The presentation of self via everyday vlogging: Analyzing everyday vlogs of Korean expatriates

Abstract

Drawing on research about constructing identities through self-presentation (De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2012) and Bamberg’s (2011a, b) sameness and difference, I demonstrate how Korean expatriates employ vlogging strategies to construct and present everyday self, especially vis-à-vis viewers. To do so, I analyze 27 daily vlogs of Korean expatriates living in Hong Kong, New York, and Tokyo. The vloggers present the mundanity of everyday life, using chronological organization, quick scene transitions, micro-details, and “historical present” (Wolfson, 1979). These vlogging strategies, I argue, create alignment with viewers, signaling that “my daily life is just like yours.” Simultaneously, the vloggers make everyday vlogs engaging and entertaining through offering explanatory notes and not providing translation of what is being spoken, especially when they present foreign city lives, cultures, and languages they experience by virtue of living abroad, to signal “my daily life is different from yours.” Everyday vlogging of Korean expatriates, as a type of “lifestreaming” (Marwick 2013), involves meaning making and identity construction processes through which Korean expatriates skillfully exert and express agency in (ab)normalizing their expatriate self and life, in connection to others, and thus achieve self-legitimacy and -empowerment.