"These VLOGS aren't real": managing authenticity and privacy as family influencers

Family vlogging on YouTube is a practice gaining in popularity and scope. An increasing number of couples are giving up their jobs to become full-time "vloggers" or, in industry terms, "creators". This involves parents filming their everyday lives with their children and uploading the footage to YouTube in daily or weekly instalments for others to watch and respond to. Vlogging reflects a current Western obsession with documenting and recording the self. The digital practice of recording life on YouTube is part of a "broadcast era" (Garde-Hansen et al.). YouTube is a product of a participatory (Jenkins; Burgess and Green), peer-to-peer (Merrin), "memory boom" (Huyssen), where ordinary people are obsessed with recording and saving their lives (Arthur). YouTube, with its infamous byline "Broadcast Yourself", allows and encourages everyday individuals to document, edit and share their lives, acting as a "memory bank" (Smith and Watson) and building autobiographical archives that we later use to identify ourselves (Eakin).