Vlogger, storyteller or character? Chronotopic identity shifts and multimodal resources in COVID-19 vlogs

Vlogs, as one of the most popular digital genres for the construction of personal experience, are an important site for the study of digital storytelling. Although the narration of ongoing events is becoming increasingly common in vlogs, narration of past events is still present. As they incorporate both storytelling modes, vloggers also act as editors curating and commenting on their materials. Thus, vloggers are presented with the task of transitioning between different chronotopic identities as characters, storytellers, and vloggers in their narratives. Research has shown that vloggers are judged based on perceived authenticity and credibility, as well as their ability to involve viewers, therefore managing these self-presentations is complex in view of the above requirements which have to be met if vloggers want to attain greater popularity. Drawing on a corpus of 47 YouTube vlogs documenting vloggers’ experiences of COVID-19, we analyze how vloggers transition between these chronotopic identities, and describe such transitions according to a dual system of categorization based on the chronotopes involved in the transitions and their function. We find that vloggers shift focus between their roles as vlogger, storyteller, and character through the use of multimodal resources such as captions, overlaid media, and camera movement, and in doing so, address the demands that they need to meet in order to gain followers by presenting themselves as competent, credible, and engaging content creators.