From the bedroom to LA: Revisiting the settings of early video blogs on YouTube

• Main Author: Rainer Hillrichs
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam University Press 2016-01-01
• Series: NECSUS : European journal of media studies
• Online Access: https://www.necsus-ejms.org/test/from-the-bedroom-to-la-revisiting-the-settings-of-early-video-blogs-on-youtube/

This article revisits the settings of early video blogs on YouTube and the arguments made about these settings thus far. Video bloggers’ use of domestic and other settings is a far more complex issue than it may initially appear. Convenience, creative ambitions, viewers’ expectations, and emerging conventions intersected in this dimension of video blogging. In contrast with the notion of private spaces that were simply shown as they are, I suggest that bedrooms were consciously and performatively put into the scene. For these reasons, and because videos were typically produced to be publicly shown on YouTube, I challenge the notion of a genealogical relation of video blogs with home movies and videos. Instead, video blogs should be historicised and contextualised with other public audiovisual practices.