ABSTRACT

YouTube has provided a platform for many queer vloggers in South Africa to find audiences and to represent queer lives via a public medium. The platform allows for multiple queer identities to be represented in dynamic ways, complicating the ways in which mainstream mass media often stereotype or distort queer lives and experiences, and simultaneously challenging the widespread social marginalisation of queer people. This article explores how queer South African vloggers have created communities that function as heterotopias, spaces that allow for social and cultural norms to be contested or reversed. These heterotopian YouTube communities provide forums where identity, space and authenticity or “realness” are invoked and reimagined in ways that speak back to the limitations or oppressions experienced in offline spaces. The communities also offer viewers and commenters the space to share, reflect on and demonstrate support for the experiences of others. Videos of influential South African vloggers are analysed to demonstrate the heterotopic potential of these queer communities.

摘要

YouTube为南非的许多酷儿视频博客提供了一个平台，可以找到观众并通过公共媒体代表酷儿的生活。该平台允许以动态方式表示多个酷儿身份，使主流大众媒体经常刻板或扭曲酷儿的生活和经历的方式变得复杂，同时也挑战了酷儿人群的广泛社会边缘化。本文探讨了奇怪的南非视频记录员如何创建起异质症作用的社区，这些异质性空间允许对社会和文化规范进行质疑或逆转。这些异质的YouTube社区提供了论坛，通过这些论坛来调用和重新构想身份，空间和真实性或“真实性”，以回味离线空间中受到的限制或压迫。社区还为观看者和评论者提供了共享，反思和展示对他人体验的支持的空间。分析了有影响力的南非视频博客的视频，以证明这些同志社区的异位潜力。