"Here is the Truth": Characterizing YouTube's Drama Community as a Public and Reconceptualizing Microcelebrity

One of the most prevalent yet understudied arbiters of modern celebrity critique is the drama community on YouTube, a collective of video-makers who report on influencer scandals and make moral judgments about appropriate celebrity behaviors. Due to their fundamental concern with celebrity power, I theorize YouTube’s drama community as a public which operates within the structures and objectives of microcelebrity. Using grounded theory and critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA) centered around the Colleen Ballinger controversy of 2023, I identify and explain the underlying ethical principles of the group, namely: care and justice, accountability, transparency, and authenticity. Such principles become apparent through the community’s microcelebrity and evaluative practices of: recursive viewing, consolidating gossip, and liveness and making room for audiences. This research thus opens up new understandings for microcelebrity and publics, especially in considering how drama channels often hold within them the celebrity power they wish to undermine.