Ranting in emotional public spheres: Publicizing participatory challenges on YouTube

Abstract

Ranting has a bad reputation. But is it always deserved? Online ranting has been alternatively decried for its emotion-laden hostility and praised as a beloved video genre. By exploring a qualitative corpus of YouTube rant videos, this article analyzes how problem-centric rants may serve as forms of proto civic engagement. The article shows that problem-centric rants contribute to emotional public spheres, in which emotions and logic combine to publicize personally-experienced participatory problems and to contribute to civic discourse for others similarly impacted. It reveals the discourse strategies that ranters use to persuade viewers that the site’s policies and the behavior of other participants are complicating self-expression through video. Discourse strategies include counter-balancing criticism with praise, interpellating addressees into a civic public, and focusing criticisms on the powerful. The article contributes to research on social media-based civic engagement and emotional public spheres by analyzing rant videos that expose issues with tech- nologized and commercialized communicative frameworks in digital spaces.