Chapter 8

Performing branded affect in micro‑celebrity YouTube reaction videos

While significant attention has been paid to how social media influencers and content creators use diverse channels for self-presentation and self-promotion, there has been relatively less research into how they employ affective resources in on-screen interactions with their audiences. This article analyses the ways in which online micro-celebrities deploy the resources of affective stance in one specific subgenre of YouTube videos, namely reaction videos. It seeks to identify ways of how such individuals perform affect while otherwise passively watching well-known videos which they allegedly had not seen before (‘first-time watching’). Thus, influencers expose online audiences to their (seemingly) authentic reactions, involving a range of affective responses including surprise, appreciation, amusement etc. The findings reveal that YouTube influencers use affective stance in reaction videos strategically rather than spontaneously, consciously performing affect for their audiences. The article argues that such a form of performed affect is closely linked to self-branding and can be described in two ways: not only as ‘synthetic affect’, which is inauthentic and staged for the benefit of the audience, but also as ‘branded affect’, which is interlinked to the ultimate economic success of social media content creators.