Legitimation, Authenticity and Intersubjectivity in YouTube ‘lifestyle’ vloggers: the case of ‘Hygge’

This paper uses Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis (EMCA) and Multimodal Analysis to explore the epistemic status positions in a collection of YouTube ‘lifestyle’ videos that deal with the topic of hygge. By explicating the interactional structures through which localised cultural practices are (re)configured in the superdiverse cultural sphere of YouTube, this analysis contributes to our understanding of the emergence and development of vloggers’ ‘genre practices’, foregrounding the epistemic strategies through which ‘authenticity’ is configured. The analysis points to three distinctive epistemic categories of hygge videos (1) vloggers that discursively claim legitimacy as practitioners of hygge, (2) vloggers that embody hygge practice as a way of displaying legitimacy, (3) Danish vloggers that show hygge as distinctively Danish and enact their Danish identity through the videos. These three types involve the production of different notions of authenticity, tied to particular identity claims, accounting practices, and audience positionality.