KSI - representation

How is he represented as down to earth and relatable?

• Low budget locations such as his bedroom and flat

• Use of slang and colloquialisms

• Featuring his family and friends in videos

Cocky and arrogant

• Whilst appearing relatable, he also creates a representation of himself as cocky and cool in his videos. His confidence often verges on arrogance.

• This may appeal to his young male audience looking for role models

Humour

• Represents himself as humorous

• Started off with a lot of prank videos

• His videos contain humour and jokes

• This appeals to young people

• However his humour can often be inappropriate. His posts have been criticised for being misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic and racist

• Whilst some less mature and more discriminatory viewers may enjoy this offensive representation, it may repel others who are more accepting and open minded

• Offensive jokes may make some people see him as edgy or rebellious

Family friendly image

• More recently in his career, he has been presenting a slightly more family friendly image eg going on Blue Peter

• This appeals to a mainstream, family friendly audience and represents him as a reliable, trustworthy role model to young people

Gender representation

• Typically masculine

• Video games, boxing, rap, football

• Sporty, physical, competitive

• This masculine representation has gone too far eg harassing women at a gaming convention

• Some of his videos represent men as rude, aggresive, toxic and sexist towards women. Toxic masculinity. Unfortunately some audiences will enjoy these representations

• Very little female representation apart from being sexualised. Less in recent videos, however they are marginalised and not seen as important. This reflects his predominantly male audience

Age

• He was very young when he started

• Having such a large number of subscribers and views represents young people as hard working and successful

• However a lot of his content reinforces ideas about young people being immature

• KSI represents himself as immature to appeal to young people. Eg titling his autobiography “I am a bellend”

• His post have become a little more mature over time perhaps to reflect his own change in age as well as his audience growing up. He has even called out other influencers for being bad role models eg Logan Paul, distancing himself from his old ways

• Makes videos where he rewatches his old content, these show how he has matured and changed

Ethnicity

• The aggressive representations, particularly in his old videos, reinforce negative stereotypes about young black men

• His success represents black men as wealthy, successful, talented etc, challenges stereotypes about black people

How real are the representations we see of him in the media?

• Most social media influencers carefully construct their image and it’s hard to know how “real” any of his content is, particularly now that he has such a large following.

• Videos are scripted and edited.

• Representations of binary opposite conflicts with opponents are designed purposely to create drama and excitement, they aren’t necessarily real. For example, his beef with the Sidemen and Logan Paul

• The representations of KSI may be seen as simulacra