In week three, I continued to think about authenticity and vlogging. In week two, I became more interested in how vloggers create communities and fan bases, and how authenticity or inauthenticity plays a role in that. I recently read another article that continued this. However, it also made me aware that I want to spend the majority of my time researching authenticity and its impacts. So, for example, a tight-knit community could be one of many results of their authentic performance, but I also want to explore the other impacts as well. I latched onto this fascination with the \u201ccynical\u201d and \u201csincere\u201d performances after reading an article by Kimberly Ann Hall on a famous YouTube scandal. One of the first ever vloggers, this girl\u2019s channel thrived as she posted videos of herself going through her day. However, people questioned whether it was a real, authentic vlog or a fabricated script (it ended up being the latter). So, using this example, does the fact that it was fake change how meaningful the messages delivered can be? Can a \u201ccynical\u201d performance be used to make a positive impact? And, of course, what is authenticity for vloggers? Do they have to be amateur? These are the questions I\u2019m now zeroing in on, because I feel like they\u2019re more in line with what interests me most about the vlog style of media.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t want to abandon completely they type of questions I was asking last week regarding community-building. I still think it\u2019s useful to think about how these communities are close enough to comment supportive messages on serious, heartfelt videos. However, I want to answer that by thinking about authenticity. How does authenticity<\/em> drive this? Are there things that vloggers do that make their performances seem more \u201csincere\u201d and thus bring out a feeling of trust and comfort? If so, what are they? And, if they don\u2019t do these things, will people in their \u201ccommunity\u201d of subscribers and commenters still respond the same way to their videos? Asking these questions and using the articles I\u2019ve collected so far on authenticity, as well as using my own content analysis on some vlogs will help me. So far, I was struggling to ask the questions that got at my underlying fascination for vlogs and why they are so popular. I\u2019m happy, though, because now I feel like after a few weeks of tweaking and modifying I\u2019m on the exact train of thought that I wanted.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve also considered changing the nature of my project. I still think it will be useful to write a standard research paper on authenticity and its impact on vlogs (number of subscribers, popularity, income, community-building, etc.). However, I\u2019m also thinking about making a short vlog of my own \u2013 something I\u2019ve never done and have never remotely wanted to do. But, the more I think about it, I think it may be a fun way for me to understand these performances better. It would allow me to be in the shoes of the content creators and understand how and why they may choose to show certain things, act particular ways, etc. I\u2019m not positive I\u2019ll be doing this and I want to schedule a meeting with Prof. Greene to discuss, but I think it may be an interesting way to learn more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In week three, I continued to think about authenticity and vlogging. In week two, I became more interested in how vloggers create communities and fan bases, and how authenticity or inauthenticity plays a role in that. I recently read another article that continued this. However, it also made me aware that I want to spend … Continue reading “Log 3”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":15,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-28","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-sjablons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-sjablons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-sjablons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-sjablons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-sjablons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-sjablons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-sjablons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-sjablons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}