A Study of Daily Vlog Channels Made by Rural Residents - Focusing on the Reproduction of Rural Images

This study examined the types of rural images represented in rural daily life vlog channels on YouTube. In these channels, rural areas tend to be romanticized as pastoral landscapes or represented as a form of nostalgia for ‘disappearing things’ such as simplicity, the past, purity, and authenticity, akin to existing rural representation videos. This may be the channel operator’s response to the expectations of subscribers who demand nostalgia and healing or the result of the internalizing of the ‘imagined’ rural areas previously known. However, because these videos are created by residents living in rural areas and non-professional producers, the meanings of these videos are dispersed or complex. In addition, the working conditions of the rural areas in these channels are imagined as poor; they are culturally alienated spaces, exclusive spaces, spaces supported by state and local governments, and spaces where one can live if one tolerates a certain level of inconvenience. Despite the complex image of rural areas, it should be taken into account that these images are combined with the economic, social, and cultural environments surrounding the channel operators and that individual experiences are imagined as expanded general rural experiences. The rural image in these channels is imagined in various layers and becomes complex. This is because the daily lives of rural residents, who are channel operators, are formed in a relationship that does not entirely cater to the commercialism or popularity of YouTube operations.