Beyond the Screen: Exploring Vaporwave Musicians’ Communicative Identity Work

ABSTRACT

While vaporwave musicians create surreal soundscapes from under the cover of anonymity, they also engage in complex and humanizing identity work processes. We applied a communication theory of identity (CTI) lens to semi-structured interviews conducted with 18 self-identified vaporwave musicians. Grounded in the experiences of vaporwave musicians, our iterative qualitative analysis revealed that participants constantly contend with friction between personal, enacted, relational, and communal identities. This study’s contributions include extending CTI literature into a new realm of music subculture, suggesting new avenues for understanding identity within digital communities, and emphasizing the importance of lived participant experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Identity
• music
• subculture
• Vaporwave
• communication theory of identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Connor D. Wilcox

Connor D. Wilcox is a doctoral candidate in the College of Communication and Information at Kent State University.

Cristin A. Compton

Cristin A. Compton is an assistant professor in the School of Communication Studies at Kent State University.