Legitimation, Authenticity, and Communicative Entitlement in YouTube “Lifestyle” Vlogs: The Case of “Hygge”

Authors

  • Will Gibson Institute of Education, University of London
  • Elisabeth Muth Andersen University of Southern Denmark

Keywords:

hygge, authenticity, vlogs, legitimacy, YouTube

Abstract

This article uses ethnomethodological conversation analysis and multimodal analysis to explore the performance of “authenticity” in “lifestyle” vlogs that deal with the topic of hygge. This analysis contributes to our understanding of the emergence and development of vloggers’ “genre practices,” foregrounding the epistemic strategies through which “authenticity” is configured. The analysis points to three distinctive epistemic categories of hygge videos: (1) videos in which vloggers discursively claim legitimacy as practitioners of hygge; (2) videos in which vloggers embody hygge practice as a way of displaying legitimacy; (3) videos in which vloggers show hygge as distinctively Danish and enact their Danish identity through the videos. These three types involve the production of different notions of authenticity that are tied to particular identity claims, accounting practices, and audience positionality.

Author Biographies

Will Gibson, Institute of Education, University of London

Will is professor of Social Interaction and Qualitative Research Methods at the Institute of Education, University of London. His research concerns the use of interactionist methods for the study of diverse empirical contexts including numerous online domains. He recently co-edited the Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism (2021) along with Dirk vom Lehn and Natalia Ruiz-Junco.

Elisabeth Muth Andersen, University of Southern Denmark

Elisabeth Muth Andersen is an Associate Professor in Danish Language and Lommunication at the Department of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark, and is a member of the research center Social Practices and Cognition (SoPraCon).  Mainly using Ethnomethodological Conversation Analytic methodology, she has conducted research on online as well as face-to-face interaction. Approaching written and multimodally constructed mediated texts as interaction, her research includes work on reader constructions in online newspapers, membership categories used to do moral work in social media interaction, Membership Categorization Analysis of online comments, as well as constructions of viewer participation in a fictional net-series. Recent publications include papers in Journalism Studies and Discourse, Context & Media.

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Published

2024-04-14

Issue

Vol. 18 (2024)

Section

Articles

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