The Influence of Vlog Consumption and Emphatic Accents on the Perception of Voices on YouTube

This study investigates if the consumption of video blogs (vlogs) has an influence on the perception of speech on YouTube, with a focus on the occurrence of emphatic accents in stimuli of ten English-speaking YouTubers, and charisma and likability ratings from a perception experiment. The stimuli are presented in audio-only format. Emphasis strategies (including emphatic accents — extremely strong prominent syllables which stand out from the rest of an utterance in part because of a long segmental component) are seen as part of “YouTube voice” as well as charismatic speech. Contrary to expectations, the results show little effect for speakers who watch vlogs. For listeners who do not watch vlogs, higher numbers of emphatic accents in a stimulus tend to correlate with higher charisma ratings but lower likability ratings. However, these trends did not reach statistical significance.