YouTube Queer Communities as Heterotopias: Space, Identity and “Realness” in Queer South African Vlogs

Abstract

ABSTRACT YouTube has provided a platform for many queer vloggers in South Africa to find audiences and to represent queer lives via a public medium. The platform allows for multiple queer identities to be represented in dynamic ways, complicating the ways in which mainstream mass media often stereotype or distort queer lives and experiences, and simultaneously challenging the widespread social marginalisation of queer people. This article explores how queer South African vloggers have created communities that function as heterotopias, spaces that allow for social and cultural norms to be contested or reversed. These heterotopian YouTube communities provide forums where identity, space and authenticity or “realness” are invoked and reimagined in ways that speak back to the limitations or oppressions experienced in offline spaces. The communities also offer viewers and commenters the space to share, reflect on and demonstrate support for the experiences of others. Videos of influential South African vloggers are analysed to demonstrate the heterotopic potential of these queer communities.