Introduction
It can easily be said that this is the “Age of the Apology,” as it is not hard to find politicians, celebrities, small or large, standing in front of a camera to say they are “sorry” on the web. Listicles of worst apologies of all time are plentiful on Buzzfeed and other pop culture sites. Public apologies are much different than friends or strangers apologizing because the audience is much larger and influential. When it comes to public apologies, Luke suggests that “the politics of the public apology provides us with evidence of a fear of the power of the word…” (Harris, 2006). Public apologies are higher risk as it is not just one person they are apologizing to, in most instances, but a whole audience of people who the apologizer are trying to regain trust from. Holmes (1995) argues that, even in informal contexts, the presence of an audience is highly likely to influence the “expression and form” of apologies. Public figures, like celebrities and politicians, are reliant on the public’s trust to keep their careers intact.
YouTubers, a fairly new form of celebrity, rely heavily on a sense of intimacy with their fans and viewers. Most Youtubers are ordinary people who control their whole production, from setting up the camera to editing the video, and so every aspect of their video career is personal. Many fans and viewers are not attracted to well produced videos, but instead, interesting personalities that are either funny, emotional, or relatable. It then comes as no surprise that this level of intimacy with an audience generates a larger number of these “apology videos” since the emotional connection can very easily be turned into betrayal. This is amplified for more popular Youtubers that have a large subscriber count, as their many fans and observers, those who follow them without liking them, believe that these Youtubers are obligated to apologize and fix their “offense” in order to display and model acceptable behavior to their loyal fans that may be highly populated with younger, more impressionable subscribers. While politicians and traditional celebrities have the same high stakes, YouTube discourse is perfectly bubbled as the platform provides not only apology videos, but also commentary and response videos to said apology videos. There is a lot of discussion within the YouTube community on if these apologies are “good enough” and many will criticize the strategies these video personalities use. YouTube, while a platform where anyone can post anything, has a set sense of community that it has created since its creation. There is an overall YouTube community of career, self-proclaimed Youtubers that regularly post consistent content, and then within that big community are subcommunities that post certain content like vlogs, commentary, gaming, etc.
Within this paper, I will explore how gender plays within this intense display of apology performance. Do men and women use different apology strategies in their videos? How does the audience perceive these apologies? How effective are these apologies? Does the gender of the audience matter as well? I will be sampling highly viewed apology videos and then look at commentary of said apology videos through comments and response videos, specifically looking at gender, offenses, strategies, and negative/positive responses.
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