Sabbatical Presentation by Hyang-Sook Kim, Department of Mass Communication, College of Fine Arts and Communication
Hyang-Sook Kim, Associate Professor in the Department of Mass Communication, presents her sabbatical talk on Friday, May 12, 3:00pm on Zoom. The title of her presentation is “Cultivating Positivity through Authentic Stories: How Self-Disclosure Builds Cancer Vlog Communities on YouTube.”
Self-disclosure is a communication strategy widely used to convey authentic personal experiences among video bloggers (vloggers) on YouTube. While self-disclosure plays a vital role in attracting viewers, whether self-disclosure enables vlog communities to build and thrive is relatively unknown. This study explored the mediating effect of member contribution on reciprocity of self-disclosure between vloggers and viewers in cancer vlogs on YouTube. Path analysis of linguistic features and expressed sentiments in 503 cancer vlog videos and 194,300 associated comments revealed that self-disclosure among vloggers discouraged viewers to comment, in turn dampening reciprocal self-disclosure among viewers. However, the sheer number of comments by viewers encouraged self-disclosure among viewers, which contributed to overall positivity in the vlog community. The findings imply that reciprocity of self-disclosure from viewer to vlogger was less likely to occur when comments were salient to other viewers. However, contributions by other viewers cued community homophily, helping viewers leave their comfort zones to share personal stories with other viewers. Implications of this distinctive dynamic of a cancer vlog community are further discussed.
Hyang-Sook Kim’s sabbatical talk will be presented as part of COFAC’s Colloquium 57 on Friday, May 12, at 3:00pm on Zoom.
The Zoom link may be found here (passcode Colloquium).
Tags: ResearchCategorised in: General
This post was written by Zyne, Paula C.