How Audience Reaction to The 5th Estate Vlogs Aid in The Construction of Mutahi Ngunyi’s Identity as an Authoritative Political Analyst

Abstract

This study investigated one of Kenya’s foremost political commentary vlogs – The 5th Estate as a rich site on how multimodal resources are marshaled by Mutahi Ngunyi, the vlog’s creator and political analyst, to construct the identity of an authoritative political analyst. Whereas there are several studies on identity construction on social media platforms, little research on identity construction focusing specifically on vlogging exist. More so, there is scanty investigation of identity construction strategies used by vloggers who specialise in political commentary. Using the Systemic Functional – Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) approach, the research investigated how audience reaction aid in the construction of individual’s identity. The research adopted a qualitative perspective and more specifically a descriptive-interpretive design. Data which included vlogs posted on The 5th Estate since its establishment on 19th February, 2019 to date constituted the population of study from which four most popular vlogs were sampled. Data for research was collected, transcribed and analysed using content analysis technique. Knowledge generated by this study is expected to fill the existing gaps in political communications and new media research concerning identity construction in social media. The study could also be useful to politicians, political influencers and government agents who may want to adopt vlogging to communicate to their audience efficiently and effectively. The study concluded that audience reaction plays an important role in shaping Identity of an individual by affirmation of the message, use of descriptive words that describe the author, or titles ascribed to the author.