Stoking the flames of the digital fireplace. How can the practice of vlogging contribute to an understanding of the presentation of self in contemporary oral history making?

Abstract

Stoking the Flames of the Digital Fireplace is a creative practice based project with an ethnographic and auto-ethnographic focus in which I experiment with and analyse the medium of video-logging (vlogging) on the Youtube platform, interviewing New Zealand vloggers along the way to gain insight into how lifestyle vlogging functions as a means of relating oral histories, and how this new role within modern media impacts on the performance of self, culture and identity. The result of this research is a Youtube channel and specifically, four topic focussed vlogs, as well as the exegesis that discusses my journey and findings.