YouTube
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International fans turn to YouTube to access music videos (MV) — to which they are somehow reliant on to fully understand the scope of their idols' message — because of the visual and literal subtitles it provides them. However, there is no ambiguity regarding the place that the fan or the idol takes in their counterpart’s life considering how the identity of the fandom is symbolically integrated within the idol's universe and how the fans then appropriate the MV content to anchor idols to various environments. Music videos are thus a key medium in the materialization of idols in the lives of their fans, as they allow for a dialogue that does not rely solely on words, but rather on the emotional and visual understanding of an individual and their message. Each music video adds to this understanding by developing the idol’s concept and the relational story of the idols to their fans through the built environment, the looks, the choreography, etc.; companies go to great lengths to create engaging and exclusive content so that fans want to reproduce it and incidentally personify idols beyond perceived boundaries.
Youtube also carved a notable place for KPOP in the global cultural flow by the ways in which the platform allows for the consum of a wide variety of content related to idol groups. Fans, in exchange for considerable investment of their time, can fully enjoy the audiovisual presence of their favorite artists and get to know them in depth. The engagement of fans with this content, through a network of communication platforms, and the fluidity with which they redistribute it enriches the transnational exchanges inside and outside the fandom and formalizes the idol's virtual presence — its materiality — on scales never seen before. The idols are then manifested by the cohesion of the fandom around them and are embodied through the multiplicity of virtual spaces activated by their fans’ engagement, thus demonstrating the possibilities the third culture has to close the gap between producer and consumer, but also between perceived and experienced reality, through mimicry and the monopolization of communication channels.
Youtube also carved a notable place for KPOP in the global cultural flow by the ways in which the platform allows for the consum of a wide variety of content related to idol groups. Fans, in exchange for considerable investment of their time, can fully enjoy the audiovisual presence of their favorite artists and get to know them in depth. The engagement of fans with this content, through a network of communication platforms, and the fluidity with which they redistribute it enriches the transnational exchanges inside and outside the fandom and formalizes the idol's virtual presence — its materiality — on scales never seen before. The idols are then manifested by the cohesion of the fandom around them and are embodied through the multiplicity of virtual spaces activated by their fans’ engagement, thus demonstrating the possibilities the third culture has to close the gap between producer and consumer, but also between perceived and experienced reality, through mimicry and the monopolization of communication channels.
One of the ways fans allow idols to occupy space, even when the KPOP industry is not actively sharing content themselves, is to make videos in reaction to their favorite MV. These reviews, while at first glance personal, serve to compare fans’ experiences with the same media or rather invite the same kind of enthusiasm towards this media from a third party audience. This type of involvement with the content, with other fans, and with the idol exacerbates the tangibility of idol’s presence across geographic, monetary, cultural distances, and participates to the deconstruction of preconceptions one might have regarding the realism of the virtual idol. The format of these videos is specifically interesting as it allows fans to superimpose themselves on the idol’s content and thus appear in the same virtual world. Just as these videos bridge the idol’s digital universe with the physical one of the reaction video audience by talking to them through the eye of the camera.![]()
Another way to extend the idol's universe to that of the audience is for fans to share dance covers which allows them to perform in the persona of their idol—clothes and mimics included—while keeping their own identity. Most of the videos are made with little technical means, or even filmed in the fans' private homes. However, some performances feature the dances in public places and, much like the fictional universe created by the MV, position the idol, through means of visual propositioning, in the context in which the protagonists exist. In fan cover videos, the backgrounds will thus often exude a strong environmental identity and suggest the idol to also be part of this context.
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The media sphere and the physical realm thus becomes saturated with the idol’s presence, whether by direct contact to their persona or by the mimicry of the fans; individuals outside the fandom are also more inclined to acknowledge the space idols take in their daily lives without necessarily seeking it, as they are systematically confronted with their incarnations
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