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A new authenticity? Communicative

practices on YouTube
a
Andrew Tolson
a
Department of Media, Film and Journalism , De Montfort
University , Leicester, UK
Published online: 22 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: Andrew Tolson (2010) A new authenticity? Communicative practices on
YouTube, Critical Discourse Studies, 7:4, 277-289, DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2010.511834

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 Critical Discourse Studies
Vol. 7, No. 4, November 2010, 277 –289

A new authenticity? Communicative practices on YouTube

Andrew Tolson∗

Department of Media, Film and Journalism, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

Recent discussion of some user-generated material on the Internet has argued that its
‘freshness’ and ‘spontaneity’ offers a new form of ‘authenticity’ in mediated
communication. With a focus on YouTube, particularly where extensive use is made of the
facility to post text comments on vlogs, it has been suggested that such activities reproduce
the feel of ‘face-to-face communication’. Interestingly such accounts echo previous debates
about broadcast talk, although YouTube is defined as a species of ‘post-television’. This
article assesses these claims through a case study of one practice of user-generated
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communication on YouTube, the so-called ‘make-up tutorial’. It takes an approach to

spoken discourse analysis previously developed in the study of broadcast talk, but it also
makes some observations about the structure of the YouTube site, by comparison with the
discursive ‘regime’ of television. This analysis finds that there are indeed some distinctive
communicative practices on YouTube, but rather than assessing these in terms of their
‘authenticity’, it is more useful to consider their ‘communicative entitlements’, which
throw new light on the constraints of traditional forms of broadcasting.
Keywords: authenticity; communicative entitlement; conversation; discourse analysis;
broadcast talk; television; viral communication; vlogging; YouTube

Introduction: mediated authenticity

Questions of authenticity have been a recurring theme in the analysis of modern mass media.1
However, they have been raised within different critical perspectives. If, in early commentaries,
for example those of the Frankfurt School and initially in Cultural Studies, the critical issue was
the authenticity of art or popular culture in conditions of mass reproduction, in more recent
discussions there has been an interest in rediscovering sources of authenticity in mass mediated
performance. To cite two well known examples: Richard Dyer has argued that a ‘rhetoric of
authenticity’ motivates a popular interest in film stars and David Marshall suggests that
authenticity is a key dimension of discourses of celebrity, both in television and in popular
music (Dyer, 1991; Marshall, 1997). In cinema, according to Dyer, and on television, according
to Marshall, what is at stake is the presence of the ‘real person’ in the celebrity persona. In
popular music, technological transformations of the relation between recording and live
performance have placed a premium on constructions of authenticity in the relation between
performers and their fans.
In all these media, judgements are being made (by consumers, not necessarily by critics)
about the quality of mediated performances. In contexts of industrial production and technologi-
cal enhancement, questions are asked about the ‘sincerity’ and/or ‘genuine’ quality of the acting
(in film) or the singing (on record). In television, where a dominant ideology insists that perfor-
mers who are not overtly acting are ‘being themselves’ (Tolson, 2001; Ytreberg, 2002), this issue
has been especially acute. For example, if, for a television celebrity like Oprah Winfrey, it is not
possible clearly to distinguish the ‘real person’ from the public persona, how are we to know that

∗
Email: avtolson@dmu.ac.uk

ISSN 1740-5904 print/ISSN 1740-5912 online

# 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2010.511834
http://www.informaworld.com
 278 A. Tolson

the apparent ‘sincerity and conviction’ in her performance as ‘authentic host’ is a genuine per-
sonal quality (Marshall, 1997, p. 131ff)? Or if it has been constructed and cultivated for pro-
fessional purposes, does that make it inauthentic in some way?
For television (as a form of broadcasting) these questions have been brought to focus in fresh
and interesting ways in the analysis of broadcast talk. The specific issue here is that since the
1930s broadcast talk has aspired to be ‘conversational’ in its mode of address to listeners and
viewers. In the UK, the historical research of Paddy Scannell and David Cardiff (1991) has
traced how the development of radio talks at the BBC saw, in the 1930s, a shift away from
extended monologues or ‘straight talks’ of the sort associated with forms such as the political
speech, lecture or sermon and towards more dialogical forms of round table discussion, inter-
viewing and debate (Cardiff, 1980). At the same time it was felt that listeners in their own
homes and leisure time, would only listen to the radio if it spoke to them in ways they found
attractive. Gradually, though with some difficulty and much experimentation, ways of speaking
on radio were adapted to patterns of ordinary talk.
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However one problem with broadcast talk is that, because of its institutional location, its
‘authenticity’ can be called into question. It may aspire to be ‘conversational’, but it can
never be the naturally occurring ‘ordinary conversation’ of everyday life, as featured, for
instance, in the analysis of spoken discourse (Cameron, 2001). Conversational broadcast talk
does not ‘naturally occur’ for it is governed by institutional protocols; nor is it reciprocally inter-
active, because its recipients are positioned as an ‘overhearing audience’ (Heritage, 1985). Some
of the founding work on broadcast talk has argued that its conversationality is ‘simulated’
(Goffman, 1981); and in their famous essay on mediated interaction, Donald Horton and
Richard Wohl (1956) defined this as ‘para-social’ rather than truly dialogical. It has been
suggested that such accounts approach broadcast talk with a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’
(Scannell, 2001), as for example in Norman Fairclough’s discussion of the ‘synthetic persona-
lisation’ of mediated public discourse (Fairclough, 1989). From this point of view, broadcast talk
is permeated with forms of ‘conversationalisation’ rather than being authentic conversational
talk, as such.
Since the publication of Fairclough’s critique there has been some subsequent debate about
authenticity in broadcast talk (a special issue of the journal Discourse Studies was devoted to this
topic in 2001). The most sophisticated riposte to Fairclough is offered by Scannell, who effec-
tively shifts the ground away from the authenticity of the talk itself, to the communicative
context that is established between broadcasters and their audiences. This is characterised as
a ‘care-structure’, in which the talk may not be natural conversation, but its conversational qual-
ities allow for the cultivation of sociability (Scannell, 1996, 2001). Everyone watches television,
it is ‘for-anyone-as-someone’, and as such everyone is entitled to talk about it, in a ‘communi-
cative entitlement’ which is inclusive and implicitly democratic. I shall return to Scannell’s dis-
cussion of communicative entitlement in the final section of this article, but for the moment it
should be seen as making a significant intervention in the debate about authenticity in mediated
communication.
These debates about broadcast talk have relevance for this article, because they provide a
context in which to evaluate some recent developments in mediated communication made poss-
ible by the Internet. Specifically my interest here is in some user-generated video material to be
found on file-sharing sites such as, and especially, YouTube. With its promotional slogan
‘Broadcast Yourself’, YouTube invites comparison with traditional forms of broadcasting,
and indeed some recent discussion defines this as a form of ‘post-television’ (Lister, Dovey,
Giddings, Grant, & Kelly, 2009). These authors also claim that ‘viral communication’ on the
Internet has the potential to deliver new kinds of mediated authenticity:
 Critical Discourse Studies 279

The very pleasure of the viral communication for the user is that it needs to feel ‘discovered’,
‘original’, ‘fresh’ – it needs to arrive with the serendipitous feel of the spontaneous and the
authentic. (p. 201)
In the light of such claims it will be interesting to consider what precisely might be thought to be
‘fresh’, ‘spontaneous’ and ‘authentic’ about some of the videos that appear on YouTube.
Other commentators have argued that user-generated ‘vlogging’ is ‘the emblematic form of
YouTube participation’ (Burgess & Green, 2009, p. 53). There are of course various ‘affor-
dances’ of this technology: as well as being a repository for all sorts of recorded happenings
and events, it also functions as an archive of clips from traditional media. However, interestingly
in the light of previous work on broadcast talk, Burgess and Green suggest that a distinctive
feature of vlogging is its ‘conversational character’, in so far as it ‘reminds us of the residual
character of interpersonal face-to-face communication’, and it is this ‘that distinguishes the
mode of engagement in the categories dominated by user-generated content from those domi-
nated by traditional media’ (p. 54). So is it the conversationality of vlogging that renders it
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more ‘authentic’ than the pseudo-conversations of traditional broadcasting? Burgess and

Green do not explicitly make this claim, but they do report that an ‘ideology of authenticity’
is a significant part of the ‘DIY culture’ of YouTubers, as illustrated for example in their justified
suspicions about the origins of LonelyGirl 15 (pp. 28– 29). In both academic and user-generated
discussion therefore, with its ‘emphasis on liveness, immediacy and conversation’ (Burgess &
Green, 2009, p. 54), vlogging on YouTube is seen as a distinctively original form of mediated
communication.
Accordingly, and given the relative absence to date of such empirical research (Turner,
2010) it would now seem to be appropriate to test some of these claims through critical discourse
analysis. My approach here is to examine a particular genre of user-generated video (which has
received some attention from mainstream media) as a case study. Specifically I will be looking at
make-up ‘tutorials’ (and ‘lectures’) on YouTube, and will compare and contrast their commu-
nicative practices with traditional forms of broadcast talk. The methodology involves analysing
transcripts of talk, using concepts previously applied to broadcast talk (Tolson, 2006; Hutchby,
2006; Lorenzo-Dus, 2009). Following that, some more general observations will be made about
structural features of the context in which these videos appear, comparing this with the discur-
sive ‘regime’ of conventional television (Tolson, 1985, 1996). Finally the discussion will return
to questions of ‘authenticity’, but more precisely to the potential here for a participatory culture
that is not available in traditional broadcasting.

Communicative practices on YouTube

On 23 January 2009 The Guardian newspaper announced that its new make-up specialist, with a
weekly feature in its Saturday magazine, was to be Lauren Luke, ‘a 27-year-old single mother
from Tyneside’. Luke’s expertise and notoriety was based on her delivery of home-produced
make-up tutorials on YouTube (under the moniker panacea81). At the time of that announce-
ment Luke was ‘the second most popular YouTube user in Britain’ with a huge following of
young women. So popular had she become that, not only was she now about to make the tran-
sition from ‘new’ to ‘old’ media, but she was also hired by a New York cosmetics company to be
the front person for its products. In an attempt to explain this popularity, The Guardian commen-
ted on her ‘unaffected amateurism and great charm. Luke doesn’t edit her videos – she doesn’t
know how’ (23 January 2009, p. 3).
Further investigation reveals that Luke is herself just one representative of an extensive
online community. On YouTube, the make-up tutorial is a major feature of its ‘How To &
Style’ category of user-generated content, with scores of ‘tutors’ catering for every conceivable
 280 A. Tolson

stylistic variation and colour shade. Moreover, because of the text facility whereby viewers can
post their comments, the site itself offers evidence of a vast, and of course international, com-
munity of consumers. So if, on one level, Luke’s vlogs provide interesting empirical material
for analysis of practices of viral communication, on another they are perhaps indicative of
new forms of mediated ‘participatory culture’. I examine aspects of the communicative practice
of vlogging in terms of three key dimensions: presentation, interactivity and expertise.

Presentation
On 27 April 2009 Lauren Luke posted a video on YouTube entitled ‘My New Make Up Line’.2
This was the range of cosmetics manufactured in America now carrying her name, as mentioned
in The Guardian article. On several occasions Luke declares herself to be ‘excited’ and ‘proud’
of this development; in fact it is the second greatest achievement of her life so far, after the birth
of her son. The video is 14 minutes 50 seconds long and is entirely devoted to displaying
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these products, not only the cosmetics as such but also the packaging, and demonstrating the
different colours on the back of her hand. A very striking feature of this display is that she repeat-
edly holds up the products, and her hand, directly to the camera, so obscuring most of her face.
The visual effect is entirely different from the posed appearance of a model, or a celebrity, in a
conventional cosmetics advertisement. Here is a transcript of the video’s first two minutes:
Lauren Luke: Extract 1
Hi everyone. Today I’m going to be showing you my new make-up line. And you’ll have to
forgive us if I do outbursts squeezy squirty squeals ‘cos I’m so excited right (.) Okay first
we’re gonna start with the long awaited my fierce violets. Now I’m gonna show you the
cards first
[Holds card to camera]
5 because this is what I’ve been playing with and they’ve got all the names attached and this is
what I’ve been sent that I can use in me tutorials. The actual products themselves are here I
have them yes but I can’t touch them inside ‘cos it’s for photo purposes still and there’s
lots of photos taken of these palettes. Now somebody I think (.) they got sent off for
the photo shoot in one of the magazines in America and it’s Elle magazine which wow I got
10 they wanted to do an interview with us so I went along in New York to do an interview and
because it’s been passed here there and everywhere the actual palette
[Holds palette to camera]
(.) see that? I think someone’s had a dip but (.) nonetheless I didn’t do it meself just in case so
anyway I’m gonna run you through each one but first I want to show you the outer cartons ‘cos
I’m so excited about the whole thing. Right these are a bit d-dented ‘cos they’ve been in me
15 make up bag ‘cos I’ve been showing them off left right and centre. So
[Holds carton to camera]
first you’ve got luscious greens. . .
The video is recorded on a single camera located in Luke’s bedroom. Some bedroom furni-
ture and, in the right hand edge of the shot, a teddy bear, constitute its mise-en-scene. Apart from
the moments when she holds products to the camera, and apart from a couple of times when she
looks to her right, apparently to check the time, the video is a single shot of her face in big close-
up, directly addressing the viewer. This direct visual address is reinforced by features of the talk
in what is a continuous monologue. Luke speaks directly to her viewers as a plural ‘you’; there
are deictic references to time (‘today’, ‘now’) and space (‘here’, ‘this’); the monologue starts
with a greeting; and Luke makes use of response demands which require viewer participation
(‘see that’, line 12). All this is reminiscent of basic and simple forms of broadcast presentation,
such as television programmes for very young children or traditional forms of DJ talk
(Montgomery, 1986). The effect is to construct co-presence and invite interaction even
though of course, none of this is live.
 Critical Discourse Studies 281

Luke’s ‘ordinariness’ is confirmed, not only by the domestic setting but also by what she
‘gives off’ about herself. She speaks with a northern English (geordie) accent and uses the
non-standard grammar of the local dialect (e.g. the plural ‘yous’). She also uses colloquial
phrases (‘here there and everywhere’ [line 11] and ‘left right and centre’ [line 15]). However
these conventional phrases are interspersed with apparently spontaneous interpolations
(‘wow’, line 9) and inventive expressions of personal feeling (‘squeezy squirty squeals’, line
2). This gives the impression that she is producing conversational ‘fresh talk’ (Goffman,
1991) rather than reading or reciting from a script. Luke’s ordinariness is also apparent in
what she says about herself: a young woman speaking from a bedroom in Tyneside who has
just been interviewed by Elle in New York clearly conveys the novelty of her situation. Such
self-characterisation is also a feature of radio DJ presentation, though there it is often playful
and ironic rather than spontaneous and sincere (Brand & Scannell, 1991).
This self-referentiality extends to transparency about the process of production. Minor flaws in
the presentation, such as the fact that some of the cartons are dented, are explained rather than
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glossed over. Luke draws our attention to, and excuses herself from, the observation that one of
the samples is missing, in what are demonstration packs ‘for photo purposes only’. However,
what is most unusual by comparison with traditional broadcasting is Luke’s references to the
time left on the video recorder. It is clear that this performance is recorded in real time, rather
than shot and edited, and that there is limited time available until (as she informs us) ‘the camera’ll
cut off’. However we are told not to worry when that happens because ‘I’ll just switch it back on’,
which is indeed what comes to pass eight minutes into the tape. It is not just then that the pro-
duction is amateurish, it is that she makes a transparent virtue of this. There are some forms of
DJ talk associated with zoo radio where the production process is foregrounded to the listener,
but that is for dramatic purposes (Tolson, 2006) rather than, as here, out of an apparent naivety.

Interactivity
A final point to make about this performance is its interactivity with viewers. There are two sides
to this: one side comes from Luke herself and the other side is evident in viewer responses. On
her side Luke develops the direct address and transparency of her performance to produce asides
on her relationship with her fans. All the features of her presentation – the direct address,
colloquialism, ordinariness and self-referentiality are apparent in this short extract:
Lauren Luke: Extract 2
I’m really proud to be showing you these. And another thing it’s quite sentimental for me showing
you these because again like I keep saying I hope I don’t bore anyone when I say this but without
you all I would never have gotten to do this an opportunity like this in me life. So thanks goes to
yous really. Thank you for sticking around. Thank you for sticking around watching me videos
5 even though they’ve not been amazing quality and all that (.) but uh thank you. Let’s get cracking
petticoat pink. . .
For their part, the YouTube site enables viewers to respond both with their own videos and more
commonly with text comments. In fact the site informs us that there are 4432 text comments on
‘My New Make Up Line’. Here are just four of these:
Coolclover17
Wow I’m so happy for you congrats I looked on the video and I love the salty blues and fierce
violets. I know how your so exited who wouldent be excited

compassrose117
eeeeeeeeee I am so excited for you! And I am definately getting some, asap! this look you’re
wearing is gorgeous by the way and I can’t even get over how pumped I am for you! ,3333
you are awesome and I love your looks! and products! yayyy omg :-)
 282 A. Tolson

dubprince
can I just say you are stunning and naturally pretty, and that make up looks wonderful you,I’m a
huge fan of mac but will definately be buying one of these kits,I think I want all of them, eek :)lol

ledzepgurl
Oh I love these! Congratulations and I’m so happy for you :D I hope I can purchase some! And I
also love how they’re cruelty free :D
Text messaging of this sort provides empirical evidence of the ‘conversational character’ of
vlogging, as highlighted in Burgess and Green’s (2009) discussion. Conversationality is
evident in the reciprocation which respondents give to Luke’s monologue, for it is clear that
they are not commenting on the products, in fact they are not really ‘commenting’ at all,
rather, they are giving direct responses to her video appearance. They use similar colloquial
language (‘I can’t get over how pumped I am for you’) and of course use the emoticons and con-
ventional abbreviations (omg, lol) associated with texting. Some of this emotion is expressed as
inarticulate cries (eeeee, eek), but what particularly gives the impression of ‘conversation’ is the
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fact that Luke’s personal statements in her video are recycled. By picking up on her opening
remark about being ‘so excited’, the first two responses echo the cooperative exchanges of con-
versational turn-taking. Perhaps also the spelling mistakes and non-standard punctuation con-
tribute to their general impression of immediacy and spontaneity.

Expertise
However if this is ‘conversational’ talk, both in its delivery and in the forms of text response,
there is also a level at which it is paradoxical. This paradox is located in the use of the term
‘tutorial’, which is Luke’s own word for what she is doing. In the context of the history of broad-
cast talk (as outlined earlier) this might seem to be a throwback to the kind of pedagogical mono-
logue that was rejected by broadcasters in the development of early radio. It is perhaps ironic, but
also very interesting, that young people are using YouTube not only for entertainment, but also
as an alternative source of instruction, and here they are reproducing, albeit in modern colloquial
forms, traditional speech genres associated with expertise. For there are not only ‘tutorials’ on
YouTube, there are also some performances which are akin to lectures, as extended monologues
on abstract concepts. As one illustration of this consider WSITN, or ‘What style is to Nickel’,3
in which a young man, wearing distinctive eye make-up, offers an extended and very fluent
discourse on the meaning of ‘personal style’:
Nickel: Finding Your Personal Style
Hey guys. So I’ve spoken about personal style, and I had a couple of questions asking me like
‘how can I find out what my personal style is? Can you give me some tips on finding my own
personal style?’. So I’m going to talk today on what personal style is and how you can find
your own personal style. Okay so the first thing you want to think about is what inspires you
5 and what inspires you about those things. Is it the colours, the textures, the meaning? You know
and you also want to think about what kind of things inspire you like photography and art and
culture stuff like that. And what is it about those things that inspire you? You know. What is it
that you identify with those things about like what is it that you take from it that you really
think embodies your personal style. So you really want to make everything fit your person and
10 the person you feel you are and the person you want the world to know that you are.

And you also want to think about what kind of decades you like maybe you like fifties sixties
eighties twenties something like that now what is it that you like about those decades? Now
I think the key thing about decades and this isn’t a strict rule but I think the key thing about
keeping decades fresh is don’t take the decades literally like me I really like eighties fashion
15 but I don’t take it literally like I don’t go all out eighties but make it modern you know make it
today like how you could wear that today so mix it with modern things and make it you know
two thousand and nine . . .
 Critical Discourse Studies 283

The fluency of Nickel’s discourse is an effect of its rhetorical construction. He uses lists of three
(‘the colours, the textures, the meaning’; ‘photography and art and culture’) in a manner remi-
niscent of political speeches (Atkinson, 1984). There are discourse markers (‘Okay’, line 4; ‘So’,
line 9; ‘Now’, line 12) used to signpost logical developments in a way that is similar to the con-
ventional lecture. Nickel also has an effective way of introducing his substantive points as
responses to questions. Clearly his whole ‘talk today’ is introduced as a response to previous
comments from viewers, but he also has a way of formulating questions on behalf of the
viewer (‘what is it that you identify with those things?’, ‘what is it that you like about those
decades?’) which he then proceeds to answer with his own points: ‘So you really want to
make everything fit your person’; ‘Now I think the key thing about decades . . . is. . .’. This ques-
tion – answer structure is similar to some forms of conversational news presentation (Tolson,
2006) but here Nickel is apparently adlibbing without a script.
There are also two ‘you’s in this discourse. Unlike the plural ‘you’/’yous’ spoken to her fans
by Lauren Luke, Nickel addresses a singular you, but in two ways. The first involves shifting
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from the second person singular recipient of the discourse (‘What is it that you identify
with?’ to a more generalised ‘you’ who might be anyone interested in this topic (‘the first
thing you want to think about is . . .’). This is in keeping with the generalising discourse of a
lecture. However it is again embedded in conversational direct address, delivered here
through forms of what Basil Bernstein once described as ‘sympathetic circularity’ (Bernstein,
1971). Nickel’s use of ‘you know’ (lines 5, 7, 15, 16) and ‘like’ (lines 6, 8, 15, 16) invite and
imagine listener reciprocation, the latter variant being particularly common in young people’s
conversation today. Nickel’s discourse alternates therefore between degrees of formality and
informality in its forms of verbal address.
We might sum up this analysis by suggesting that some forms of ‘broadcasting yourself’ on
YouTube seem to involve the production of hybrid forms of talk. On the one hand both Luke’s
‘tutorials’ and Nickel’s ‘talk today’ are reminiscent of traditional speech genres associated with
expertise. On the other hand, however, markers of the ‘ordinary person’ are evident in Luke’s
colloquial fresh talk and in Nickel’s use of sympathetic circularity. This is the hybrid discourse
of the ‘ordinary expert’ which vlogging makes possible and, to return to Lister et al.’s comment
on viral communication, might be taken as evidence of something that is ‘original and fresh’ in
its reworking of traditional generic forms. However, does this justify their further claim that this
is somehow ‘authentic’? In my penultimate section I will outline some critical questions to do
with ‘finding your personal style’ that perhaps begin to complicate such a judgement.

The ordinary expert

Before we consider these critical arguments, there are further observations to be made about the
context in which these videos appear, and specifically the notion that this is ‘post-television’.
Actually, Luke’s was not the first online make-up tutorial I encountered: I first stumbled
across one of these videos whilst researching another topic (you will have to believe that as a
middle-aged man I would not otherwise be surfing this territory). I was working on a lecture
on celebrity, and was wondering what had become of Chantelle Houghton, the 2006 winner
of Celebrity Big Brother UK. Her claim to fame (some readers will recall) was that she was
not originally a celebrity, but became one by passing as such and subsequently winning the
show – she is a prime example of the ‘demotic celebrification’ discussed by Graeme Turner
(2004). The way I first entered this online territory was via Chantelle’s website, which contained
a video clip, ‘Living the Dream’, downloaded from YouTube.
What became apparent, and very interesting for thinking about contemporary celebrity, was
that by following the linkages made possible by the ‘Related Videos’ feature on YouTube, the
 284 A. Tolson

celebrity world of Chantelle Houghton opened out into a vast network, not only of celebrity
worlds, but also of ordinary people, where the boundaries between ‘ordinariness’ and ‘celebrity’
become blurred. From clips of the wedding of Chantelle and Preston, you can follow links to
promotional videos for ‘Instyle celebrity weddings’ and ‘Beautiful Brides’, and from there to
the wedding photos and videos of ordinary couples. Somewhere embedded in this was my
first sight of a young black American woman offering make-up advice. An interesting theoretical
point is that these linkages challenge the distinction between ‘ordinary people’ and ‘media
people’ which Nick Couldry makes in Media Rituals, and which he himself recognises might
be becoming problematic in the development of the Internet (Couldry, 2003). One facility of
the make-up tutorial is that ordinary people can be advised how to look like the celebrities
they wish to emulate.
In his latest discussion of some of these developments Turner has offered a general critique
of what he calls the ‘demotic turn’ in contemporary media culture (Turner, 2010). His argument
ranges from reality television to talk radio, but it is particularly sharply focussed on excessive
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claims made for user-generated content on the Internet. There is, according to Turner, a particu-
larly problematic conflation, propounded by ‘digital optimists’, between online participation and
the ‘myth of digital democracy’, which is in urgent need of a ‘reality check’ (p. 132). In one
section Turner focuses on blogging, quoting research which shows that this is a practice domi-
nated by ‘new Internet elites’ creating an ‘aristocracy of opinion’ (p. 139). However, vlogging is
not blogging, and in fact Turner does recognise that there might be contingent and contradictory
developments here, particularly in some uses of YouTube. I shall return to some of the key con-
tradictions in my next section; but here, and keeping Turner’s general caveats in mind, I want to
pursue one specific line of argument about the make-up tutorials.
It is this: that if, on one level this use of vlogging offers a promise of ‘celebrification’, on
another there is something interesting in its constructions of expertise. As we have seen this
expertise ranges from the ordinary consumer demonstrating what has worked for her, to a
more abstract and conceptual discourse about ‘style’. However, if in this area of YouTube ordin-
ary people are now appearing as experts, it seems that another category distinction, endemic to
traditional broadcasting, has been crossed. Consider the conventional television make-over pro-
gramme, in the genre of ‘lifestyle television’ (currently in the UK, How To Look Good Naked or
Ten Years Younger). It features a personality presenter (Gok Wan, Myleene Klass) who may or
may not themselves be an expert, but who will also have on hand a group of further expert
specialists (beauticians, hair-stylists and in the latter programme, plastic surgeons) to treat
their hapless guests. The guests are portrayed as lacking expert knowledge; effectively they
are objects of ‘commodified renovation’ (to quote Turner again) which, he argues, ‘pathologises’
the ordinary subject at the same time as it demands a new ‘performance of the self’ (Turner,
2010, p. 172). Certainly there is an element of commodification in the YouTube make-up tutor-
ial, but it avoids the ‘pathological’ because crucially there is no special class of presenters and
experts. The consumer herself takes these roles and the make-up is self-applied.
Developing this point, it also becomes apparent that the YouTube video differs profoundly
from what might be called the ‘regime’ of conventional television (Tolson, 1985, 1996). In a
conventional television programme, there is a centre, or starting-point, in which the presenter
is first located, and from where the viewer is taken to other spaces, encountering ‘other
people’ along the way. Prototypically, the centre is a studio and the other spaces are outside
locations. although in many lifestyle television programmes today the presenter is on location
from the start. However, the presenter, in this regime, functions as ‘anchor’, may be ‘live’ (or
appears ‘as live’) and has the facility of direct address to the viewer. Other people encountered
in other locations do not have this facility; they are introduced (‘framed’) by the presenter and
take the role of a ‘third party’ in the set up which the programme has established. Here, there is a
 Critical Discourse Studies 285

hierarchy of discourse: the ‘media people’ (to use Couldry’s term) have a superior status because
they manage the programme in which the others appear. This whole regime is absent in the
YouTube make-up tutorial because there is only direct address, the ordinary person is an
expert and crucially, there are no ‘others’ to be filmed, interviewed or otherwise acted upon.

‘Post-television’
Putting the points made so far together, it may be that they give some substance to the claim that
YouTube (at least in this version) offers a kind of ‘post-television’. In this form of video pro-
duction, not only is there no hierarchy of discourse, but also, as suggested earlier, clips of ordin-
ary people, media people and celebrities are interlinked, in a single network. The only thing that
re-introduces hierarchy into this arrangement is ‘viral’ popularity, in the ‘folksonomy’ that
governs the related videos function. However, crucially, this is not institutionally predetermined.
In classic broadcast television, as John Ellis once described it, viewers cede authority to the
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media institution which surveys and interrogates situations on their behalf. It provides, in the
familiar phrase, a ‘window on the world’ with which the viewer engages in a form of ‘delegated
looking’ (Ellis, 1982). However on YouTube, although there is some guidance on the homepage
with its featured videos, and although there is the pre-selection of links, crucially it is the
computer user, not the institution, that makes the connections. In classic television, viewers
are presented with pre-produced, pre-edited, programmes designed for particular time-slots;
in post-television users construct their own viewing experiences, from user-generated videos
which (at least in these make-up tutorials) have no prior institutional imprint.
It might be helpful to schematise these observations. They define a very different kind of
context on YouTube from the regime of conventional television (Table 1).
In Media Rituals, Nick Couldry has argued that the power of traditional media is reproduced
by their adherence to a ‘myth of the mediated centre’ (Couldry, 2003). This myth assumes that
media have privileged access to a ‘social centre’ and to what ‘really matters’ in our culture. It is
at its most intense he suggests in its construction of ‘media events’, in media places as sites of
‘pilgrimage’ and, in particular, in the aforementioned category distinction between ‘media
people’ and ‘ordinary people’ evident in encounters with celebrities or when ordinary people
appear on television. My analysis here confirms that the myth of the mediated centre is apparent
not only in such category distinctions, but also in the organisation of traditional media, around a
centre with its peripheries, and restricted conditions of access. Furthermore, when, at the end of
that book, Couldry went on to speculate about an alternative ‘world with many “centres” that
produce and reproduce media messages’ (p. 138), in ‘new dispersed possibilities of production
and distribution [that] challenge the naturalised hierarchies between media people and non-
media people’ (p. 140) could he have been envisioning the formation of YouTube? Of course
YouTube was founded in 2005, two years after Media Rituals was published. Couldry also

Table 1
Conventional television YouTube
Centred (in a studio) Decentred (in a network)
Hierarchy of discourse System of linkages
Institutional voice Individual voices
Transmitted programmes Accessed postings
Distinctive class of ‘media people’ Ordinary people as celebrities and experts
Construction of otherness ‘Broadcast yourself’
Delegated looking User navigation
 286 A. Tolson

suggested that there was the opportunity here for ‘a different, less unequal vision of the mediated
public sphere’ (p. 140). It is necessary then to return to these questions, including the potential
for a more ‘authentic’ form of mediated communication.

The limits of authenticity

In his contribution to the special issue of Discourse Studies Martin Montgomery points out that
judgements of ‘authenticity’, of the sort we are considering here, will always be relative, for this
is not an ‘analytical term’ (Montgomery, 2001). Thus the authenticity of vlogging, if it is to be
perceived as such, is located in its excessive direct address, in its transparent amateurishness and
in the sheer volume and immediacy of ‘conversational’ responses, by comparison with and rela-
tive to the constraints of traditional broadcasting. It is this relativity that allows the notion of
‘authenticity’ to be transferred across different media in different contexts, as I began this
article by observing. This is a contingent relativity, often located in new technological affor-
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dances and discursive opportunities. To cite another example, it was her use of ‘fresh talk’
(as opposed to reciting a script) that was the secret of Geri Halliwell’s success as an ‘ambassa-
dor’ for the United Nations Population Fund, as portrayed in Molly Dineen’s documentary film
Geri (see Tolson, 2001). What we might call an ‘authenticity effect’ was created in this instance
by an opportunity for Halliwell to perform ‘as herself’, and not the synthetic creation ‘Ginger
Spice’ which was what she had been before.
From a wider perspective, however, because it is contingent and relative, this authenticity
effect always seems vulnerable to critique. To return to Lauren Luke, her vlogs may seem
fresh and spontaneous, but their beguiling quality cannot disguise the fact that what she is
doing is a form of ‘promotional discourse’ (Wernick, 1991). As such her discourse is subject
to all the caveats one might care to make, ranging from the use of YouTube for purposes of
‘viral marketing’, to the activity of ‘self-branding’ seen by one recent commentator as a ‘distinct
kind of labour’, characteristic of a neoliberal consumer economy based on flexible accumulation
(Hearn, 2008). From this perspective (and Hearn is particularly bleak), social networking on the
Internet is a playful (but sinister) version of the self-promotional qualities necessary to operate in
the flexible, casualised ‘creative economy’, where the performance of ‘any imagined ‘authentic
self’’ is inevitably compromised by its marketisation (Hearn, 2008, p. 201). More generally, at
least in their origins, Luke’s activities clearly fall into the category of ‘free’ or ‘immaterial’
labour fundamental to late capitalist economy (Terranova, 2004) with which, as Mark Andreje-
vic has effectively demonstrated, much user-generated productivity online is transparently com-
plicit (Andrejevic, 2008). A more sanguine perspective sees such labour not simply as
exploitation, but as part of a new environment of ‘co-creation’ with labour relations that are
very different from ‘industrial era production’ (Banks & Humphreys, 2008). Either way,
however, it seems necessary to conclude that online make-up tutorials are another example of
a cultural activity that, as a commercialised creative practice, is at best profoundly ambivalent
and contradictory.
Moreover if what Luke is doing is, on one level, a form of labour, on another she is also
working in a context where she is still susceptible to forms of media power. This is immediate,
and it is also imminent. Immediately, Luke’s celebrification in the transition she has made to
mainstream media (and for which of course she is now being paid) confirms Couldry’s myth
of media power. Ordinary people may be celebrities on YouTube, but mainstream media
remain a place of limited access and special status. Here Luke is the exception that proves
the rule. Imminently however, Robert Gehl has recently written about the potential exploitation
of the YouTube ‘archive’ by emergent media entrepreneurs and large broadcast media (even as
these engage in disputes with YouTube over copyright infringement etc.; Gehl, 2009). The
 Critical Discourse Studies 287

dominant media system, including broadcasting, is not displaced by YouTube and it retains the
capacity to recontextualise for its own purposes the user-generated communication it finds there.
In this context Lauren Luke may be receiving some compensation for her new status as a media
person, but Gehl’s point is that contributors to the YouTube archive like Nickel have no control
over how their offerings might, in future be ‘curated’.

Conclusion: communicative entitlements and citizenship

Finally, however, I will return to the more specific observation that, for all its wider contradic-
tions, there might be something interesting here about the regime of ‘post-television’. Let me
start by reiterating the point that, whatever continuities we might discover between ‘old’ and
‘new’ media, watching YouTube is not like watching television. As such it has different com-
municative practices and ‘communicative entitlements’, to return to Paddy Scannell’s
concept. In fact what YouTube does is throw new light on the communicative entitlements of
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broadcasting. As we have seen, these are now seen to be hierarchical and constraining by com-
parison with the affordances of YouTube. Scannell has argued persuasively that the rise of
broadcasting in the last century created a new kind of ‘modern public life’ in which national
events and the institutions of state were now available, as never before, to whole populations
(Scannell, 1989). However, YouTube (and it is of course one of many such sites) highlights
the restricted position and participatory constraints placed on the ordinary person in that
regime. Broadcasting created modern public life as spectacle, as ‘media events’ and as topics
for discussion, but it did not distribute the means of creative production to users, nor did it
invite the labour of ‘co-creation’. There are then limits to the kind of citizenship offered by
broadcasting by comparison to that imagined by YouTube.
Now, citing a ‘substantial body of work’ in this area, Burgess and Green (2009, p. 79) argue
that YouTube has the potential to create a ‘new model of cosmopolitan cultural citizenship’ by
virtue of its provision of ‘spaces for engagement and community formation’. They refer to
‘models of engaging activities . . . based around ‘everyday consumer citizenship’, which
seems to connect with, but also to blur, the categories of ‘cultural citizenship’ and ‘consumer
productivity’ which John Hartley discusses in this issue. However if we remain clear that
these are, fundamentally, new forms of communicative entitlement, empowering perhaps, but
contingent on their specific communicative context, it does not necessarily have to follow
that they have any wider ‘democratic’ purchase. Nor, it seems to me, can their novelty simply
be assumed. I am struck by the possible continuities between Nickel’s discourse on ‘style’
and that phenomenon which Dick Hebdige identified 30 years ago in his work on youth subcul-
tures (Hebdige, 1979). YouTube may be a ‘new model’ for communicative entitlement, but it
also may be doing little more than creating another space for the sort of creative engagement
with consumer culture that has long been a defining feature of post-war capitalism. This
would support another of Turner’s arguments that a historical perspective can make a useful
contribution to the reality check on digital optimism.
So to reinforce the specific point about communicative entitlement, let us pay another visit to
Lauren Luke. Also on YouTube can be found a television programme about her made by BBC
North East, as part of its current affairs series ‘Inside Out’.4 Alongside clips from her videos,
Luke is being investigated as a YouTube phenomenon; she is interviewed and ‘put to the
test’ of delivering make-up advice in a department store. (Here she is recognised as a
YouTube celebrity by some of the shoppers.) Later she is taken to meet a ‘top make-up
artist’ to whom she confesses feelings of inadequacy but by whom she is reassured about the
‘real Lauren you have to bring to the industry’. Nevertheless the narrative ends with Luke com-
plaining that she couldn’t ‘get what I wanted to say across and I just sat there [feeling] silly’.
 288 A. Tolson

The programme has her returning to the ‘comfort zone’ of her bedroom on YouTube; and as such
it is precisely the discomforting nature of her experience of conventional television that this
YouTube clip confirms.

Notes on contributor
Andrew Tolson is Professor of Media and Communication at De Montfort University, Leicester. He is a
founder member of the Ross Priory Seminar on broadcast talk and has published widely in that field, includ-
ing work on chat and talk shows, news presentation and political communication. Current research interests
include the histories of television celebrity and political interviewing, the latter in the context of a project on
the UK Election 2010 with other colleagues at DMU.

Notes
1. A version of this article was presented at the MeCCSA Conference 10 at the London School of Econ-
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omics in January 2010. I am grateful to my colleague Simon Mills for his advice in its preparation.
2. This can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ3gr-bFAOs
3. This can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRO3qFUA5Zq&p
4. This can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxy-TxCXH6Y

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