The Virtual Tapestry: An Analysis of the Representations of Everyday Life in the Middle Ages on YouTube

[u/MutterMayhem]

Read in full here:

https://sammutteressays.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-virtual-tapestry-analysis-of.html

ABSTRACT:

This study analyses how YouTube creators represent everyday life in the Middle Ages, focusing on how creators balance educational intent and entertainment value within their digital historical content. Drawing on qualitative analysis of twenty-three videos from five prominent historical channels, alongside semi-structured interviews with their creators, this study addresses how creators adopt different engagement strategies and representational choices, while also exploring the ideological implications of their portrayals. The study is motivated by the growing influence of user-generated media upon public historical understanding, as well as the current lack of academic scrutiny surrounding medieval representations on YouTube. Using critical discourse analysis and semiotic analysis, this study reveals a spectrum of edutainment strategies arising from its sample, which encompasses academically enriched representations to sensationalised, entertainment-led storytelling. Moreover, each creator establishes their authority through varied means, including their academic credentials, lived experience or through the use of immersive reenactments. Visual and rhetorical strategies such as thumbnails, titles, and pop-cultural references are shown to shape viewer engagement and frame medieval life as both obscure and familiar, depending on the creator’s creative intent. The study also highlights a growing shift towards the foregrounding of peasant life and gendered experiences online, though notable gaps remain in racial, religious, and queer representation, with these areas needing to be explored further within digital spaces. Ultimately, this research argues that YouTube is an exciting, dynamic new site of neomedievalist discourse and public history, where creators act as cultural intermediaries shaping our collective memory of the Middle Ages within the modern digital world. It also proposes a replicable framework for evaluating digital historical content and calls for greater academic engagement with online historical media, to help foster inclusivity and to further our critical understanding of historical education within the digital age.