ABSTRACT
The locus of the home is one of the earliest and most common settings and backdrops in YouTube vlogs. In the decade since YouTube creators and Influencers have flourished in the industry, new strategies, mechanisms, and vocabularies of self-presentation have emerged across various social media, resulting in the emblem of the home emerging as a topic, genre, and setting in YouTube vlogs. Several studies have studied the proliferation of various genres of vlogs on YouTube—generally surveying how the medium is used for diary-keeping, sharing one’s identity, or constructing one’s self[ie]—but very few focus on the spatiality of the home as a locale and topic of content production. Building on three key studies that have focused their attention on home tour vlogs on YouTube from primarily Anglo- and Euro-centric samples, this chapter is an exploratory study of home tour vlog genres that are proliferate in East Asia, focusing especially on two genres: “slow living at home” and “home cafés.”
