Analysing digital audiences: A case study of YouTuber depression videos

The affordances of social media have created a new relationship between media figures and their audiences, and new methods are required to study the interaction between them. In this chapter, audience comments on YouTube videos are analysed in order to study the dynamic interplay between creators and the viewing community expressed in the ‘below-the-line’ comments accompanying the videos. In each case, the creator is a lifestyle vlogger who has uploaded a confessional video in which they talk candidly about their experiences of depression. The audience comments are interpreted with reference to the concept of parasocial interaction, an approach whose literature, mostly based on broadcast media, assumes a largely one-to-one correspondence between media figure and media user. Some viewing communities do indeed reproduce patterns of traditional parasocial interaction, with viewers addressing the creator directly, and the creator remaining silent, while others resemble fan communities, with the creator often being discussed in the third person. In others, however, the creator becomes a dynamic participant in the interactive environment, challenging long-held assumptions about the parasocial.