Paper
Between national policies, self-branding and marketing- negotiating family intimacy in Saudi influencer videos on YouTube
presenters
Sabrina Zahren
Nationality: Germany
Residence: Germany
University of Munich (LMU)
Presence:Online
Keywords:
YouTube, Saudi Arabia, family influencers, Influencer Culture, Micro-Celebrity Studies
Abstract:
(Male) Saudi Influencers dominate the Arabic-speaking YouTube scene, where they contribute to the production of Pop Culture, while being embedded in national and transnational media systems. Since family plays a very important political, social, and cultural role in Saudi Arabia (Al-Khraif et al. 2020) my article wants to highlight the very successful genre of Saudi family influencers, who display on their videos a staged family life that must always appear “authentic”, following the global consensus of social media practices (Zahren 2021). The content of family influencers nevertheless must respect Saudi norms and values, but also the affordances of the platform YouTube as well as the tastes of their respective audiences, covering all age groups from child to adult. By examining videos of the family influencer Saud Alhomud through content analysis, I want to interrogate how everyday family life, values, identities, and family relationships are negotiated, curated, and transported amidst current youth, media, and family policies in Saudi Arabia. Theoretically, I am interested in locating my findings, methodologically rooted in Arabic Studies, in the context of a Saudi “Influencer Culture,” a term that was introduced by digital anthropologist Crystal Abidin and colleagues (2019). Deriving from the field of (Micro-)Celebrity Studies, she recognizes influencers position as a Self-Brand (Senft 2012) within Digital Capitalism (Staab 2019) without neglecting their transformative potential.