Abstract
ABSTRACT What does ‘staying at home’ mean, and how is it represented online, once it suddenly becomes a legal obligation? This article explores the ways to display and resignify the domestic space through the frames of YouTube during the first nationwide lockdown in Italy in spring 2020. While being enforced at home, and possibly as a way to cope with this, YouTube creators perceive, display and (re)adapt their dwellings in contrasting ways along the continuum between safe shelter and prison; as proper domestic space but also as functional equivalent of extra-domestic ones such as gyms and offices; as the necessary backdrop for their performances or as a setting to be exhibited in its own right. Based on a content analysis of 989 videos using the hashtag #iorestoacasa [‘I’m staying home’] between March and May 2020, this article explores how the domestic space is turned into a stage for public (YouTube-mediated) activities, thereby revealing an increasing permeability between private and public domain. This, in turn, invites to further investigate the complex entanglements of private and public, ‘displayed’ and ‘invisibilized’, as an expression of the constitutive ambivalence of the home.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
