ABSTRACT
This chapter examines emerging modes of life and death-writing of the moment in YouTube video blogging (aka vlogging). The analysis of a female young adult’s vlog dedicated to the sharing of her unique illness experience reveals a specific mode of story making, where the plotline develops cumulatively over a series of short video segments. These small stories variously focus on the past, the very recent past, or the here and now, depending on how the vlogger-teller affectively positions herself to her illness, her viewers, and her emotional self. I argue that vlogging on (terminal) illness as small stories serves as a way of reclaiming some control over life with illness as well as over one’s posthumous legacy. Inadvertently, it also emerges as a site for mourning associated with specific types of affective positioning for viewers. This mode of curated storying of the illness experience attests to (i) the mobilization of illness as an authenticating resource for increasing networked connections and visibility, as well as (ii) the (inadvertent) mobilization of mourning as a resource for motivating and inspiring networked publics.
