WHO ARE YOU?: ON AUDIENCES’ INDIVIDUAL PERCEPTIONS OF VIRTUAL YOUTUBERS

Abstract

In a world where the Internet infiltrates all corners of our daily life, there exists a blended reality, a space where the divide between the virtual and the real is blurred, the space where entities such as Virtual YouTubers (VTubers) emerge. VTubers have 2D avatars that are animated real-time by the movements of the “voice actors”. They livestream with this avatar and the people who lend their voices to these animated avatars, never show their faces and are shrouded in mystery. This begets the question of how exactly their viewers formulate views of their identities and reconcile with this fact. Through the use of an online survey and a comprehensive look at the inner working of the community through channels such as YouTube, Twitter and Reddit, this thesis investigates the non-unified definitions of VTubers among viewers. I argue that audiences’ association of the VTuber form with other modalities of performance, their subcultural knowledge as well as internal processes of regulation in the community in conceiving their impressions of the identities of these VTubers. In doing so, this thesis hopes to encourage a deeper look into the histories of performance forms that emerge from the Japanese media ecology as well as encourage a serious and necessary study of the processes within fan communities and the roles of fans that facilitate such activities that deal with sensitive identities.