YouTube vlogging as access to possibilities: A phenomenological study of an OG Filipino vlogger

Abstract

This qualitative phenomenological study aims to understand and provide contextual explanation on the meaning behind the communicative action of YouTube vlogging as located in the essence of experience of the OG Filipino vlogger voice. The bracketing used is an in-depth interview, and the participant is Lincoln Velasquez, more popularly known as Cong TV, one of the top 10 individual vloggers in the Philippines (his channel having >7 million subscribers), and also one of the earliest to start in 2008, several years before vlogging became commercially lucrative in 2016. The analysis is conducted by coding, categorizing, and interpreting the interview transcript, from which 13 sub-themes emerge. By conceptually connecting the sub-themes, the grand theme of vlogging as access to possibilities is surfaced. Through an initial linkage to Sen’s capability approach, a further theoretical abstraction of the grand theme to vlogging as expansion of capabilities is tentatively proposed.