Abstract
Sharing one’s past experience of being bullied is expected to be painful, but gay Taiwanese YouTubers’ self-disclosures about how they became victims of homophobic bullying are frequently accompanied by humor and shared laughter. Their interactions are also presented multimodally with other visual and audible semiotic resources. Adopting a multimodal social semiotic approach and a framing approach, this study analyzes three YouTube videos about homophobic bullying. Findings suggest that the gay Taiwanese YouTubers frequently shifted between the sociable frame and the audience-targeted frame when interacting with their interactants and audience. They also assumed different narrative roles, serving as the story-teller, the commentator, and the fictionist. How these gay influencers articulate their opinions on behalf of the LGBTQ community also helps them to assert themselves as eloquent, knowledgeable, and humorous sexual moderns.
Introduction
Although the predominance of heteronormative discourses has been gradually weakening due to ‘an increasing visibility and perceived legitimacy of same-sex sexualities’ after the 1969 Stonewall Riots (Motschenbacher, 2020: 66), gay men still face challenges, particularly in patriarchal Asian societies. Gay men in Singapore, for example, are forced to communicate their sexual identity ‘softly’ because of the illiberal pragmatism in the country (Pak, 2021). In Taiwan, toxic masculinity still exists in the society, as a man’s lack of masculinity can be seen as ‘funny’ on television (Chen, 2018, 2022). In particular, homohysteria not only regulates and stratifies masculinities (Anderson, 2009), but also influences people’s attitudes toward homosexuality and straight men’s freedom to express ‘feminine’ behaviors (Morris and Anderson, 2015). Therefore, straight men’s homophobia perhaps results from the fact that they no longer feel a sense of security when gay men, who used to be insiders, have now become outsiders. More often than not, such fear leads to homophobic bullying.
Notably, Vore (2014) observed that most gay university students in Taiwan showed little awareness or concern for the negative effects of homophobic bullying. Their masculine or feminine characteristics do not predict whether they will become victims of acts of homophobic bullying. Li’s (2020) recent investigation further showed that, in Taiwan, gay men with feminine personality traits do not see themselves or act as victims, but have exercised their agency to lead their preferred lives. Although experience of homophobic bullying may create internalized messages to cause psychological shame and mental health difficulties for the bullied victims (Meyer, 2003), this is not the case for all gay Taiwanese men, including those with feminine personality traits. Different from seeking friendship, support, and providing empathy as manifested in the self-disclosures of many bullied LGBTQ people in YouTube videos (Green et al., 2015), gay Taiwanese YouTubers’ self-disclosures are not always focused on negative affects. As this study will show, how gay Taiwanese YouTubers talk about their negative experience can be humorous. They are also observed to frequently shift between the two interactive frames and the three narrative roles on this social media platform.
YouTube as a platform for talking about homophobic bullying
YouTube is a multimodal mediated form, as ‘videos and comments co-occur in a patterned way and are interrelated in meaning making’ (Androutsopoulos, 2013: 50). The multiple semiotic modes may include moving and still images, spoken and written words, music and sound, and various clickable objects, icons, and links (Benson, 2015, 2017). As a popular mediated form, YouTube is frequently used to construct ordinary expertise (Eriksson and Thornborrow, 2016; Riboni, 2017, 2020), communicate and interact with others (Rotman and Preece, 2010), and seek friendship, support, and provide empathy (Green et al., 2015). Not surprisingly, gay Taiwanese YouTubers, as in-group members of the LGBTQ community, may publicly share their past experience of being bullied for not conforming to cisheteronormative ideologies such as for being gay or for lacking manliness. As Shaw and Sender (2016: 4) observed, ‘Queer life has always been forged as much through ingenuity, invention, and resistance as it has through the erotics of non-normative sexualities, and no less now than in earlier eras of communication technologies’. As they need to assertively articulate their opinions on behalf of the LGBTQ community regarding discrimination against sexual minorities such as homophobic bullying, they have to queer their talk and be responsible, caring, and advocative when talking to their young followers, who are ‘closeted, struggling, or looking for guidance’ (Abidin, 2019: 619). This study, therefore, aims to analyze how gay Taiwanese YouTubers verbally and non-verbally disclose their experience of being bullied through humorous interaction with their interactants and audience.
Database
The data selected for this study are based on three videos publicly available from three LGBTQ-friendly YouTube channels, including Ty Ty So Hot (2018), FJ234 (2018), and Girls’ Bedtime Talk (2019). The first two channels are run by out-and-proud gay Taiwanese YouTubers, whose videos are mostly focused on LGBTQ issues. The third channel run by a straight Taiwanese woman teaches viewers simple and usable fashion tips, and in the selected video the YouTuber interviews her gay friend, who is also a celebrity himself. In each of the videos, two speech participants are talking about how they were bullied in the past, and therefore interaction between two gay men and that between a gay man and a straight woman can be observed.
Hànyǔ Pīnyīn ‘Transcription of Chinese Characters’ is used for transcribing the Mandarin data. Each example is accompanied by two screenshots and an English translation. The transcribed data are marked with transcription symbols (see Table 1):
Transcription symbols. a
Some of the transcription symbols were adopted or adjusted from Jefferson (2004: 24–31), Jenks (2011:45–69), and Chen (2016: 163).
Multimodal social semiotics and framing on YouTube
An interaction on YouTube is multimodal by nature in the sense that it not only involves YouTubers’ verbal and non-verbal performances, but other semiotic resources are also used during post-production, such as inserts of texts, pictures, videos, music, and sound. Thus, the interactions on YouTube are best studied within a multimodal framework. The multimodal social semiotic approach draws upon the systemic-functional theory (Halliday, 1978; Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004), which is a form of grammatical description viewing language as social semiotic and grammar as a resource for making meanings (Halliday, 1978: 192). In multimodal analysis, a mode may refer to a set of socially- and culturally-shaped resources used for meaning-making (Jewitt, 2014). As explained by Van Leeuwen (2005: xi), ‘[S]ocial semiotics compares and contrasts semiotic modes, exploring what they have in common as well as how they differ and investigating how they can be integrated in multimodal artefacts and events’. More specifically, social semiotics explores our physiological and technical resources used for communication and how the uses of them are socially regulated.
On the other hand, the framing approach (Goffman, 1981; Tannen, 1996) builds on Bateson ([1954] 1972) concept of the metacommunicative message, or metamessage, which helps people understand verbal and non-verbal moves in communication. For example, a metamessage can frame a hostile move as ‘play’. As observed by Goffman (1981: 157), ‘linguistics provides us with the cues and markers through which such footings become manifest, helping us to find our way to a structural basis for analyzing them’. For example, Tannen and Wallat (1993) observed that a pediatrician shifted among three frames when interacting with the child, the mother, the video crew, and the medical residents. Kendall (2006) also found four frames (dinner, managerial, caregiving, and sociable) and a child-centered family footing in two family dinnertime homecomings. Matsumoto’s (2009, 2011, 2015) studies revealed that elderly Japanese women turn painful life events into daily matters through quotidian reframing, which serves as a discourse strategy to reduce psychological intensity and reground the quotidian self. In an interaction, frames can also be created using ‘contextualization cues’ for conversational inference (Gumperz, 1982, 1992). The framing approach helps to show how YouTubers negotiate frames and footings using multimodal resources. The multimodal resources used by the speakers and during the post-production of the video clips will be analyzed.
The YouTubers’ dual interactive frames
The two YouTubers in each video clip shift between the sociable frame and the audience-targeted frame, as can be seen in the linguistic and non-linguistic cues used in an interaction. Some of the cues are produced during post-production.
The sociable frame
Extract (1) is a sequence from Girls’ Bedtime Talk, in which XL, a gay man, is invited by HM, a straight woman, to tell how he was bullied in the past. As HM hosts the interview, she has to elicit more interesting remarks from XL, her invited guest. As we will see, XL shifts back to the sociable frame, where a humorous episode takes place. More precisely, the sociable frame is co-constructed by HM and XL to attract more laughter, with HM as the major contributor.
Translation of the Textual Insert:
Translation of the Textual Insert:
In the first part of the interaction, XL frequently looks at the camera when sharing his story with the audience and seldom shifts back to the sociable frame to interact with HM. Before he is lexically challenged to find suitable phrases for his introverted and shy personality (line 5), he looks at HM only once when he feels that HM is shocked (line 1). HM, on the other hand, remains mostly in the sociable frame throughout the interaction, as signaled by her use of involvement tokens, such as gaze (lines 1–7, 9, and 10), a question (line 4), and comments (lines 6 and 10). As the laughter in lines 7, 9, and 10 further shows, the sociable frame overlaps with a humorous episode, that is, XL’s slip of the tongue (line 5), which audibly connects HM’s thinking to a tantric sex practice in Chinese (line 10).
Noticeably, XL touches HM on the shoulder when he feels embarrassed for accidentally creating a funny new word (line 7, Figures 1–2). As observed by Weisfeld and Weisfeld (2014), an embarrassing situation is not always accompanied by anxiety; instead, it can be amusing due to its humorous aspect signaled by smiling and laughter. In my data, a gay man or a straight woman frequently touching his/her interlocutor during embarrassing or joking moments is not uncommon. However, Dolinski (2013) observed that straight men are rarely found to touch other men, perhaps because this ambiguous gesture ‘can bring associations of homosexual undertone’ (p. 458), even in countries where homophobia is not that strong. Thus, this non-verbal engagement helps to distinguish a gay man from a straight man, since the former seems to be less sensitive to the boundary between a man and a woman and is not afraid to show friendliness to his interlocutor via this non-verbal engagement.
The audience-targeted frame
A YouTuber interacts not only with his/her interlocutor(s), but also with his/her audience. In my data, a YouTuber may signal the audience-targeted frame by gazing at the camera, using the second-person pronoun, and adding the inserts (e.g. textual, pictographic, sound or music) for the audience. The following sequence is extracted from the final segment of Ty Ty So Hot, in which both TL and AG appeal to their audience as signaled by the aforementioned contextualization cues, but also in a humorous way.
Translation of the Textual Insert:
As the above sequence shows, both TL and AG look at the camera while talking to the audience. The four instances of the second-person pronoun nǐ ‘you’ (lines 1, 3, 5, and 7) are also used to refer to the audience, serving as a linguistic tool to create solidarity (Kuo, 2002) or to align with or affiliate to the other (Droste and Günthner, 2020). As the audience-targeted frame is signaled by the two YouTubers’ gazing at the camera and their use of the Chinese second-person pronoun, the two YouTubers can be regarded as talking to their audience as if they were right in front of them.
Considerably, the phrase bàlíng de shìqíng ‘matters about bullying’ (line 1) is ambiguous if judged by the context. As the victims of homophobic bullying, both TL and AG have nevertheless once bullied others, according to some of their anecdotes shared during the interaction. TL’s use of the verb fēnxiǎng ‘to share’ (line 1) and AG’s added remark jīngyàn ‘experience’ (line 2) have made the phrase even more ambivalent. In Chinese, the verb fēnxiǎng ‘to share’ tends to take a joyful event as its object; on the other hand, the word jīngyàn ‘experience’ implies that one specializes in a certain field. Both of the words can ambiguously construct the act of bullying as expertise that one can joyfully share with others. Thus, the matters about bullying in the above sequence can either refer to a person being bullied by others, or a person performing the act of bullying, with the latter spiced with humor. More concretely, the two YouTubers can be regarded as asking their audience to share how they were bullied or how they bullied others, but in a humorous way. Also note that there is a textual insert highlighted in yellow (line 1, Figure 3), which also adds comments but in a humorous way. This sequence, which is signaled as ‘play’ by the two YouTubers’ smile (Figure 4), further suggests that they, while appealing to their audience, tend to joke with them.
The YouTubers’ three narrative roles
Coates (2003) has defined a narrative as a sequence of ‘narrative clauses’ (Labov, 1972), which are combined together according to the real-time order of the described events. In other words, it is ‘the representation of an event’ or ‘a series of events’ (Abbott, 2008: 13). While these narrative clauses are packed together to construct the heart of the story, the narrative must have a point—the ‘tellability’ (Coates, 2003: 21–24). More precisely, a narrative requires the violation of ‘the canonical script’ (Bruner, 1991; quoted in Coates, 2003). Similarly, gay YouTubers also need to violate the canonical script to attract more viewers. The notion of ‘tellability’ perhaps distinguishes between male and female narratives, as manifested in the chosen topics. For example, Coates (2004) observed that men tend to avoid self-disclosure and like to talk about impersonal topics. While men can be regarded as performing masculinity in their construction of narratives, and vice versa for women, this is perhaps not the case with gay Taiwanese men. In my data, the gay YouTubers tend to take up different narrative roles as they talk about how they were bullied, including the story-teller, the commentator, and the fictionist.
The story-teller
Serving as a story-teller, the speaker focuses the interaction on a past event of himself, or that of the other person. It is signaled by the use of time indicator (e.g. nà shíhòu ‘at that time’, de shíhòu ‘at the time of’) and is dramatized by the use of quoted speech. In systemic-functional linguistics, an utterance can be regarded as having been said by a ‘Sayer’ during the verbal process (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 252), or as having been felt, thought, wanted, or perceived by a ‘Senser’ during the mental process (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 201). More pointedly, it is not uncommon to quote one’s verbal speech or inner speech in story-telling. In the following sequence, JX directly quotes his homeroom teacher’s remarks and his own thoughts to dramatize his story.
As the above sequence shows, JX’s elementary school homeroom teacher valued marriage with one husband and one wife and trumpeted his personal belief in health education class. To make the story more interesting, JX uses direct quotation, as can be seen in line 8, in which the first-person pronoun wǒ ‘I’ does not refer to JX, but to his homeroom teacher. According to Brown and Levinson (1987), one positive-politeness strategy is to intensify interest to the hearer by ‘making a good story’ via the ‘vivid present’ in the quoted speech and ‘switching back and forth between past and present tenses’ (pp. 106–107). JX can be regarded as enacting the role of his homeroom teacher who does not appear in the speech event. His greater force, such as louder pitch, clenched fist, and angry face (Figure 5) has dramatized his homeroom teacher’s utterance, further resulting in it being funny, as signaled by FF’s laughter (line 8). Also note that JX pauses, repeats his own quoted speech to highlight its funniness, and then looks at FF (lines 8–9). This time FF laughs so hard that he covers his mouth (Figure 6). As observed by Chen (2016), laughter used for showing appreciation of another’s humor is accompanied by physiological changes, such as an open mouth, bared teeth, and narrowed eyes. Chen’s data have further shown that when a woman appreciates humor, she tends to throw her whole body backward and cover her smiling face with a hand. Although there is no adequate evidence supporting that FF’s interactional style is close to that of a woman, it is clear that he appreciates JX’s humor in the quoted speech.
Interestingly, JX not only quotes verbal speech but also quotes his inner speech when the event took place, as can be seen in line 13. Inner speech is dialogic in nature, which is important in terms of metacognition, self-awareness, and self-understanding (Morin, 2005). As further defined by Alderson-Day and Fernyhough (2015), inner speech is ‘the subjective experience of language in the absence of overt and audible articulation’, which may be referred to as ‘private speech, self-talk, covert speech, silent speech, verbal thinking, verbal mediation, inner monologue, inner dialogue, inner voice, articulatory imagery, voice imagery, speech imagery, and auditory verbal imagery’ (pp. 931–932). From the above, JX not only presents the event vividly, but he also shows how he felt about it vividly.
The commentator
As YouTube is an online space for its users to publicly broadcast extensive information about their identities (Lange, 2008), it is therefore not uncommon for a YouTuber to make comments. As a commentator, the speaker reveals his opinions on the narrated event, as signaled by the use of many linguistic cues, such as assertives and rhetorical questions, which are more likely to be reinforced by the inserted texts that can also be observed in the audience-targeted frame. In the following sequence, both the assertives and rhetorical questions are used when the two YouTubers are talking about how a junior female schoolmate was bullied.
Translation of the Textual Inserts
Translation of the Textual Inserts
In the above sequence, TL shares how he and his friends bullied a junior female schoolmate because she had stolen his bestie’s boyfriend. Before he further shows the details, he asks a rhetorical question (line 2), which does not seek an answer. Clearly, TL’s rhetorical question aims at getting support from AG; he wants AG to show agreement, as is also evidenced in his gaze at AG (line 2). While TL’s smiling face has framed his support-seeking question as play, it is also a comment itself: this junior female schoolmate is quite deserving of the bullying act. In his turn of speaking, AG shows his support, which is also framed by his laughter as play (line 3). Both TL and AG also try to keep their voice down when giving comments, as can be seen in lines 2–3. While lowering one’s voice may result in a serious atmosphere, as if both the two YouTubers agreed to the bullying behavior, the red textual insert reminds the audience that what the two YouTubers say is simply joking (Figure 7).
We may note, in passing, that TL and AG use the degree adverb hěn ‘very much’ to reinforce the funniness. The Taiwanese YouTubers in my data are observed to frequently use degree adverbs in their assertives, such as zhēnde ‘really’, fēicháng ‘very’, or chāo ‘super’, as can also be seen in line 10. As an assertion ‘presents a proposition as true’, ‘commits the speaker to that proposition’s being true’, and ‘expresses belief’ (Sbisà, 2020: 160), using a degree adverb to reinforce a proposition or belief results in a dramatic effect and creates humor. It is therefore not surprising to see both TL and AG use hěn ‘very much’, especially when their proposition is framed as play.
Upon hearing TL’s story about how he and his friends bullied this junior female schoolmate, AG immediately asserts that when all the hangers are placed on her seat, it looks like an installation art, which is immediately supported by TL. Also note that AG’s assertive is a dramatic expression, which is a discourse strategy to result in a humorous effect by dramatizing a speech event (Chen, 2017). As Chen further explains, a Taiwanese may cognitively choose between different potential dramatic expressions to create humor, many of which are based on the shared in-group community knowledge and are concerned with things like commentary (Chen, 2017: 76). The pink textual insert also highlights the funniness of AG’s comment (Figure 8).
The role of a commentator is also signaled by the use of wǒ juéde ‘I feel’ and the inserted texts. The frequent discourse chunk wǒ juéde ‘I feel’ is highly mobile in an utterance, as it can occur initially, medially, or finally in an utterance or a turn, or can be coded as a single-unit turn (Endo, 2013; Liu, 2013). In general, wǒ juéde ‘I feel’ serves as an epistemic marker with deliberative and tentative functions: it serves the deliberative function if an utterance with it shows the speaker’s certain opinion, and the tentative function if an utterance with it weakens the speaker’s commitment (Liu, 2013: 161). In the following sequence, XL uses wǒ juéde ‘I feel’ to show why he was bullied and places this discourse chunk in the utterance-final position.
Translation of the Textual Insert:
Translation of the Textual Insert:
In the above sequence, XL states that he was bullied by three guys because he looked down upon them first and tried to stay away from them on purpose whenever they might have a chance to walk together. In commenting on why he was bullied and the consequence that he had to face, he uses the two idiomatic expressions: zì-shì-shèn-gāo ‘too much self-esteem’ and lè-jí-shēng-bēi ‘after joy comes sadness’. The role of a commentator is signaled by his use of wǒ juéde ‘I feel’ in the utterance-final position to serve the deliberative function. XL’s selection of the two idiomatic expressions is not uncommon, each with four characters or syllables. The frequent apposition of four closely-combined Chinese characters results from the Mandarin speakers’ dual thinking, in particular, how they cognitively summarize and/or classify matters (Li, 2013).
XL’s use of idiomatic expressions also suggests his wide range of knowledge about the classical Chinese lexicon and that he can assert himself as a knowledgeable and eloquent ‘sexual modern’ (see Hall, 2019). Indeed, the mismatch between the spoken genre and the use of the formal register might generate a humorous effect (Chen, 2022). The funniness is highlighted by the sound and textual inserts (lines 7–8). The inserted sound is the theme of a past television program which taught Taiwanese audiences one Chinese character a day. On the other hand, the inserted texts are presented in square grids split into nine smaller squares (see Figures 9–10), which were arranged for practicing Chinese calligraphy. Phonetic symbols for transcribing Mandarin in Taiwan are also placed beside Chinese characters. Therefore, both the sound and textual inserts can be regarded as highlighting the humor of XL’s use of the two idiomatic expressions by constructing him as an expert specializing in classical Chinese lexicon.
The fictionist
Serving as a fictionist, a speaker jumps out of the real world and goes into an imagined or a hypothesized situation, which is signaled by the imitated tone of voice and the pictographic inserts. The imitated tone of voice helps the speaker to enact a role in the created fictional episode, whereas the pictographic inserts visualize a part of the episode. This frame helps to illustrate a point in discussion while, in many cases, to create humor, such as to create wúlítóu ‘nonsense humor’. In the following sequence, TL and AG co-construct a fictional episode when talking about whether a teacher handles the bullying act properly.
Before this sequence, TL shared how he was bullied and how his teacher handled the situation poorly: TL’s teacher simply made a phone call to his parents. As he further explains, it should be hard for a child to tell his parents that he was bullied because he behaved femininely, as parents in the patriarchal society tend to blame their children for being feminine, instead of blaming the bullies. TL’s explanation is framed as a fictional episode, in the sense that he enacts the roles of a bullied boy and his parents in an imagined and hypothesized situation using an imitated tone of voice. In lines 3 and 4, TL uses soft speech to imitate the feminine tone of voice of the bullied boy. In lines 2 and 6, he uses soft and loud speech to enact the roles of this boy’s parents at different moments. While the parents show their concern for their child, they become angry upon hearing that their child behaves femininely. Although some gay men display significantly higher pitch modulation patterns and less breathy voices compared to straight men (Suire et al., 2020), TL’s imitated feminine tone of voice is intended sarcastically in response to those who despise male feminine traits.
Translation of the Textual Inserts:
Translation of the Textual Insert:
The roles of the angry parents are also visualized via a pictographic insert (Figure 12). In lines 6–7, TL and AG construct another fictional episode to mock male femininity in a sarcastic but playful way. They incorporate a scene from a popular Chinese costume television series into their fictional episode and enact the role of an imperial consort in it. ‘Cuiguo’, the name mentioned in line 6, is a maid of an imperial consort, who, in a scene, was asked to punish an imperial concubine by slapping her face. In the created fictional episode, however, both TL and AG enact the roles of parents who ask Cuiguo (the role in the television series) to slap their bullied child for his feminine traits. The parents’ accusation to their child is also highlighted using a textual insert (line 6, Figure 11). As this television series features the fierce power struggles in the imperial harem, it is popular among women and gay men. The insert of Cuiguo’s picture (Figure 12) not only helps the loyal viewers recall the funniness of the scene, but it also familiarizes others with the fictional episode. The co-occurrence of the pictographic insert and the constructed fictional episode can be regarded as producing an extra layer of meaning carrying narrative force, which creates humor to reduce seriousness.
Conclusion
Examining data drawn from three LGBTQ-friendly YouTube channels focusing on homophobic bullying, I observed that gay Taiwanese YouTubers frequently shifted between the sociable frame and the audience-targeted frame, as signaled by their linguistic and non-linguistic cues. They also took up different narrative roles when talking about how they were bullied, including the story-teller, the commentator, and the fictionist. The results are significant in that the observed verbal and non-verbal behaviors of these gay Taiwanese YouTubers show gender differences. Previous studies observed how male YouTubers present themselves on YouTube. While some straight male YouTubers have created a new form of masculinity to make themselves popular in the modern world (e.g. non-aggressive, emotionally open, embracing their femininity, publicly displaying homosocial tactility with other men, supporting their gay friends, and promoting a more egalitarian perspective on the status of women) (Morris and Anderson, 2015: 1201), gay YouTubers can ‘flexibly demonstrate gradients of self-conspicuousness in digital or physical spaces depending on intention or circumstances for favorable ends’ (Abidin, 2016: 87) and ‘carve spaces for non-hegemonic and non-orthodox presentations of the self’ (Abidin, 2019: 621). I further observed that gay Taiwanese YouTubers tend to express intimacy and show support through physical contact, in particular during embarrassing or joking moments.
Talking about homophobic bullying can be entertaining, as can be seen in gay Taiwanese YouTubers’ playful attitude in their self-disclosures. While many bullied LGBTQ people are found to seek friendship, support, and provide empathy in YouTube videos (Green et al., 2015), gay Taiwanese YouTubers are likely to treat their past negative experience in a sarcastic but humorous way. As observed by Berryman and Kavka (2018: 86), there is troping toward positivity on YouTube, which can be seen as the ‘attention economy’ of social media (Fairchild, 2007; Marwick, 2015; Senft, 2013); that is, followers offer their attention in exchange for the YouTubers’ produced content. As Berryman and Kavka further illustrate, one positive affective unit from the YouTubers generates one attention unit from their followers, which will produce a monetary unit. More indicatively, talking about unhappy events in a joyful way helps these gay Taiwanese YouTubers not only to attract higher viewing rates to monetize their channels, but also to assert ‘sexual modernity’ (Hall, 2019).
To conclude, YouTube has offered us a means to communicate our beliefs and attitudes to others in a more effective way through multimodal resources. By using various social semiotics and shifting between different frames and narrative roles, gay Taiwanese YouTubers may disclose their negative past experience in a humorous way, while at the same time articulating their opinions as members of the LGBTQ community.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer and Mie Hiramoto for their invaluable feedback on an earlier version of this paper. Any errors that remain are my own responsibility. My gratitude also goes to those brave and humorous out-and-proud gay Taiwanese YouTubers for publicly sharing their experience of being bullied, which has raised the attention and awareness of the Taiwanese society toward homophobic bullying.
Correction (January 2023):
This article has been updated to correct the year in the reference Chen L-C (in press) to Chen L-C (2022).
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.