Web Series, YouTube, and Politics: Affective and Emotional Dimensions of User Comments

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the complex relationship among entertainment contents, networked publics, and politics by offering an overview of literatures in the fields and suggests that the emotional dimensions are the key to understand the political possibilities of mediated public discussion. By analyzing the online comments of YouTube channel WIGS’s web series Lauren , this article reveals that audiences interpret and discuss this web series through mediated feelings of connectedness and thus are able to engage in public debate and political deliberation. I argue that, the connective affordances of YouTube and the emotional realism of the web-drama facilitated the web space of Lauren to function as an “emotional public sphere” where social solidarity was strengthened, political criticism was developed, and political activity could be motivated. Overall, this study reconceptualizes the place of entertainment media in democracy and everyday life and contributes to political communication and feminist media studies.