. The bloggers wrote mostly about their own consumption habits, but they also gave advice for the readers. Some questions were raised about the ecological and ethical issues in clothing industry, but especially ethical issues were presented only remotely. Most of the bloggers also wrote about the conflict between fashion blogs and ecological and ethical values. The motives of writing about ecological and ethical matters varied a lot among the bloggers, but the most important reason was to evoke discussion on the subject. The bloggers also sought to inspire their readers to strive for more sustainable consuming.