Droz-Dit-Busset, O., Spilioti, T. “Getting personal with you” Affect and authenticity in confessional videos of YouTube lifestyle and beauty influencers (2024) Influencer DiscourseAffective relations and identities, Eds. Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich and Alexandra Georgakopoulou, John Benjamin’s Publishing Company, pp. 278-302.
DOI: 10.1075/pbns.349.11dro
Abstract
Since the Middle Ages, confession has been one of the ‘most highly valued techniques for producing truth’ (Foucault 1978). While confessional monologues have been researched in reality TV discourse (Lorenzo-Dus 2009; Tolson 2006), the communicative potential of confessional talk for Social Media Influencers has been largely underexplored. This chapter aims to fill this gap by exploring confession as a distinct genre in the communicative repertoire of lifestyle and beauty YouTubers. In this regard, we first map this genre in terms of its key themes, formal features and media production choices. Drawing on Giaxoglou’s (2021) notion of affective positioning, we also examine how the influencers and their audiences are affectively positioned in the discourse of confessional videos through the deployment of verbal, non-verbal, as well as other material (camera) and graphic (emojis) resources. We conclude this chapter by demonstrating how this type of positioning intersects with the production of an authentic selfhood on YouTube. © 2024 John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Author Keywords
(affective) positioning; affect; authenticity; confession; content creators; intimacy; lifestyle and beauty influencers; multimodality; social media influencers; vulnerability; YouTube
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