Microcelebrity Around the Globe

Vlogging Parlance: Strategic Talking in Beauty Vlogs

Sophie Bishop,
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 Chapter 1

Vlogging Parlance: Strategic Talking

in Beauty Vlogs
Sophie Bishop

Abstract
The YouTube affordance of auto-generated textual closed captions (CC) is
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valued by the YouTube algorithm, and therefore spoken words in vlogs can be
strategically used to optimize and orient videos and channels for search. In their
blog, YouTube suggests that complicity with their desire for rich and accurate
CC is rewarded with algorithmic visibility (YouTube, 2017a). CC metadata are
therefore an example of the significant degree of pressure for vloggers (video
bloggers) on YouTube to optimize their content down to minutia of self-
presentations. In this chapter I analyze the practice of highly visible beauty
vloggers to conceptualize vlogging practices that contribute to algorithmically
readable CC text. I term this labor vlogging parlance. Vlogging parlance
includes keyword stuffing, defined as inserting often-searched-for keywords into
speech. It also encompasses the strategic verbal expressions, language choice,
speech pace, enunciation, and minimization of background noise by vloggers.
Vlogging parlance can be thought of as a microcelebrity (Senft, 2008) technique,
deployed to attract attention and visibility in an information-saturated online
“attention economy,” a system of value in which often “money now flows along
with attention” (Goldhaber, 1997). The call to optimize speech ultimately places
responsibility onto creators to ensure their videos can become visible, while
assisting YouTube in developing search accuracy for their viewers. Further-
more, the Western-centric language affordances of CC, and the high valuation
of English on the YouTube platform, are used as examples of how social media
platforms can underserve differently abled and non-English speaking audiences.

Keywords: YouTube; beauty vlogging; Zoella; authenticity; algorithms;

keywords; visibility

Introduction
To be a successful vlogger (video blogger) on YouTube, one must make oneself
legible to the site’s algorithms. In addition to making visual content appealing,

Microcelebrity Around the Globe, 21–32

Copyright © 2019 by Emerald Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
doi:10.1108/978-1-78756-749-820181002
 22 Sophie Bishop

this necessitates optimizing video metadata. Metadata are defined as “data which
are used in organizing video to facilitate content-based retrieval” (Jain &
Hampapur, 1994: 2). On YouTube this includes textual keyword tags, video titles,
and closed captioning (CC) text. Since 2006, a proportion of videos on YouTube
have been afforded CC, which appear to the viewer as textual subtitles on videos
(Google Video Blog, 2006). CC were developed as auto-generated in 2009, uti-
lizing the same technology as their parent company, Google’s voice recognition
software (Official Google Blog, 2009). CC were launched, in part, to increase
accessibility for deaf and hard of hearing viewers. In each announcement of CC
updates, Google has worked to highlight the potential to improve accessibility,
with each rollout being publicized in blog posts written by a deaf engineer, citing
how they have benefitted personally from this capability. In 2006, the original
rollout was announced in a blog post by deaf Google engineer Ken Harrington,
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who likened the move to the advent of CC on television. While he lauded the
potential for accessibility in the post, he also noted “the potential applications
here for search quality, automatic translation, and speech recognition should also
become more obvious” (Google Video Blog, 2006). In other words, while
recognizing the accessibility function, Harrington suggests here that auto-
generated CC text is valued as meaningful data and used in increasing accuracy
of video searches on the platform. As of 2017, one billion videos have CC; these
generated transcripts are also utilized to assign relevancy and visibility to You-
Tube videos (Official YouTube Blog, 2017). However, CC capability only
stretches to 10 languages, predominantly spoken in the Global North: English,
Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and
Spanish. This sidelines audiences speaking some of the world’s most widely
spoken languages, such as Arabic, Hindi, and Mandarin Chinese.
On their creator-facing help blog, YouTube suggests that “translated metadata
may increase a video’s reach and discoverability” (YouTube, 2017a). Translated
text is indexed for search, thus vloggers producing videos with translated CC
metadata containing more keywords will become visible for those keywords.
Visibility, or as YouTube puts it, discoverability, takes the form of promotion
through high billing within search rankings, inclusion in automatically generated
rolling playlists, and promotion via personalized “recommended for you” links
embedded within the platform’s interface. In short, visibility means being chan-
neled toward the eyeballs of YouTube’s users. Searching for a “smoky eye”
tutorial will return with videos titled and tagged with “smoky eye,” but also vlogs
that feature beauty YouTubers repeatedly stating the words “smoky eye” aloud,
clearly and in a translatable manner, and in a CC recognized language. This
chapter will look to how this platform affordance can be seen to influence the
speech of popular vloggers, and will consider the wider implications for
inequalities on YouTube.

Keyword Stuffing and Vlogging Parlance

To address the significance of CC, I argue vloggers employ keyword stuffing in
their speech. Google’s support pages describe keywords stuffing as “repeating
 Vlogging Parlance: Strategic Talking in Beauty Vlogs 23

the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural”: it involves the
determination of popular keywords using analytics software, and packing
them, traditionally into textual website copy, multiple times to be read easily
by search engines (Google, 2017). In addition to keyword stuffing, I argue
speech designed to be readable can be termed vlogging parlance. Vlogging
parlance is broadly defined as the strategic verbal expressions, language choice,
speech pace, enunciation, and minimization of background noise by vloggers
that are informed by a desire to optimise platform visibility, in part through
generating accurate auto-translated CC metadata. The deliberate and consid-
ered uses of textual tags for visibility have been considered by Zappavigna
(2015), who outlines the practice of “searchable talk” among Twitter users.
They demonstrate that Twitter hashtags are used to catalogue tweets
(i.e., #breakingbad), to add interpersonal metacommentary (i.e., #sad), and as
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unrealistically specific playful subversion of hashtags’ aggregation function

(i.e., #butreviewer2tho). Unlike on Twitter, both textual keywords and CC text
are hidden from YouTube viewers and do not enable viewers to click through
to aggregated conversational streams. Vlogging parlance therefore lends itself
to cataloguing functions, in other words spoken and textual keywords that
demonstrate a video’s “aboutness” intended for search visibility: in this vein
they cannot be too specific, or “tight,” or too general or “loose” (Zappavigna,
2015, 283). The link between the desire for visibility and cataloguing functions
is illustrated by Page, who observes that on Twitter, “visibility required for self
branding appears more dependent on categorising the updates” (Page, 2012,
14). In the analysis of vlogging content, I will look to how keywords bridge
this divide.
Vlogging parlance is also an example of “visibility labor”; platform-specific
techniques designed to gain visibility in diverse attention economies (Abidin,
2016). Abidin first introduced this concept to define the strategic use of hashtags
to catch the attention of influencers by followers; however, she defines “visibility
labor” in the wider context as “the work enacted to flexibly demonstrate gra-
dients of self-conspicuousness in digital or physical spaces depending on
intention or circumstance for favourable ends” (Abidin, 2016: 2). The strategic
and intentional use of keywords and speech strategies certainly fits this
description. Vlogging parlance can also be thought of as a microcelebrity (Senft,
2008) technique, deployed to attract attention and visibility in an information-
saturated online “attention economy,” a system of value in which often “money
now flows along with attention” (Goldhaber, 1997). It is worth pointing out that
on YouTube, this manifests literally, as creators in the “Partner Programme”
are compensated an undisclosed monetary value per view for their videos
(YouTube, 2017b). The attention economy has also been qualified by Marwick
as “a marketing perspective assigning value according to something’s capacity
to attract ‘eyeballs’ in a media-saturated, information-rich world”
(A.E. Marwick, 2015: 138). Examples of self-presentations used by both influ-
encers and everyday internet users intended to court attention, views, and eye-
balls include documenting and publishing ostensibly personal backstage
moments such as marriage proposals and childbirth (Garcı́a-Rapp, 2016),
 24 Sophie Bishop

nurturing “commercial intimacy” through direct communications and meetups

with followers (Abidin, 2015a: 4), choreographed influencer fights designed to
provoke a media storm (Abidin & Ots, 2016). The central question for this
chapter is thereby how the significance of CC metadata likely are likely intended
to court attention, and how this affordance can be understood as shaping the
formation and organization of utterances for vloggers on YouTube, often along
existing lines of inequality.

Methodology and “A List” Beauty Vloggers

To illustrate my argument, I draw from my larger research project on the UK
vlogging industry, conducted between 2015 and 2017. I use the term vlogging
industry to describe the interlinked web of formalized stakeholders involved in
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the production of the vlogging economy. Stakeholders in the vlogging industry

include YouTube, brands and advertisers, vloggers and private sector inter-
mediaries such as digital talent management, vlogging studios, vlogging
schools, and YouTube audiences. This research project involved an extended
online ethnography and content analysis of vloggers’ textual and visual output.
I also conducted fieldwork at vlogger meetups and conventions, and semi-
structured interviews with vlogging industry stakeholders. Beauty vloggers
produce media across platforms, including web-hosted textual blogs, Insta-
gram, Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat. However, my research has focused on
content published on YouTube as I contextualize self-presentations and con-
tent production on the platform. As Baym and boyd argue, platforms’
“architectures and the affordances they provide… do shape identities, audi-
ences, and publics, but not in simple ways” (Baym & boyd, 2012: 326).
Therefore, my research focuses on YouTube, in order to disentangle the
complex, often contradictory and ambivalent, nature of self-presentations in a
platform-specific context.
In my work I concentrate on “A List” vloggers, broadly defined as the tiny
fraction of beauty vloggers in the UK who become extremely successful on
YouTube, often accruing millions of subscribers each. The question of how many
followers makes a microcelebrity is one that has no easy answer; there are often
broad and blurry lines between microcelebrities and those aspiring to be so.
Marwick observes that, in part because of social media platforms, “celebrity
practice as a continuum that can be practiced across the spectrum of fame rather
than a schism” (Marwick & boyd, 2011: 141). This statement does speak to
the fluid definitions and embodiments of fame on social networks. However, in
the context of the UK vlogging industry, there is a certain group that attain a
significant market share of attention: they are most subscribed to women on
YouTube in the UK who represent themselves as friends (i.e., #teaminternet),
consistently work with the most high profile beauty and lifestyle brands, are
featured in magazines and headline vlogging conventions and win vlogging
awards. They have traversed what Abidin terms “systemic microcelebrification,”
as their positioning as celebrities is calcified through recognizably traditional
markers, including brand deals, management by talent agents, and their coverage
 Vlogging Parlance: Strategic Talking in Beauty Vlogs 25

in gossip tabloids (Abidin, 2015b: 3). These A List vloggers could also be accu-
rately conceptualized using Abidin’s definition of influencers:

Everyday, ordinary internet users who accumulate a relatively large

following on blogs and social media through the textual and visual
narration of their personal lives and lifestyles, engage with following
in digital and physical spaces, and monetise their following by
integrating advertorials into their blog or social media posts
(Abidin, 2015a: 1).

This description certainly matches the self-presentations, behaviors, and

generic conventions of A List vlogging. However, I argue due to their platform-
specificity, and their overwhelming YouTube market share in the UK context,
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they necessitate a further qualification. Hence, I have borrowed from Holly-

wood’s celebrity popularity demarcations to ring fence a subset of “A List”
beauty vlogging influencers for this analysis.

Beauty Vloggers, Entrepreneurship, and Tags

The imperative for accruing attention and visibility on social media platforms
becomes potent when saturated with neoliberal discourses of “entrepreneurship”
(Marwick, 2013). Content creation online is often undertaken as “aspirational
labor,” involving a significant temporal, emotional, and economic investment that
looks forward to eventual compensation in the form of employment or a freelance
career (B. Duffy, 2016). For entrepreneurial young women in the UK, the
competition for attention is particularly distilled on YouTube, due to the visceral
nature of the Partner Programme, a YouTube monetary compensation initiative
that rewards creators financially per video view. Furthermore, the mythologized
potential for participatory capital generation and career-building on YouTube is
widespread in UK media: features and editorials regularly invite readers to “Meet
the 21 Year old YouTuber who made millions playing video games” (Telegraph,
2014) or advise readers how to “Vlog your way to a million pounds” (Glamour,
2016). YouTube’s entrepreneurial potential is simultaneously promoted by the
UK government, as vloggers have been hired as ambassadors to promote digital
careers in schools (BIMA, 2015).
To be findable on YouTube, vloggers attach textual keywords tags to their
videos, which are often standardized in order to build on consistent brand and to
carve out a fixed and easily identifiable pathway to content. To take one example,
Zoella is the most followed and highest profile UK beauty vlogger, with over 11
million followers. For her video metadata, she utilizes the textual keywords,
attaching “zoesugg, zoe, sugg, zoella, beauty, cosmetics, fashion, lifestyle, haul,
collaboration, friends, funny, British, life, chatty, favorites” on each of the videos
published on her main channel. Tags such as “fashion,” “lifestyle,” and “haul”
work to situate her content within the hugely popular beauty and fashion genre on
YouTube, whereas “zoella,” “zoe,” and “sugg” (her surname) are used to ensure
she is searchable for her own branded name and beauty-related themes, even
 26 Sophie Bishop

when a video may ostensibly be on another topic. Beauty and lifestyle tags are
applied, no matter the video topic or genre, including videos about Easter
cupcake baking (Zoella, 2017a) or teenage friendships and periods (Zoella,
2017b). In addition to aggregating her content, this protects Zoella’s own personal
brand and trademarks by continuously reinforcing the relationship between her
band name and beauty and lifestyle content.
The labor and strategy behind tagging practices should be understood in the
context of the desire for, and performance of, visibility. Vloggers disclosed to me
in interviews they ran their vlog ideas through optimization tools such as Google
AdWords to determine how many times keywords relating to their topic idea
were searched for, and to determine busy search periods. The data they found
then informed which videos they decided to make, which keywords to use, and
which of these will likely be successful during which seasons. Similarly, the
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indexing of auto-generated CC text in search could lead to an imperative to

formulate and organize speech as algorithmically recognizable. A symptom of
CC is that many popular vloggers are noticeably employing strategic use of
keywords in their speech, identified earlier as keyword stuffing. This practice is
identifiable in spoken word, through a slow and clear pronunciation of
commercially valuable or genre-specific keywords, with noticeably suppressed
background noise.

Vlogging Parlance and Commerciality

Vlogging parlance is evocative of YouTube videos oriented toward the “com-
mercial sphere” (Garcı́a-Rapp, 2016: 365). In her study of Chinese-British beauty
vlogger Bubz Beauty’s YouTube content, Garcı́a-Rapp identifies Bubz’s
engagement in both the commercial sphere through tutorials “delivering viewers
attention to advertisers” (Garcı́a-Rapp, 2016: 363) which is distinct from the
“community sphere,” in which emotional connections are formed and solidified
with viewers through “spontaneous and connection-seeking vlogs” (Garcı́a-Rapp,
2016: 364). The commercial sphere encompasses video topics including the
tutorial (cosmetic look instruction), hauls (demonstrating apparent recent pur-
chases), or favorites (discussing apparent favorite products). In opposition
to these direct-to-camera, domestically situated video genres, “community
sphere” – orientated vlogs often “lack a fixed structure” (Garcı́a-Rapp, 2016: 375).
These more personal videos are often filmed in public space, can include multiple
social actors, are high-energy, and can be rambling in topic and narrative order. In
this vein, community vlogs predominately do not lend themselves to the slow,
deliberate, and distinct performance that could be considered vlogging parlance.
There are exceptions, however: the line between community and commercial
content can be permeable and slippery. In community vlogs beauty vloggers may
pause the action in order to enunciate commercially oriented keywords directly
to the camera. In one example, A List vlogger Brogan Tate’s “weekly vlogs” are
busy and loud. Over the course of “WEEKLY VLOG #117” she films herself
talking while audibly sobbing (because she has watched a YouTube video
featuring cute small children), chatting with television programming and music
 Vlogging Parlance: Strategic Talking in Beauty Vlogs 27

in the background, and cooking in her boyfriend’s kitchen with a disruptively

loud extractor fan whirling in the background (Tate, 2017). At one point in the
video, however, she sits down and speaks directly to the camera with no back-
ground noise. She runs through a haul of recently purchased products, clearly
and slowly speaking keywords aloud: “Garnier moisture bomb tissue mask,”
“body cream,” and “nail file.” This example is evocative of vlogging parlance
that is saturated with keywords, in an otherwise busy and often noise-polluted
stream of content.

The Primark Haul Video

This analysis will now focus on the “Primark Haul.” Searching for Primark
Haul on YouTube yields 300,000 videos at the time of writing. The popularity of
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this video genre is perhaps due to the capability to purchase many pieces of on-
trend clothing cheaply in the store, meaning this is a low-cost and seasonally
replicable genre. Primark has even embraced this YouTube-centered attention
by partnering with beauty vlogger GabriellaRose to release a homeware
collection in 2015 (Barns, 2015). The video “Huge Disastrous Primark Haul,”
produced by Zoella, illustrates the practice of keyword stuffing by “A List”
beauty vloggers (Zoella, 2016). In this video, Zoella holds up each item and
slows down her speech, carefully and crisply pronouncing keywords. She
includes a description of the seasonal change: “autumn transitional dress,” “the
true spirit of autumn,” and “more of a winter item,” keywords that are asso-
ciated with seasonal visibility. Zoella ensures she describes the style, length, and
color of each and every one of her purchases in search engine–ready discursive
patterns. She holds up a “navy midi dress,” a “striped maxi dress,” “black, flat
ankle boots” and a “burgundy corduroy pinafore.” She organizes her video
carefully, beginning with dresses and methodically moving on to various trou-
sers, shoes, and accessories, readying and neatly grouping together generically
related keywords.
The turn toward the valuation of CC metadata illustrates the significant
degree of pressure for vloggers to optimize their videos down to the seemingly
microperformances of the self. Through published creator resources, YouTube
suggests that complicity with their desire for rich and accurate metadata is
rewarded with algorithmic visibility. This ultimately places responsibility onto
creators on the platform to ensure their videos are optimized, while assisting
YouTube in developing search accuracy for their viewers. The vlogger is caught
in a double bind: they must both make themselves algorithmically visible, while
also appearing as authentic and genuine. Authenticity is highly valued by fans
and industry in influencer markets, including vlogging (see Abidin & Ots 2016;
Duffy, 2017; Marwick, 2013; Tolson, 2010). Indeed, one of the anchoring
components of influencer self-brands is their distinctiveness from mainstream
or traditional fashion and beauty houses. Despite the calculated style of
pronunciation performed throughout her Primark Haul, it is clear that
Zoella labors to imbue this video with an undercurrent of this performed
authenticity. In this context, a performance of authenticity can be considered
 28 Sophie Bishop

branded ordinariness (Jerslev, 2016) or “calibrated amateurism,” a highly

choreographed style of authentic and amateur self-presentation that ultimately
bears no relation to the skill level or professionalism of the influencer employing
it (Abidin, 2017: 1).
Zoella introduces each of her videos with a “blooper reel” scored by plodding
comedic music. In this particular opening sequence, two pug dogs are in the room
with her and they (adorably) fight on the bed, bark loudly, and cause havoc.
Zoella is ostensibly annoyed by their presence, at one point throwing herself on
the bed with a loud sigh, pulling a pillow over her head and stifling a scream.
Their presence anchors her video as cute, comedic, and totally relatable: who
hasn’t been struggling to get work done due to an interruption by two
rambunctious designer dogs? The presence of the pugs, in addition to lighting
inconsistencies caused by the sun moving in and out of the clouds, imbue the
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video with an amateur quality that is consistent with the home-grown beauty
vlogging genre. Zoella uses “strategic intimacy” in an address to her more devoted
fans (Marwick, 2015). Due to the closely cultivated personal relationships
through her vlogs, and other social media platforms, viewers are both aware of
and somewhat invested in her relationship with vlogger Alfie Deyes. They also
know that one of the dogs in the background is not hers, and belongs to his sister.
In a chatty, familiar address she asks her audience to remind her that she
shouldn’t buy another pug “if you could all just remind me, after this, what it
would be like to have two dogs… or let Alfie know cos he’s the one that wants a
second dog already.” Speaking to her audience, as she would do a friend, rein-
forces the perceived accessibility and performance of “ordinariness” of the
YouTube star. It is important to recognize that the transgressions in the blooper
reel are cut together and set aside from the deluge of crisply pronounced keywords
in the video body. Despite the video title hinting that in the “Primark haul,” the
so-termed “disastrous” interruptions of pug fights and inconsistent sunlight are
confined to the video opening, the rotation of clearly pronounced products runs
smoothly. Ultimately, the video disasters do not hinder, overpower, or mask the
keywords or the crisp pronunciation on “Primark autumnal patterned shirt”
(Zoella, 2016).

Vlogging Parlance and Inequalities

Scholars in the field of critical disability studies have responded to the high
valuation of CC metadata for search, arguing that platforms have misplaced
priorities when it comes to accessibility. These criticisms can prompt us to
examine the motivations of those developing software, and indeed make visible
how hegemonic social hierarchies of value can be baked into code and calcified to
coerce user output to meet commercial requirements (Bivens, 2015). Alper,
Ellcessor, Ellis, and Goggin (2015) argue that the “high market value” of the text
generated actually leads to the needs of those with disabilities being “depriori-
tized” (Alper et al., 2015: 7). Media accessibility scholar Ellcessor (2012) is
similarly critical of the predominantly commercial motivations of CC practices,
stating “online captioning initiatives… have numerous goals, including the
 Vlogging Parlance: Strategic Talking in Beauty Vlogs 29

production of metadata for search engine optimization, and they do not clearly
serve the needs of deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences” (Ellcessor, 2012: 333).
Auto-generated CC rarely encompass what would traditionally be considered CC.
In my sample, these translations were overwhelmingly evocative of textual sub-
titles, rather than accessibility-orientated CC. The predominate distinction is CC
are designed for deaf or hard-of-hearing viewers and include textual descriptions
of music and nondiagetic and diagetic sounds. The platform’s continuation to
term this textual translation affordance CC is therefore misleading and under-
serves differently-abled audiences. Furthermore, as highlighted earlier, CC
capability only stretches to 10 languages, predominantly spoken in the Global
North: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese,
Russian, and Spanish. This sidelines audiences speaking three of the world’s most
spoken languages, including Arabic, Hindi, and Mandarin Chinese, both for
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differently-abled viewers, and for content creators due to their comparably

restricted access to accurate rich auto-translated metadata for their videos.
Many of UK-based vlogger Zoella’s videos are voluntarily translated into
second languages such as Russian, Italian, Dutch, and French. This fan labor
increases Zoella’s findability across languages and locales, generating metadata
for her videos that can ensure visibility within diverse cultural spaces. The most
popular non-English speaking vloggers do often tag their video content with
English keywords and title them in English. For example, Spanish beauty vlogger
Yuya (2017) adds English keywords to her Spanish-speaking videos, and the “diy,
howto, makeup, outfits,” Italian-speaking beauty vlogger Brunella (2017) titles
her Italian videos in English, for example, “1 Minute Makeup” and “Autumn
Look.” Although these behaviors demonstrate the high perceived value of English
metadata on YouTube, these vloggers do not have access to accurate transcripts
in English. The lack of translated CC data may contribute to disadvantages in
international search results for these vloggers. The complex ramifications of the
high valuation of English language metadata on YouTube would be a point of
interest for a future project.

Conclusion
YouTube’s CC and algorithmic affordance are intended, at least in part, for a
generation of textual metadata. Textual subtitles auto-generated by YouTube are
not traditional CC, which identify and translate noise, music, and sounds.
Speaking to the valuation of translated metadata, this chapter has offered a
definition of the spectacular, slow, and careful pronunciations of popular and
desirable search keywords that I have defined as vlogging parlance. I argue
vlogging parlance is an identifiable and visible trend in recent high-profile beauty
vlogging output, which is shaped by assumptions and realities of how commercial
algorithms read and translate audio data. Building on the strategic use of textual
tags as a visibility strategy, and taking into account vloggers’ affective relation-
ships with the YouTube platform, the trend toward “keyword stuffing” can be
identified as an awareness of, and a response to, the high value attached to
commercial and advertising relevancy on the platform. The case study of Zoella’s
 30 Sophie Bishop

Disastrous Primark Haul makes clear the tensions between producing content
that is algorithmically legible and the maintenance of valuable authentic micro-
celebrity self-branding. Furthermore, the Western-centric language affordances of
CC and the high valuation of English on the YouTube platform are examples of
how differently-abled and non-English speaking audiences and content creators
are underserved on YouTube.

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