Thesis advisor: Celeste Wells / This study examined the influence of a popular Youtuber in creating social discourse surrounding concepts of health, fitness, and beauty, employing a case study approach of the popular Youtube channel, Blogilates. Both visual and rhetorical analyses were conducted on the titles and thumbnail images of the top 50 most viewed Blogilates videos, and 10 videos were studied in depth. The findings established the concept of a unique power relationship between Youtubers and their viewers, which also explains the marked dissonance between the discourse posited by the channel’s marketing and the discourse posited in the actual video content. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Communication.

Smartwatch is a technological product that has rekindled a lot of interest worldwide and areseen to be connected to our day-to-day lives. The recent growth on the adoption of thesmartwatch has posed challenges to researchers and other interest groups. Humans now live inmodern scientific societies that are heavily reliant on numerous smart devices of which thesmartwatch is a part of it. Past research has been done on the smartwatch phenomenon and itsassociated question that surround it. In this paper, we seek answers to the vital questionsbordering the usage of smartwatch and how those factors that are responsible for the increasein adoption of the smartwatch . The grounded theory research designed was used as ourmethodological approach and data were collected from twenty participants, some living inSweden and some in Norway. Analysis of data is also based upon, and informed by, theguidelines of grounded theory data coding steps. Further open coding & axial coding techniqueswere applied in data analysis section. Analysis of the data collected from the interviewsrevealed some interesting areas of smartwatch applications today. It also presented an insighton how consumers of smartwatch think about the product. Results from this study will be usefulfor future researchers as well as smartwatch merchants and makers.