Hegemonic and Inclusive Masculinities in American and Czech YouTube Vlogs
Hegemonic and Inclusive Masculinities in American and Czech YouTube Vlogs

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines discursive means of the construction of hegemonic and inclusive masculinities in American and Czech YouTube vlogs. The vlog is a relatively young new media genre, which has developed primarily in the context of YouTube (the second most visited website and the second highest ranking social media platform in the world) and is a curious object of study as a platform of identity construction. The two types of masculine identities are analyzed in terms of two-level indexicality realized by means of positioning of self and others in the context of YouTube vlogs. The author outlines the most salient strategies of performing the two types of masculinities and shows how differently they are employed by young male Americans and Czechs. The extent and means of constructing these gender identities by Czech and American YouTubers diverge: both masculinities were constructed more prominently in American vlogs, whereas Czech YouTubers exhibited more neutral patterns. Moreover, American vloggers proved to resort to inclusive masculinity considerably more frequently that their Czech counterparts and tended to co-construct the two masculinities in such a way that they appear blended (for instance, by clustering affectionate homosociality with address terms indexical of cool solidarity). In Czech YouTube vlogs, on the other hand, the instances of inclusive masculinity were significantly less abundant and more isolated, which is in line with a less intensive construction of masculine identity in Czech vlogs overall

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