‘Rankings are all bullsh*t anyway, why not do my own?’: Vloggers and genre remediation

Astrid Van den Bossche; Jelena Brankovic; Morten Hansen

doi:10.1177/14614448251316795

‘Rankings are all bullsh*t anyway, why not do my own?’: Vloggers and genre remediation

Astrid Van den Bossche, Jelena Brankovic, Morten Hansen

Digital Humanities

Humboldt University of Berlin

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Rankings are a well-established genre for evaluating diverse phenomena, yet culturally resonant critiques of them are relatively rare. This paper examines how student vloggers on YouTube challenge and reinterpret university rankings through ‘tier list’ and ‘reaction’ videos, thereby shifting genre expectations. Through a move analysis of 30 such videos, we identify 3 rhetorical actions – making sense of ranking, audience interpellation and subverting the ranking genre – and discuss how the ranking’s remediation simultaneously rejects and reinforces hierarchy as the social form underlying it. This results in often humorous critiques where vloggers challenge ‘objective’ cardinal assumptions and posit rank as collaboratively constructed. Remediation in social media has the potential to not only make visible genre work performed by the genre’s discursive community, but in doing so also reconfigures the rhetorical premises that characterise the ranking genre in the first place.

Original language	English
Journal	New Media and Society
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251316795
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 19 Feb 2025

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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14614448251316795

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abstract = "Rankings are a well-established genre for evaluating diverse phenomena, yet culturally resonant critiques of them are relatively rare. This paper examines how student vloggers on YouTube challenge and reinterpret university rankings through {\textquoteleft}tier list{\textquoteright} and {\textquoteleft}reaction{\textquoteright} videos, thereby shifting genre expectations. Through a move analysis of 30 such videos, we identify 3 rhetorical actions – making sense of ranking, audience interpellation and subverting the ranking genre – and discuss how the ranking{\textquoteright}s remediation simultaneously rejects and reinforces hierarchy as the social form underlying it. This results in often humorous critiques where vloggers challenge {\textquoteleft}objective{\textquoteright} cardinal assumptions and posit rank as collaboratively constructed. Remediation in social media has the potential to not only make visible genre work performed by the genre{\textquoteright}s discursive community, but in doing so also reconfigures the rhetorical premises that characterise the ranking genre in the first place.",

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‘Rankings are all bullsh*t anyway, why not do my own?’: Vloggers and genre remediation

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